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Readers are asked to report all cases of books marked or muti- lated. ~' Do not deface books by marks and writing. i{ W. ^ Cornell University WM Library The original of tiiis book 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/cu31924093598054 ESSAYS CONTEIBUTED TO THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. BY EEV. J.^' J. BLUNT, B.D., LATE MARaAKEI PKOFESSOK 01' DIVINITY AT OAMERIBGE, LONDON : JOHN MURKAY, ALBEMAELE STEEET. 1860, A'2^^74^^ LONDON : FEINTED BY WOODFALL AND KINDEB, A^OEL COURT, SKINNER STREET. CONTENTS. Essay fAGE I. The Chtjboh in India. . . ... 1 II. Milton ... 47 III. Refokmation in Italy . . .89 IV. Paley ... . . 133 V. Db. Park . . . 173 VI. Bishop Butlee (Wobks) . . . . 250 VII. Townson's Disooubses . . 293 VIII. Cbanmee . . . . 324 rX. Robert Hall . . . . 361 X. Adam Clarke . . ... 404 XI. Church Rates . . ... 440 XII. Village Preaching . . 454 XIII. Village Schools . 475 XIV. Bishop Bdtler (Memoirs) . 490 I.-THE CHURCH IN INDIA. (Mahoh, 1827.) 'If God has no need of human learning! retorted South on the Puritans of his day, 'still less has he need of human ignorance : ' and too truly has this been seen in much of the history of the attempts to Christianize the East. A sanguine spirit has gone forth thither, expecting ends without means — hailing the most equivocal symptoms as infallible signs of con- version — prompting replies to the listless heathen, and thea recording those parrot-words as spontaneous tokens of grace. To every sentence which one of the missionaries addressed to a man before him, covered with cow-dung, he received as an answer, 'Nisam!' (most certain!) pronounced with great gravity, and accompanied by a sober nod of the head. ' I was much cheered," says the worthy teacher, ' by his approv- ing so cordially the doctrines of salvation :' — and if here the questions had ended, this man would have had as good right to be enrolled amongst the lists of converted heathens as many more; but, unluckily, it was further asked, 'How old are you?' 'How long have you been Sunyasee?' — to which he rephed, with the same emphasis as before, 'Nisam! Nisam!' "■ 1. Missionmni Reguters. 1825, 1826. 2. Memoirs of the Life of Thomas Fanshaw Middlelon, D.I)., late Lwd Bishop of Calcutta. By Henry Kaye Bonney, D.D., Archdeacon of Bedford. 3. A Farewell Sermon, preached in the Parish Church of Hodnet, in the County of Salop, April 20, 1823. By the Rev. Reg. Heber. Second Edition. 4. The Omnipresence of God; a Sermon preached August 5, 1825, on the Consecration of the Church of Secrole, near Benares, By Reginald, Lord Bishop of Calcutta. Calcutta. 1826. B 2 THE CHURCH IN INDIA. [Essay I. The missionary should ever be on his guard against exciting the suspicions of the people of England that his work is hollow and unsound, — he should be slow to claim conquests which cool-headed men at home may think his desultory mode of warfare not likely to achieve. The people of England are not ignorant of the boasts of the Eoman Catholic teachers in the same field ; as many as they could baptize (and in some countries they are said to have made short work of it, by swinging a besom) were registered as converts, and reported as living proofs of their amazing success. And we all know what has been the consequence. Of late years, however, and especially among the Protestant missions of our own church, far greater caution has been observed; and now (except, perhaps, in a few instances where the native catechists recom- mend to the missionaries candidates for baptism, for whose competency they are themselves the vouchers) a degree of he- sitation is felt about admitting to this rite, that some may think, and perhaps justly think, more than even prudence demands. That error, however, if en'or it be, is on the right side. Already, by all who do not wish to be blind, some symptoms of progress may be traced. Till within these few years the reluctance of the Brahmins to communicate the contents of their sacred books was insuperable ; now, every European, who has the curiosity, is permitted to look into those mysteries, and acquaint himself with what a Hindoo professes, which will often furnish not the worst arguments against what he practises. Martyn durst not introduce into his schools his version of the parables, and acquiesced, of necessity, in the use of a Hindoo poem on an avatar of Vishnu, which had no other merit than that of being unintelligible to the children : but at this day the gospels are freely read, as far as the teachers think fit to impart them ; boys of all ranks, from the Brahmin to the Soodra, are assembled together, under the same roof; and places are won and lost in the classes without any reference to caste or colour. When one of the church missionaries was first appointed to the school at Burdwan, not a boy would consent to abide on the Essay I.] THE CHURCH IN INDIA. 3 same premises with him ; by degrees they were induced to be- come more familiar — at length to attend worship — and at last (except during the holidays) to remain with him altogether. At Badagamme, in Oeylon, we are told that the children of different castes may be seen seated on mats, ealing and drink- ing together, with the utmost apparent good will; — a novel spectacle, even in that island of promise. It is not more than five or six years ago that the project for educating females in India was reckoned hopeless ; now, upwards of thirty girls' schools are in activity at Calcutta alone. At Mirzapore, where a chapel has been established for Bengalee preaching, the congregation changes several times perhaps during a sermon, as the curiosity or patience of the hearers becomes ex- hausted ; nor is it a symptom of small importance that, whilst few old people are observed there, the young are always to be found in considerable numbers. We are told by Colonel Phipps (who resided several months near Juggernaut, and was present at the great annual festival), that the practice which but recently prevailed of enticing pilgrims to cast themselves under the wheels of the car has now ceased ; that the disgust- ing images with which it was decorated have been removed, and that the outer walls of the temple are purged of the like emblems of impurity. ' Where there is shame' (says John- son), ' there may in time be virtue.' Again, while Martyn found himself everywhere regarded with a degree of suspicion and reserve, that almost shook his better purpose, the late Bishop Heber, we understand, discovered his office to be magnified far beyond his hopes or expectations; received a cordial welcome from those who, some few years earlier, would barely have endured his presence ; and was solicited to despatch ordained ministers to several stations that had been hitherto neglected, with an earnestness which could not be mistaken. We could adduce many other facts, relating indeed to indivi- duals, but still above all suspicion, to prove that the mind of the natives is becoming more busy about religious truth — but we abstain, from dislike to a species of argument which is justly listened to with extreme caution, and because we would B 2 4 THE CHURCH IN INDIA. [Essay I- not, in any degree, contribute to the growth of a spirit which, proclaiming ' A to be all that could be wished,' — ' B a pleasing lad, affectionate and serious,' — ' (who, however, afterwards, poor fellow, trained off) very attentive, and of a dwarfish stature,' — announces, on the other hand, with detestable pre- sumption, that G had been suddenly removed by cholera morbus, just when, in spite of all advice and admonition, be ■was determined to help a party of Eoman Catholics to act a play! Caste is undoubtedly the great obstacle to the conversion of the East, but it is not an insurmountable obstacle. It existed, with many other Indian pecuharities of the present day, before the age of Arrian ; yet Christianity made its way on the coast of Malabar in spite of it. Certain it is, also, that many natives in our own times have actually courted baptism, and "thereby broken caste, even where the caste was honourable ; and that more have been prevented from taking the same step, only by the importunate entreaties of parents and friends. It is not, indeed, by any measure which ' cometh of observation ' that a death-blow can be dealt to this deep-rooted institution ; — but time and Christianity will do the work in peace. Thus it is that slavery, in almost all Christian countries, has disappeared, no man knowing when or how — not by the triumphant issue of a servile war, not by any sudden measures of legislatorial emancipations, — but through the operation of the eternal laws of social progress fixed by Providence, and especially, as we cannot but believe, by the slow yet sure operation of that very principle which is now beginning to work in India. Thus it is that witchcraft, which so few generations back held firm possession cf the faith of our forefathers, and against which even the lofty mind of a Sir Matthew Hale was not proof, has been quietly laid to sleep. What prejudice of caste could be stronger than the principle of religious intolerance in our own country three centuries ago, when even Cranmer could sully his fair fame by one miserable, though, no doubt, most con- scientious compliance with it ; and, what is perhaps more re- markable, when, in a subsequent age, and after the tempest of Essay I.] THE CHURCH IN INDIA. 5 the Eeformation had well nigh subsided, even the amiable Bishop Jewell could breathe the temper which spake in James and John at the Samaritan village, in one solitary sentence of his immortal Apology ? But years rolled on, and the better spirit was silently prevailing. Through Hooker, who now appeared, its advance may be traced ; though his writings (which, however, are of a defensive rather than an aggressive character) occasionally deal out blows against the captious adversaries of the church which he revered, with an asperity savouring more of the times than the man, yet never would they deliver over an heretical offender to the secular arm; and, in the next century, toleration was openly and professedly abetted in a work, which, as it was the first, so it remains the ablest, vindication of the cause — ' The Liberty of Prophesying.' With these and many more such instances before us, we cannot but look forward to the time when Brahmin and Soodra. shall have the relation to each other of gentleman and peasant, and no other — and this the more confidently, because there is good reason to beheve that caste is as much a civil as a rehgious institution, — as much founded upon convenience as upon conscience. Such a consummation the estabhshment of a national church among our own countrymen scattered over India was eminently calculated to advance; and in selecting the founder of that church (a matter of no small importance to its future fortunes), a most sound judgment was exercised. The hints for his conduct in India, which Dr. Middleton committed to writing whilst on ship-board, and which are given in Arch- deacon Bonney's Life of him, are worthy of all praise ; and to that spirit of piety which influenced him, both in the acceptance and discharge of his high functions, were added, talents for business, and a practical wisdom, which enabled him to struggle with difficulties that would have overwhelmed a mind of a different construction, and to devise measures and regu- lations of ecclesiastical polity for the infant church, under which, by God's blessing, it will for ever prosper. Still his firmness (and few men had more) was not unfrequently put to C THE CHURCH IN INDIA. [Essat I. the proof. The appointment of a bishop at all was considered by many a dangerous experiment; and perhaps a jealousy of investing him with too ample powers was the natural conse- quence. It must, for example, have been vain to expect that a knowledge of Christianity should be diffused on any great scale, without the liberal help of native preachers, over such a country as India — more especially when the civil government cannot, for obvious reasons, give more than their best wishes to the work. The history of our own Reformation (were not the reason of the thing enough) might have estabhshed this truth ; and whilst Wales and the Norman Isles, where the new doctrines were taught by ministers of their own, became speedy and sincere converts to those doctrines, Ireland, which was visited by English instructors only, — men whose speech was strange and oflFensive to the great majority of the inhabitants, — neyer was made fully acquainted with the reformed faith ; and so, that critical day being suffered to pass unimproved, has entailed upon the sister-kingdoms, in our own times, a melancholy division of heart. The privilege, nevertheless, of ordaining native Christians was withheld from Dr. Middleton ; and though he subsequently sued for it under restrictions, it was still denied to him. On trial, however, it was found that a bishop had not been nearly so mischievous as had been apprehended. No rebellion had followed his appointment; tlie rupees had continued to drop as fast as before into the Company's treasury : and accordingly, one of the first acts of Dr. Middleton's successor was to ordain a native Christian. Nor was this the only thom in the side of our first Indian bishop. It may be gathered from his two latter charges, how much he suffered from the divisions which he saw amongst the people, and that the want of unity in church doctiine and dis- cipline afforded him a subject of severe mortification — of mor- tification proportioned to the strength of his reasonable con- viction, that every departure from the tenets of the Church of England was a departure from sound faith and primitive practice. Baptists, Independents, Wesleyan Methodists and Presbyterians were all struggling for precedence ; and the poor Essay I.] THE CHUECH IN INDIA. 7 heathen lookers-on might well be perplexed with unnecessary difficulties when they perceived that the Christian doctors themselves agreed in nothing hut in mutual accusations of error. Having borne up, however, against these difficulties as few men could have done ; and having wielded the powers of a bishop for nearly nine years, with a wisdom that has procured for him the admiration of all lovers of our church, this excellent man was gathered to his fathers ; and was succeeded by one, of whom if we should now speak somewhat more at large, our excuse must he found in the extraordinary degree of pubhc sympathy with which his recent and untimely death has leen regarded, both in England and India. Eeginald Heber was the son of the Eev. Reginald Heber, of Marton, in Yorkshire, and of Mary, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Allanson, of the same county. His father lived just long enough to witness his youthful honours; his mother still survives to lament his early death. He was born April 21st, 1783, at Malpas, in Cheshire, a living at that time held by Mr. Heber, as was shortly afterwards that of Hodnet, in Salop, which, together with the estate, had come into possession of his family by a marriage with an heiress of the ancient and honoured name of Vernon. In his childhood, Eeginald Heber was remarkable for the eagerness with which he read the Bible, and the accuracy with which he remembered it; a taste and talent which subsequent acquirements and maturer years only served to strengthen, so that a great portion of his reading was intended, or at least was employed, to illustrate the Scriptures; and perhaps few men of his day had attained so masterly a knowledge of the historical parts of the Bible as well as the doctrinal, or could have thrown happier light upon its oriental customs, its difficult geography, or the civil, political, and moral condition of the people to whom it was addressed. We believe it was once his intention to have published notes upon Calmet, a task for which he would have brought all the re- sources which any single individual could be expected to furnish. Such a work, had it pleased God to restore him to his native land, would have been an agreeable and most useful 8 THE CHURCH IS INDIA. [Essay I. employment for his declining years ; and many materials for it, in addition to those he already possessed, he would have un- doubtedly accumulated during his active researches in the East. To verbal criticism he had not (like his episcopal predecessor) devoted so much attention ; nor perhaps did the character of his mind qualify him for making, in that branch of learning, the same progress as in its more popular departments. The patient investigation of a peculiar construction, or the emenda- tion of a coiTupted text (necessary as such labours are), are not those in ■which the faculties of a poet (and such were certainly his) commonly dehght; and of the few poets who have attempted minute criticism, most have failed, and none have been eminently successful. He received his early education at the grammar-school of Whitechurch, whence he was afterwards sent to Dr. Bristowe, a gentleman who took pupils near London. His subsequent career at Oxford, where he was entered of Brazen-nose Col- lege, in 1800, proved how well his youthful studies had been directed, and how diligently pursued. The University prizes for Latin verse, for the English poem, and for the English prose-essay, were successively awarded him ; and ' Palestine ' received the higher and rarer compliment of public and universal praise. Such a poem, composed at such an age, has indeed some, but not many, parallels in our language. Its copious diction, — its perfect numbers, — its images, so well chosen, diversified so happily, and treated with so much dis- cretion and good taste, — the transitions from one period, to another of the history of the Holy Land, so dexterously con- trived, — and, above all, the ample knowledge of Scripture, and of writings illustrative of Scripture, displayed in it — all these things might have seemed to bespeak the work of a man who ' had been long chusing, and begun late,' rather than of a stripling of nineteen. Some few of our University English prize-poems have had an ephemeral reputation beyond the precincts of Cambridge and Oxford ; but ' Palestine ' is almost the only one (we can recollect, at most, but two others of which any such language could be fairly used) that has Essay I.] THE CHURCH IN INDIA. 9 maintained its honours unimpaired, and entitled itself, after the lapse of years, to be considered the property of the nation. It might have been expected that such a poem would but have been the first of many — that so cordial a welcome would have stamped its author the follower of the muses for life; but having given to the world a small and well-known miscel- laneous volume in 1812 (the whole of which did not then appear for the first time), he withdrew almost entirely from a pursuit to which he was by temper strongly inclined, and devoted himself to the unobtrusive duties of the clerical office.^ From the original pieces of that volume, it would be easy to select thoughts of animation and of tenderness ; but unless perhaps ' The Passage of the Eed Sea ' (which is a noble copy of verses) should be excepted, nothing that, as a whole, comes up to the standard of ' Palestine.' In the trans- lations of Pindar which it contains, it may be doubted whether the deep-mouthed Theban is not made to speak too much after the manner of the great minstrel of Scotland ; still they are executed with genuine spirit and elegance, and the rambling movements of an author, who, in his anxiety to escape from an Hiero or an Agesias, is very apt to run riot and lose his way, are connected with no common success. Previous, however, to the production of this volume, and whilst he was yet fellow of All Souls, a society to which (it should have been said) he had been elected from Brazen-nose, Reginald Heber travelled through those parts of Europe which were then open to an Englishman; and some of his observations upon Eussia and the Crimea, which Dr. Clarke " Still, out of the fulness of his heart, or at the call of his friends, he would at intervals give proof that his hand had not forgot its cunning, however it might have hung up the harp ; and a specimen will not displease our readers : — ' PAEEWELL. ' When eyes are beaming ' When hope is chidden What never tongue might teU, That fain of bliss would tell. When tears are streaming And love forbidden From their crystal cell ; In the breast to dwell ; When hands are linked that dread to part, When, fettered by a viewless chain, And heart is met by throbbing heart. We turn and gaze, and turn again. Oh ! bitter, bitter is the smart Oh ! death were mercy to the pain Of them that bid farewell ! Of them that bid farewell ! '—MS. 10 THE CHURCH IN INDIA. [Essay I. was permitted to extract from his MS. journal, and publish as notes to liis own work, have ever been reckoned the hijoiix of the volume, and, indeed, convey more information in a few words than perhaps would have been communicated by any traveller, except Burckhardt — whose close and pithy sentences not unfrequently resemble these able memoranda. Having now been put in possession of the valuable living of Hodnet, which had been reserved for him, he married Amelia, daughter of Dr. Shipley, late dean of St. Asaph, and, happy in the prospect of those domestic endearments which no man was more qualified to enjoy, settled himself in his rectory. In no scene of his life, perhaps, did his character appear in greater beauty than whilst he was living here, ' seeing God's blessings spring out of his mother earth, and eating his own bread in peace and privacy.' His talents might have made him proud, but he was humble-minded as a child— eager to call forth the intellectual stores of others, rather than to dis- play his own — arguing without dogmatism, and convincing without triumph — equally willing to reason with the wise, or take a share in the innocent gaietie? of a winter's fire-side ; for it was no part of his creed that all innocent mirth ought to be banished from the purlieus of a good man's dwelling, or that he is called upon to abstract himself from the refinements and civilities of life, as if sitting to 1'eniers for a picture of the Temptations of St. Anthony. The attentions he received might have made him selfish, but his own inclinations were ever the last he consulted ; indeed, of all the features in his character this was, perhaps, the most prominent — that in him, self did not seem to be denied, to be mortified, but to be for- gotten. His love of letters might have made him an inactive parish-priest, but he was daily amongst bis parishioners, advising them in difficulties, comforting them in distress, kneeling, often to the hazard of his own life," by their sick- beds; exhorting, encouraging, reproving, as he saw need; • Mr. Heber was, on -one occasion, brought to the brink of the grave by a typhus fever caught in this way. Essay I.] THE CHURCH IN INDIA. 11 where there was strife, the peace-maker ; where there was want, the cheerful giver. Yet in all this there was no parade, no effort, apparently not the smallest consciousness that his con- duct differed from that of other men — his duty seemed to he his delight, his piety an instinct. Many a good deed done hy him in secret only came to hght when he had been removed far away, and, but for that removal, would have been for ever hid — many an instance of benevolent interference where it was least suspected, and of dehcate attention towards those whose humble rank in life is too often thought to exempt their superiors from all need of mingling courtesy with kindness. That he was sometimes deceived in his favourable estimate of mankind, it would be vain to deny ; such a guileless, confiding, unsuspicious singleness of heart as his, cannot always be proof against cunning. But if he had not this worldly knowledge, he wanted it perhaps in common with most men of genius and virtue ; the ' wisdom of the serpent ' was almost the only wisdom in which he did not abound. The Bampton Lectures which he published in 1816 esta- blished his reputation in the theological world; for, though many dissented from his views on some speculative points, every competent judge was compelled to do justice to the depth of learning, the variety of research, and the richness of illustration which those compositions displayed. At home, in his own parish, his sermons were very original — sometimes expanding into general views of the scheme and doctrines of revelation, collected from an intimate acquaint- ance, not with commentators, but with the details of holy writ itself, frequently drawing ingenious lessons for Christian con- duct, from the subordinate parts of a parable, a miracle, or a history, which a less imaginative mind would have overlooked — often enlivened by moral stories, with which his multifarious reading supplied him, and occasionally by facts which had come, perhaps, under his own observation, and which he thought calculated to give spirit or perspicuity to the truths he was imparting: a practice which, when judiciously restrained, is well adapted to secure the rustic hearer from the fate of 12 THE CHUECH IN INDIA. [Essay I. Eutychus, without giving offence even to nicer brethren: of ■which the powerful effect is discoverable (though the figures may be grosser than the times would now admit) in the sermons of Latimer and the Reformers ; subsequently, in those of Taylor and South ; and still more recently, in the popular harangues of Whitfield and Wesley; and a practice, we will add, which derives countenance and authority from the use of parables in the preaching of our Lord. Of Heber's language in the pulpit we shall presently give our readers an opportunity of judging for themselves. Pohshed it was, for such it was in his ordinary conversation, yet seldom above the reach of a country congregation, and sometimes (when there was a duty to be driven home) plain-spoken to a degree for which few modern men would have had courage. Frequently it exhibited metaphors, bold, and even startling; and ever possessed a singular charm, in the happy adoption of expressions from the pure and undefiled English of our Bible, with which his mind was thoroughly imbued. In the midst of these exercises of his calling, pubUc and private, he found time to compose many hymns ; which, had he completed the series, as (with the assistance of friends) he hoped to have done, would have been in relation to the Gospels for the several Sundays throughout the year — com- positions, which those who have seen them will desire that every one should have the opportunity of seeing, and which those will readily believe to be full of beauties, both poetical and spiritual, who are acquainted with the few hymns which he has actually published.* ' The following is for St. Stephen's Day : ' The Son of God is gone to war a kingly crown to gain, His blood -red banner streams afar ! Who follows in His train ? Who best can drink His cup of woe, triumphant over pain ? Who boldest bears His cross below ? He follows in His train ! ' The Martyr first, whose eagle eye could pierce beyond the grave. Who saw his Master in the sky, and called on Him to save ; Like Him, with pardon on his tongue in midst of mortal pain. He prayed for them that did the wrong. Who follows in his train ? ' A glorious band, the chosen few on whom the Spirit came, Twelve valiant saints, the truth they knew, and braved the cross and flame They met the tyrant's brandish'd steel, the lion's gory mane ' They bow'd their necks the death to feel. Who follows in their train ? EssAT I.] THE CHUECH IN INDIA. 13 In 1822, Reginald Heber undertook a more serious task, which was to furnish a life of Jeremy Taylor, and a critical examination of his writings, for a new edition of the works of that great and good man. Since the publication of his Bamp- ton Lectures, this was the first theological essay of any length in which he had openly engaged. If it be compared (as far as the subject will admit of comparison) with the ' Sermons on the Personality and Office of the Ohristiau Comforter,' it will be found that it is the work of maturer knowledge, and a more chastised taste ; the style retaining the vigour, perhaps some- what of the floridness, of former years, but without being com- plicated, ambitious, or constrained ; the matter exhibiting much thought, as well as ample reading, and setting forth, without reserve, the author's own views of most of the controverted points of church doctrine and discipline, which his subject naturally led him to pass in review. But the work derives a further interest from the evident sympathy with which his biographer (perhaps unconsciously) contemplates the life and writings of that heavenly-minded man. Much, indeed, they had in common — a poetical temperament, a hatred of intoler- ance, great simphcity, an abomination of every sordid and narrow-minded feeling, an earnest desire to make religion prac- tical instead of speculative, and faith vivid in proportion to the vigour of high imagination. * A noble army, men and boys, tlie matron and the maid, Around tbeir Savioui''s throne rejoice, in robes of light arrayed, They climbed the dizzy steep of heaven, through peril, toil, and pain — Oh, God ! to ns may grace be given to follow in their train !' — MS. There is much of that simplicity which should ever distinguish devotional poetry, in some hymns adapted to popular "Welsh airs. We shall transcribe the shortest of them — 'A VESPER-HTMN. ' God that madest earth and heaven. Darkness and light — Who the day for toil hast given. For rest the night — May Thine angel-guards defend us. Slumber sweet Thy mercy send us, Holy dreams and hopes attend us, This live-long night ! ' — MS. 14 THE CHURCH IN INDIA. [Essay I. About the time when this life appeared, Mr. Heher was elected preacher at Lincoln's-inn — a very flattering distinction, whether the character of the electors be considered, or the merits of his predecessor, or those of the distinguished person before whom he was preferred ; valuable, moreover, as placing somewhat more ' in oculis civium ' a man intended by nature for a less obscure station than that which he had for years been filling, — though assuredly that was one which he, had it been so ordained, would have continued to fill to his dying day, without any querulous suspicion that he had fallen on evil times when merit is overlooked, and talent suffered to • spend itself on an unworthy field. Thus usefully and happily was he engaged, — in town, occu- pying an honourable and important situation, and with easy access to men of letters, of whom the capital must ever be the resort ; in the country, inhabiting a parsonage, built by himself in a situation which he had selected, in the neighbourhood of most of his kindred, amidst friends who loved and reverenced him, and in a parish where none would have desired a greater satisfaction than to have done him a service, — when he was summoned from scenes where, to use a beautiful expression of Warburton's, ' he had hung a thought upon every thorn,' to take upon himself the government of the Church in India. What his struggles at that moment were, those who were near him at the time know well. How could such a man contem- plate such a charge without some self-distrust ? How could he give up his country without a pang ? How could he look forward to an Indian climate without apprehension, not, indeed, for himself (for of himself he was ever prodigal), but for his wife and child ? Still a splendid opportunity of usefulness was offered him ; and, accustomed as he was, in a degree quite characteristic, to recognize the superintending hand of Provi- dence in all the lesser events of life, it was not to be expected that in one of the nature and magnitude of this, he would see it no longer. After much deliberation, he refused the appointment, not, however, without some misgiving of heart : he shortly after Essay I.] THE CHURCH m INDIA. I5 withdrew his refusal, and was then satisfied that he had acted right. Secular minds may look, and have looked, for the secu- lar motives which might have actuated him ; but, in truth, — ' He heard a voice they could not hear, Which said, no longer stay ; He saw a hand they could not see, Which beckoned him away.' ' I can say with confidence,' writes he about this time, ' that I have acted for the best; and even now that the die is cast, I feel no regret for the resolution I have taken, nor any distrust of the mercies and goodness of Providence, who may protect both me and mine, and, if He sees best for us, bring us back again, and preserve our excellent friends to welcome us. Por England, and the scenes of my earliest and dearest recollec- tions, I know no better farewell than that of Philoctetes : — Aat/AWc, oQ TOLvr ETrsK^aj'sy. Yet a far better farewell than this was his own ; for having returned to Hodnet for a few weeks to settle his affairs before ■ his final departure, on Sunday 20th April, 1823, he preached his last sermon there, the effect of which those who read it may partly conjecture — those who heard it (we are told) will never forget. It was printed at the earnest request of the congrega- tion, and as the copies were few, and the circulation local, it may not probably have fallen into the hands of many of our readers : we take advantage, therefore, of a second edition which has been published, to introduce a passage or two from it to their notice. Having spoken in general of the vanity of fixing the affections on a world where everything is fleeting, to the neglect of that Being who alone is for ever the same, he proceeds — ' My ministerial labours among you must have an end ; I must give over into other hands, the task of watching over your spiritual welfare ; and many, very many, of those with whom I have grown 10 THE CHURCH IN INDIA. [Essay J. up from childhood, in whose society I have passed my happiest days, and to whom it has been, during more than fifteen years, my duty and my delight (with such ability as God has given me) to preach the gospel of Christ, must, in all probability, see my face in the flesh no more. Under such circumstances, and connected with many who now hear me by the dearest ties of blood, of friendship, and of gratitude, some mixture of regret is excusable, some degree of sorrow is holy. I cannot, without some anxiety for the future, forsake, for an untried and arduous field of duty, the quiet scenes where, during so much of my past life, I have enjoyed a more than usual share of earthly comfort and prosperity ; I cannot bid adieu to those, with whose idea almost every recollection of past happiness is connected, without many earnest wishes for their welfare, and (I will confess it) without some severe self-reproach that, while it was in my power, I have done so much less than I ought to have done, to render that welfare eternal. There -are, indeed, those here who know, and there is One, above all, who knows better than any of you, how earnestly I have desired the peace and the holiness of His church ; how truly I have loved the people of this place ; and how warmly I have hoped to be the means, in His hand, of bringing many among you to glory. But I am at this moment but too pain- fully sensible that in many things, yea in all, my performance has fallen short of my principles ; that neither privately nor publicly have I taught you with so much diligence as now seems necessary in my eyes : nor has my example set forth the doctrines in which I have, however imperfectly, instructed you ; yet, if my zeal has failed in steadiness, it never has been wanting in sincerity. I have ex- pressed no conviction which I have not deeply felt; have preached no doctrine which I have not steadfastly believed : however incon- sistent my life, its leading object has been your welfare — and I have hoped, and sorrowed, and studied, and prayed for your instruction, and that you might be saved. For, my labours, such as they were, I have been indeed most richly rewarded, in the uniform affection and respect which I have received from my parishioners; in their regular and increasing attendance in this holy place, and at the table of the Lord; in the welcome which I have never failed to meet in the houses both of rich and poor ; in the regret (beyond my deserts, and beyond my fullest expectations) with which my an- nounced departure has been received by you ; in your expressed and repeated wishes for my welfare and my return ; in the munificent token of your regard, with which I have been this morning EasAT I.] THE CHURCH IN INDIA, 17 honoured;* in your numerous attendance on the present occasion, and in those marks of emotion which I witness around me, and in which I am myself well nigh constrained to join. For all these, accept such thanks as I can pay — accept my best wishes — accept my affectionate regrets— accept the continuance of the prayers which I have hitherto offered up for you daily, and in which, what- ever and wherever my sphere of duty may hereafter be, my con- gregation of Hodnet shall (believe it !) never be forgotten.' He then exhorts them, by various considerations, to mutual charity and good will; and continues, in words which (long as our extract has already been) we know not how to with- hold :— ' Would to God, indeed, I could hope to leave you all as truly at peace with each other, as I trust and believe there is peace between me and you! Yet if there be any here whom I have at any time offended, let me entreat his forgiveness, and express the hope that he has already forgiven me. If any who thinks he has done me wrong (I know of none), let him be assured that the fault, if it were one, is not only forgiven but forgotten ; and let me earnestly entreat you all, as it may be the last request which I shall ever make, the last advice which I shall ever offer to you — little children, love one another and forgive one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath loved and forgiven you.' Having thus taken leave of a parish where he still signified a hope that he might lay his hones, he hastened again to town to receive imposition of hands, and then depart. 'My consecration (he writes to a friend in the country). is fixed for next Sunday; and as the time draws near, I feel its awfulness very strongly — far more, I think, than the parting which is to follow a fortnight after. I could wish (he adds) to have the prayers of my old congregation, but know not well how to express the wish, in conformity with custom, or without seeming to court notoriety.' A special general meeting of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge was now called, and a valedictory address to him pronounced, in the name of that venerable body, by the Bishop of Bristol ; an address only yielding in beauty (if ^ A piece of plate had been given to Mr. Heber by his parishioners. C 18 THE CHTIRCH IN INDIA. [Essat I. it does yield) to the reply which it produced — the one dignified, impressive, affectionate — the other glowing with all the natural eloquence of excited feelings. On Monday, 16th June, 1823, Dr. Heher emharked with his family a httle below Gravesend, and, accompanied to the ship by many sorrowing friends, bade adieu to England for ever. Well it is, that every great event in life, which does violence to the feelings, usually brings with it immediate demands upon our exertions, whereby the attention is diverted, and the grief subdued. On ship-hoard, he found abundant occupation in prosecuting the study of Hindostanee and Per- sian, which, independently of their prospective usefulness, he, as many others had done before him, found to be possessed of high interest and curiosity, — ' as establishing beyond all doubt the original connection of the languages of India, Persia, and Northern Europe, and the complete diversity of these from the Hebrew and other Semitic languages. Those (be observes) who fancy the Persians and Indians to have been derived from Elam, the son of Shem, or from any body but Japheth, the first-born of Noah, the father of Gomer, Mesbech, and Tubal, have, I am persuaded, paid no attention to the lan- gaages either of Persia, Russia, or Scandinavia. I have long had this suspicion, and am not sorry to find it confirmed by even the grammar of my new studies. If, in a year or two (he exultingly adds), I do not know them both (Hindostanee and Persian) at least as well as I do French and German, the fault, I trust, will be in my capacity, not in my diligence.' In the October following, he landed in India with a field before him that might challenge the labours of an apostle, and, we will venture to say, with as much of the spirit of an apostle in him as has rested on any man in these latter days. It was now his anxious wish to compose, as far as in him lay, those unhappy reUgious dissensions of which we have already spoken; and, without making any concession unbecoming a loyal and true lover of his own church, to set forth the neces- sity of humiUty and charity. Christian graces to which schism is so commonly fatal — and without which even the purest Essay I.] THE CHUECH IN INDIA. J 9 speculative opinions can, after all, be worth nothing. For such a task as this, none, who knew Dr. Heber at all, could deny that he was singularly well fitted. In a personal regard for himself, he was sure to bow the hearts of the people as the heart of one man.- Is it not according to our experience to believe, that the affections might have influenced the con- clusions of the understanding, and that by his means many angry disputants might have been brought to think alike, and to think as our church directs them ? With a further view to more general conformity, he, after a while, suggested to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the propriety of sending out (if possible) missionaries episcopally ordained, in order so far to obviate an unfavourable impression produced on the natives, who were at a loss what character to assign to ministers of the Gospel, whom those who supported and dis- persed them were unwilling to admit to their own churches. Nor did he think such a measure unlikely to promote the influence of the Church of England (already very consider- able) with the difl^erent stocks of oriental Christians — Greeks, Armenians, and Syrians — who hold, like her, episcopacy to be of apostolic institution. In accordance with these sentiments. Dr. Heber thought fit to re-ordain several Protestant ministers who made an application to that efiect, and though he did not urge the universal adoption of such a plan, yet he did not conceal his opinion that it was much to be desired. To the native schools he gave his utmost protection and support ; interested in their behalf those whose patronage was most valuable ; and took effectual steps for rendering the bounty of his countrymen at home tributary to the same good end. He preached very often : it never had been his practice to spare himself when in England, and in the East he felt further calls in the more pressing wants of the people, and the extreme paucity of the clergy. Short as his time in India was, his visitations had embraced almost the whole of his vast diocese. To the northern portion of it, which Bishop Middleton (who found ample occupation at Calcutta and in southern India) had never been able to reach, c 8 20 THE CHURCH IK INDIA. [Essay I. he first turned his steps ; and having journeyed as far as Merut, 'leaving behind him,' says Mr. Fisher, the chaplain of the station, ' an impression which I think will not soon or easily pass away,' he bent his course southwards, and traversed the country to Bombay. ' Of the way of performing these long journeys in India, I was myself (says the Bishop, in one of the private letters now before us) veiy imperfectly informed before I came here ; and, even then, it was long before I could believe how vast and cumbersome an apparatus of attendance and supplies of every kind was necessary, to travel in any degree of comfort or security. On the river, indeed, so long as that lasted, our progress is easy and pleasant (bating a little heat and a few storms), carried on by a strong south- eastern breeze, in a very roomy and comfortable boat, against the stream of a majestic body of water, with a breadth, during the rainy season, so high up as Patna, of from six to nine miles, and even above Patna, as far as Cawnpore, in no place narrower than the Mersey opposite Liverpool. But it is after leaving the Ganges for the land journey, that, if not the tug, yet no small part of the ajiparatus, proventus, et commeatus of war, commences. It has been my wish, on many accounts, to travel without unnecessary display. !My tents, equipments, and number of servants, are all on the smallest scale which comfort or propriety would admit of. They all fall short of what are usually taken by the collectors of districts, and in comparison of what the commauder-in-chief had with him the year before last, I have found people disposed to cry out against them as quite insufficient. Nor have I asked for a single soldier or trooper beyond what the commanding officers of districts have themselves oifered as necessary and suitable. Yet, for myself and Dr. Smith, the united numbers amount to three elephants, above twenty camels, five horses, besides ponies for our principal servants, twenty-si.'c servants, twenty-six bearers of burdens, fifteen clashees to pitch and remove tents, elephant and camel drivers, I believe, thirteen ; and since we have left the Com- pany's territories, and entered Rajapootam, a guard of eighteen irregular borse, and forty-five sipahees on foot, including native officers. Nor is this all ; for there is a number of petty tradesmen and other poor people whose road is the same as ours, and wbo have asked permission to encamp near us, and travel under our protec- tion ; so that yesterday, when I fouud it expedient, on account of Essay I] THE CHURCH IN INDIA. 21 tlie scarcity which prevails in these provinces, to order an allowance of flour, by way of Sunday dinner, to every person in camp, the number of heads was returned one hundred and sixty-five. With all these formidable numbers, you must not, however, suppose that any exorbitant luxury reigns in my tent ; our fare is, in fact, as homely as any two farmers in England sit down to ; and, if it be sometimes exuberant, the fault must be laid on a country where we must take a whole sheep or kid, if we would have animal food at all, and where neither sheep nor kid will, when killed, remain eatable more than a day or two. The truth is, that where people carry everything with them, tent, bed, furniture, wine, beer, and crockery, for six months together, no small quantity of beasts of burden may well be supposed necessary ; and in countries such as those which I have now been traversing, where every man is armed ; where every third or fourth man, a few years since, was a thief by profession ; and where, in spite of English influence and supremacy, the forests, mountains, and multitude of petty sovereignties, afford all possible scope for the practical application of Wordsworth's " good old rule," — you may believe me, that it is neither pomp nor cowardice which has thus fenced your friend in with spears, shields, and bayonets.' * In the course of this arduous pilgrimage from Calcutta to Bombay, lie found occasions for preaching upwards of fifty times; and the sermon delivered on one of those occasions, at the consecration of a church near Benares, was printed at the request of the Europeans who heard it ; and, though bearing marks of having been written in haste, fully justifies their discernment in having made that request. The following passage has much of the peculiar manner of the author of 'Palestine': — ' If the Israelites were endowed, beyond the nations of man- kind, with wise and righteous laws, with a fertile and almost im- pregnable territory, wiih a race of valiant and victorious kings, and a God who (while they kept his ways) was a wall of fire against their enemies round about them ; if the kings of the wilderness did them homage, and the lion-banner of David and Solomon was reflected at once from the Mediterranean and the Euphrates — it ^ Letter dated Barrechar (Gfuzer^t), March 14, 1825. 22 • THE CHUECH IN INDIA. [Essay I. was, that the way of the Lord might he made known hy their means upon earth, and that the saving health of the Messiah might become conspicuous to all nations. ' My brethren, it has pleased the Almighty, that the nation to which we ourselves belong, is a great, a valiant, and an understand- ing nation ; it has pleased Him to give us an empire, on which the sun never sets — a commerce by which the remotest nations of the earth are become our allies, our tributaries, I had almost said our neighbours — and, by means (when regarded as human means, and distinct from His mysterious providence) so inadequate, as to excite our alarm as well as wonder, the sovereignty over these wide and populous heathen lands. But is it for our sakes that He has given us these good gifts, and wrought these great marvels in our favour? Are we not rather set up on high in the earth, that we may show forth the light by which we are guided, and be the honoured instru- ments of diffusing those blessings which we ourselves enjoy, through every land where our will is law, through every tribe where our wisdom is held in reverence, and in every distant isle which our winged vessels visit? If we value, then (as who does. not value?), our renown among mankind ; if we exult (as who can help exult- ing?) in the privileges which the providence of God has conferred on the British nation ; if we are thankful (and God forbid we should be otherwise !) for the means of usefulness in our power ; and if we love (as who does not love?) our native land, its greatness and pros- perity, — let us see that we, each of us in our station, are promoting to the best of our power, by example, by exertion,, by liberality, by the practice of Christian justice and every virtue, the extension of God's truth among men, and the honour of that holy name whereby we are called. There have been realms before as famous as our own, and (in relation to the then extent and riches of the civilized world) as power- ful and as wealthy, of which the traveller sees nothing now but ruins in the midst of a wilderness, or where the mariner only finds a rock for fishers to spread their nets. Nineveh once reigned over the East ; but where is Nineveh now ? Tyre bad once the commerce of the world ; but what is become of Tyre ? But if the repentance of Nineveh had been persevered in, her towers would have stood to this day. Had the daughter of Tyre brought her gifts to the Temple of God, she would have continued a Queen for ever.' This visitation gave the Bishop an opportunity of ascertain- ing the state and wants of the Christian congregations in the Essay I.] THE. CHURCH IK INDIA. 23 northern districts of his diocese, where in four principal places, Benares, Ohunar, Merut, and Agra, he had the satis- faction of finding service performed, in Hindostanee, accord- ing to the Liturgy of the English Church ; it also brought him acquainted with a race of men of a character far more manly than the Bengalese, dwelling, under native chiefs, among the mountains near Rajmahal, in the province of Bahar — not divided into castes, indifferent to the idolatries of the plains, and on every account offering, as the Bishop thought, a very promising field for Christian teachers. He accordingly (by way of beginning) fixed a missionary at Bog- lipoor, a place affording local advantages for the establish- ment of schools, for learning the language, and becoming acquainted with the heads of these clans, who appear to be a primitive race, protected by their fastnesses from much contact or intercourse with the invaders that, from time to time, have made India their own. The Bishop entertained a very san- guine hope that a conversion of no ordinary extent would be thus effected, and regarded the beginning thus made as doubly important, on account of the connections which, in all proba- bility, exist between these tribes and the Goands and other nations of Central India, whom they are said strongly to resemble in habits and character. In a letter to one of his friends, written at the close of this extensive journey, the bishop distinctly expresses his satis- faction that he had never, in the whole course of it, turned either to the right hand or to the left for the sake of gratifying curiosity — that he had travelled in his episcopal capacity, and allowed no other objects to interfere with those which were pressed on him by the character of his functions. But no accomplished Englishman, far less a deeply-read and deeply- thinking scholar like Heber, could traverse these regions with- out having his attention called to many objects, which may not, at first sight, appear to have been, in his case, professional. The whole state and condition, however, of the Indian popu- lation, it was, in fact, most strictly and sacredly his duty to study; and how successfully he carried his talents to this object 2i THE CHURCH IJf INDIA. [Essay I. we have in our power to show, hy some passages from his MS. correspondence. The letter, from which we are ahout to quote, •was written in March, 1825;' and addressed to one of his oldest and most intimate friends, — a gentleman, not of his own profession, but engaged in the business of the world, and the duties of a high public station. We offer no apology for citing largely from such a letter, written upon such a subject, and are sure our readers will require none. It is not often that the English public are permitted to listen to such a witness as Bishop Heber, upon the concerns of their Indian fellow-sub- jects. Poet as he was by nature, it is nevertheless true, that a highly philosophical cast of mind is apparent in all his writings upon political subjects. He was equally enabled to work out the most serious speculations of what may be termed Political Science, and at the same time to combine and compare those varieties of detailed facts, on which Political Science, if sound, will be found to depend. ' Though the greater part of the Company's provinces (except Kumaon) are by no means abundant in objects of natural beauty or curiosity, the prospect offering little else than an uniform plain of slovenly cultivation, yet, in the character and manners of the people, there is much which may be studied with interest and amusement ; and in the yet-remaining specimen of oriental luxury and porap at Lucknow ; in the decayed, but most striking and romantic, magnificence of Delhi ; and in the Taj-Mahal of Agra (doubtless one of the most beautiful buildings in the world), there is almost enough, even of themselves, to make it worth a man's while to cross the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. ' Since then, I have been in countries of a wilder character, comparatively seldom trodden by Europeans, exempt during the greater part of their history from the Mussulman yoke, and retain- ing accordingly a great deal of the simplicity of early Hindoo manners, without much of that solemn and pompous uniformity which the conquests of the House of Timur seem to have im- pressed on all classes of their subjects. Yet here there is much which is interesting and curious. The people, who are admirably " Tliis is the same letter from which we hare already taken the description of Indiaii travelling. Essay I.] THE CHURCH IN INDIA. 25 described (though I think in too favourable colours) by Malcolm, in his Central India, are certainly a lively, animated, and warlike race of men, though, chiefly from their wretched government, and partly from their still more wretched religion, there is hardly any vice, either of slaves or robbers, to which they do not seem addicted. Yet such a state of society is at least curious, and re- sembles more the picture of Abyssinia as given by Bruce, than that of any other country which I have seen or read of; while here too there are many wild and woody scenes, which, though they want the glorious glaciers and peaks of the Himmalaya, do not fall short in natural beauty of some of the loveliest glens which we went through ten years ago in North Wales ; and some very remarkable ruins, which, though greatly inferior as works of art to the Mussul- man remains in Hindoostan Proper, are yet more curious than them, as being more diflferent from anything which an European is accustomed to see or read of. ' One fact, indeed, during this journey has been impressed on my mind very forcibly — that the character and situation of the natives of these great countries are exceedingly little known, and in many instances grossly misrepresented, not only by the English public in general, but by a great proportion of those also who, though they have been in India, have taken their views of its popu- lation, manners, and productions from Calcutta, or at most from Bengal. I had always heard, and fully believed till I came to India, that it was a grievous crime, in the opinion of the Brahmins, to eat the flesh or shed the blood of any living creature whatever. I have now myself seen Brahmins of the highest caste cut off the heads of goats as a sacrifice to Doorga ; and I know, from the testi- mony of Brahmins, as well as from other sources, that not only hecatombs of animals are often offered in this manner as a most meritorious act (a Kajah, about twenty-five years back, offered sixty thousand in one fortnight), but that any person. Brahmins not ex- cepted, eats readily of the flesh of whatever has been offered up to one of their divinities ; while among almost all the other castes, mutton, pork, fish, venison, — anything but beef and fowls, — are con- sumed as readily as in Europe. Again, I had heard all my life of the gentle and timid Hindoos, patient under injuries, servile to their superiors, &c. Now this is doubtless, to a certain extent, true of the Bengalese (who, by the way, are never reckoned among the nations of Hindoostan by those who speak the language of that country), and there are a great many people in Calcutta who 26 THE CHURCH IN INDIA. [Essay I. maintain, that all the natives of India are alike. But even in Bengal, gentle as the exterior manners of the people are, there are large districts close to Calcutta, where the work of carding, burning, ravishing, murder, and robbery, goes on as systematically, and in nearly the same manner, as in the worst part of Ireland ; and on entering Hindoostan, properly so called, which, in the estimate of the natives, reaches from the Rajmahal hills to Agra, and from the mountains of Kumaou to Bundelcund, I was struck and surprised to find a people equal in stature and strength to the average of European nations, despising rice and rice-eaters, feeding on wheat and barley-bread, exhibiting in their appearance, conversation, and habits of life, a grave, a proud, and decidedly a martial character, accustomed universally to the use of arms and athletic exercises from their cradles, and preferring, very greatly, military service to any other means of livelihood. This part of their character, but in a ruder and wilder form, and debased by much alloy of treachery and violence, is conspicuous in the smaller and less good-looking inhabitants of Rajpootam and Malwah; while the mountains and woods, wherever they occur, show specimens of a race entirely different from all these, and in a state of society scarcely elevated above the savages of New Holland, or New Zealand ; and the in- habitants, I am assured, of the Deccan, and of the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay, are as different from those which I have seen and from each other, as the French and Portuguese from the Greeks, Germans, or Poles. So idle is it to ascribe uniformity of character to the inhabitants of a country so extensive, and sub- divided by so many almost impassable tracts of mountain and jungle, and so little do the majority of those whom I have seen deserve the gentle and imbecile character often assigned to them ' I met, not long since, with a speech by a leading member of the Scotch General Assembly, declaring his " conviction that the truths of Christianity could not be received by men in so rude a state as the East Indians, and that it was necessary to give them first a relish for the habits and comforts of civilized life before they could embrace the truths of the Gospel." The same slang (for it is nothing more) I have seen repeated in divers pamphlets, and even heard it in conversations in Calcutta. Yet, though it is certainly true that the lower classes of Indians are miserably poor, and that there are many extensive districts where, both among low and hicrh, the laws are very little obeyed, and there is a great deal of robbery, oppression, and even ferocity, I know no part of the population, Essay I.] THE CHURCH IN INDIA. 27^ except the mountain tribes already mentioned, who can with any propriety of language be called uncivilized. Of the unpropitious circumstances which I have mentioned, the former arises from a population continually pressing on the utmost limits of subsistence, and which is thus kept up, not by any dislike or indifference to a better diet, or more ample clothing, or more numerous ornaments, - than now usually fall to the peasant's share (for, on the contrary, if he has the means, he is fonder of external show and a respectable appearance, than those of his rank in many nations of Europe), but by the foolish superstition, which Christianity only is likely to remove, which makes a parent regard it as unpropitious to allow his son to remain unmarried, and which couples together children of twelve or fourteen years of age. The second has its origin in the long-continued misfortunes and intestine wars of India, which are as yet too recent (even where their causes have ceased to exist) for the agitation which they occasioned to have entirely sunk into a calm. But to say that the Hindoos or Mussulmans are deficient in any essential feature of a civilized people, is an assertion which I can scarcely suppose to be made by any who have lived with them. Their manners are at least as pleasing and courteous as those in the corresponding stations of life among ourselves ; their houses are larger, and, according to their wants and climate, to the full as con- venient as ours ; their architecture is at least as elegant ; aud though the worthy Scotch divine may, doubtless, wish their labourers to be clad in hoddin grey, and their gentry and merchants to wear powder and mottled stockings, like worthy Mr. and the other elders of his kirk-session, I really do not think that they would gain either iu cleanliness, elegance or comfort, by exchanging a white cotton robe for the completest suit of dittos. ' Nor is it true that, in the mechanic arts, they are inferior to the general run of European nations. Where they fall short of ns (which is chiefly in agricultural implements and the mechanics of common life), they are not, so far as I have understood of Italy and the South of France, surpassed in any great degree by the people of those countries. Their goldsmiths and weavers produce as beautiful fabrics as our own, and it is so far from true, that they are obsti- nately wedded to their old patterns, that they show an anxiety to imitate our models, and do imitate them very successfully. The ships built by native artists at Bombay are notoriously as good as any which sail from London or Liverpool. The carriages and gigs which they supply at Calcutta are as handsome, though not so dur- 28 THE CHURCH ITS INDIA. [Essat I. able, as those of Long Acre. In the little town of Monghyr, three hundred miles from Calcutta, I had pistols, double-barrelled guns, and different pieces of cabinet work brought down to my boat for sale, which in outward form (for I know no further), nobody but perhaps Mr. could detect to be of Hindoo origin ; and at Delhi, in the shop of a wealthy native jeweller, I found brooches, ear-rings, snuff-boxes, &c., of the latest models (so far as I am a judge), and ornamented with French devices and mottos. ' The fact is, that there is a degree of intercourse maintained be- tween this country and Europe, and a degree of information exist- ing among the people as to what passes there, which, considering how few of them speak or read English, implies other channels of communication besides those which we supply, and respecting which I have been able as yet to obtain very little information. 'Among the presents sent last year to the supreme Government by the little State of Ladeh, in Chinese Tartary, some large sheets of gilt leather, stamped with the Russian eagle, were the most con- spicuous. A traveller, who calls himself a Transylvanian, but who is shrewdly suspected of being a Russian spy, was, when I was in. Kumaon, arrested by the commandant of one of our fortresses among the Himmalaya mountains ; and, after all our pains to exclude foreigners from the service of the native princes, two Chevaliers of the Legion of Honour were found, about twelve months ago, and are still employed in, casting cannon, and drilling soldiers for the Seik Eaja, Runjeet Singh. This, you will say, is no more than we should be prepared to expect ; but you, probably, would not suppose (what I believe is little, if at all, known in Russia itself), that there is an ancient and still-frequented place of Hindoo pilgrimage not many miles from Moscow ; * — or that the secretary of the Calcutta Bible Society received, ten months ago, an application (by whom translated I do not know, but in very tolerable English) from some priests on' the shore of the Caspian sea, requesting a grant of Armenian Bibles. After this, you will be the less surprised to learn that the leading events of the late wars in Europe (particu- larly Buonaparte's victories) were often known, or at least ru- moured, among the native merchants of Calcutta, before Govern- ment received any accounts from England ; or that the suicide of an English minister (with the mistake, indeed, of its being Lord » This is probably rather loosely said ; that is, if, as we siispect. Bishop Heber alludes to the same place of which we have a description in Dr. Henderson's 'Russian Travels.' (See the article on that book in the ' Quarterly Keview" for March, 1827, p. 363.) Essay I.] THE CHUECH IN INDIA. 29 Liverpool instead of the Marquis of Londonderry) had become' a topic of conversation in the " Burra Bazaar " (the native exchange), for a fortnight before the arrival of any intelligence by the usual channels. ' With subjects thus inquisitive, and with such opportunities of information, it is apparent hov? little sense there is in the doctrine that we must keep the natives of Hindoostan in ignorance if we would continue to govern them. The fact is, that they know enough already to do us a great deal of mischief, if they should find it their interest to make the trial. They are in a fair way, by degrees, to acquire still more -knowledge for themselves ; and the question is, whether it is not the part of wisdom, as well as duty, to superintend and promote their education while it is yet in our power, and supply them with such knowledge as will be at once most harmless to ourselves and most useful to them. ' In this work the most important part is to give them a better religion. Knowing how strongly I feel on this subject, you will not be surprised at my placing it foremost. But even if Christianity were out of the question, and if, when I had wheeled away the rub- bish of the old pagodas, I had nothing better than simple deism to erect in their stead, I should still feel some of the anxiety which now urges me. It is necessary to see idolatry, to be fully sensible of its mischievous effects on the human mind. Butof all idolatries which I have ever read or heard of, the religion of the Hindoos, in which I have taken some pains to inform myself, really appears to me the worst, both in the degrading notions which it gives of the Deity ; in the endless round of its burdensome ceremonies, which occupy the time and distract the thoughts, without either instruct- ing or interesting its votaries ; in the filthy acts of uncleanness and cruelty not only permitted but enjoined, and inseparably interwoven with those ceremonies ; in the system of castes, a system which tends, more than anything else the Devil has yet invented, to destroy the feelings of general benevolence, and to make nine- tenths of mankind the hopeless slaves of the remainder ; and in the total absence of any popular system of morals, or any single lesson, which the people at large ever hear, to live virtuously and do good to each other. I do not- say, indeed, that there are not some scattered lessons of this kind to be found in their ancient books ; but those books are neither accessible to the people at large, nor are these last permitted to read them; and, in general, all the sins which a Sudra is taught to fear, are, killing a cow, so THE CHURCH TIT INDIA, [Essay I. offending a Brahmin, or neglecting one of the many frivolous rites by which their deities are supposed to be conciliated. Accordingly, though the general sobriety of the Hindoos (a virtue which they possess in common with most inhabitants of warm climates) affords a very great facility to the maintenance of public order and deco- rum, I really never have met with a race of men whose standard of morality is so low, who feel so little apparent shame in being de- tected in a falsehood, or so little interest in the sufferings of a neighbour not being of their own caste or family ; whose ordinary and familiar conversation is so licentious ; or, in the wilder and more lawless districts, who shed blood with so little repugnance. The good qualities which there are among them (and, thank God ! there is a great deal of good among them still) are, in no instance that I am aware of, connected with, or arising out of, their religion, since it is in no instance to good deeds or virtuous habits of life that the future rewards in which they believe are promised. Their bravery, their fidelity to their employers, their temperance, and (wherever these are found) their humanity and gentleness of dis- position, appear to arise exclusively from a natural happy tempera- ment ; from an honourable pride in their own renown, and the renown of their ancestors ; and from the goodness of God, who seems unwilling that His image should be entirely defaced even in the midst of the grossest error. The Mussulmans have a far better creed ; and, though they seldom either like the English or are liked by them, I am inclined to think, are, on the whole, a better people. Yet, even with them, the forms of their worship have a natural ten- dency to make men hypocrites, and the overweening contempt with which they are inspired for all the world beside, the degradation of their women by the system of polygamy, and the detestable crimes, which, owing to this degradation, are almost universal, are such as, even if I had no ulterior hope, would make me anxious to attract them to a better or more harmless system. In this work, thank God, in those parts of India which I have visited, a beginning has been made, and a degree of success obtained, at least commensurate to the few years during which our missionaries have laboured ; and it is still going on, in the best and safest tcay, as the work of private persons alone, and although not forbidden, in no degree encouraged, by Government. ' In the meantime, and as an useful auxiliary to the missionaries, the establishment of elementary schools for the lower classes and for females is going on to a very great extent, and might be carried to Essay I.] THE CHUECH IN INDIA. 31 any conceivable extent to which our pecuniary means would carry us. Nor is there any measure from which I anticipate more speedy benefit than the elevation of the rising generation of females to their natural rank in society, and giving them (which is all that, in any of our schools, we as yet yenture to give) the lessons of general morality extracted from the Gospel, without any direct religious instruction. These schools, such of them at least as I have any concern with, are carried on without any help from Government. Government has however been very liberal in its grants, both to a Society for National Education, and in the institution and support of two colleges of Hindoo students of riper age, the one at Benares, the other at Calcutta. But I do not think any of these institutions, in the way after which they are at present conducted, likely to do much good. In the elementary schools supported by the former, through a very causeless and ridiculous fear of giving offence to the natives, they have forbidden the use of the Scriptures, or any extracts from them, though the moral lessons of the Gospel are read by all Hindoos who can get hold of them, without scruple and with much attention; and though their exclusion is tantamount to excluding all moral instruction from their schools, the Hindoo safired writings having nothing of the kind, and, if they had, being shut up from the majority of the people by the double fence of a dead language and an actual prohibition to read them, as too holy for common eyes or ears. The defects of the latter will appear when I have told you that the actual state of Hindoo and Mussul- man literature, mutatis mutandis, very nearly resembles what the literature of Europe was before the time of Galileo, Copernicus, and Bacon. The Mussulmans take their Logic from Aristotle, filtered through many successive translations and commentaries, and their metaphysical system is professedly derived from Plato (" Filatoun "). The Hindoos have systems not very dissimilar from these, though, I am told, of greater length and more intricacy ; but the studies in which they spend most time are the acquisition of the Sanscrit, and the endless refinements of its Grammar, Prosody, and Poetry. Both have the same Natural Philosophy, which is also that of Aristotle in Zoology and Botany, and Ptolemy in Astronomy, for which the Hindoos have forsaken their most ancient notions of the seven seas, the six earths, and the flat base of Padalon, supported on the back of a tortoise. By the science which they now possess, they are, some of them, able to foretell "an eclipse or compose an almanac ; and many of them 32 THE CHURCH IN INDIA. [Essay I. derive some little pecuniary advantage from pretensions to judicial astrology. In Medicine and Chemistry, they are just sufficiently advanced to talk of substances being moist, dry, hot, &c., in the third or fourth degree ; to dissuade from letting blood or physicking on a Tuesday, or under a particular sispect of the heavens ; and to be eager in their pursuit of the Philosopher's Stone and the Elixir of Immortality. 'The task of enlightening the studious youth of such a nation ■would seem to be a tolerably straightforward one. But though, for the college in Calcutta (not Bishop's College remember, but the Vidhalya, or Hindoo College), an expensive set of instruments has been sent out, and it seems intended that the natural sciences should be studied there, the Managers of the present institution take care that their boys should have as little time as possible for such pursuits, by requiring from them all without exception a laborious study of Sanscrit, and all the useless and worse than useless literature of their ancestors. A good deal of this has been charged (and in some little degree charged with justice) against the exclusive attention paid to Greek and Logic till lately in Oxford. But in Oxford we have never been guilty (since a better system was known in the world at large) of teaching the Physics of Aris- totle, however we may have paid an excessive attention to his 'Metaphysics and Dialeclics. — In Benares, however, I found, in the institution supported by Government, a professor lecturing on astronomy after the system of Ptolemy and Albumazar, while one of the most forward boys was at the pains of casting my horoscope ; and the majority of the school were toiling at Sanscrit grammar. And yet, the day before, in the same holy city, I had visited another college, founded lately by a wealthy Hindoo banker, and entrusted by him to the management of the Church Missionary Society, in which, besides a grammatical knowledge of the Hiu- dostanee language, as well as Persian and Arabic, the senior boys could pass a good examination in English grammar, in Hume's History of England, Joyce's Scientific Dialogues, the use of the globes, and the principal facts and moral precepts of the Gospel, most of them writing beautifully in the Persian, and very tolerably in the English, character, and excelling most boys I have met with in the accuracy and readiness of their arithmetic. The English ofiBcer who is now in charge of the Benares Vidhalya is a clever and candid young man, and under him I look forward to much improvement Kam-Mohun-Roy, a learned native, who has "Essay I.] THE CHURCH IN INDIA. 33 sometimes been called, though I fear without reason, a Christian, remonstrated against this system last year, in a paper which he sent to me to put into Lord Amherst's hands, and which, for its good English, good sense, and forcible argument, is a real curiosity, as coming from an Asiatic' In another part of the same letter, the Bishop treats inci- dentally of a topic, with their inattention to which both Pro- fessor Von Schlegel and his brother have bitterly reproached the English — the architectural antiquities of Hindoostan. ' I had myself (says he) heard much of these before I set out, and had met with many persons, both in Europe and at Calcutta (where nothing of the kind exists), who spoke of the present natives of India as a degenerate race, whose inability to rear such splendid piles was a proof that these last belong to a remote antiquity. I have seen, however, enough to convince me both that the Indian masons and architects of the present day only want patrons suffi- ciently wealthy or sufficiently zealous, to do all which their fathers have done, and that there are very few structures here which can, on any satisfactory grounds, be referred to a date so early as the greater part of our own cathedrals. Often, in Upper Hindoostan, and still more recently in Eajpootana and Malwah, 1 have met with new and unfinished shrines, cisterns, and ghats, as beautifully carved and as well proportioned as the best of those of an earlier day. And though there are many buildings and ruins which exhibit a most venerable appearance, there are many causes in this country which give this appearance prematurely. In the first instance we ourselves have a complex impression made on us by the sight of edifices so distant from our own country, and so unlike whatever we have seen there. We multiply, as it were, the geographical and moral distance into the chronological, and can hardly persuade ourselves that we are contemporaries with an object so far removed in every other respect. Besides this, how- ever, the firmest masonry in these climates is sorely tried by the alternate influence of a pulverizing sun, and a continued three months' rain. The wild fig-tree (pupul or ficus religiosd), which no Hindoo can root out, or even lop, without a deadly sin, soon sows its seeds and fixes its roots in the joints of the arching, and being of rapid growth, at the same time, and in a very few years, increases its picturesque and antique appearance, and secures its eventual destruction. Lastly, no man in this country repairs or D 3Jt THE CHUECH IN INDIA. [Bssat I. completes what his father has begun, preferring to begin something else by which his own name may be remembered. Accordingly, at Dacca are many fine ruins, which at first impressed me with a great idea of their age. Yet Dacca is a modern city, founded, or at least raised from insignificance, under Shah Jehanghir, in a.d. 1608 ; and the tradition of the place is, that these fine buildings were erected by European architects in the service of the then governor. At Benares, the principal temple has an appearance so venerable, that one might suppose it to have stood unaltered ever since the Treta Yug, and that Mena and Capila had performed austerities within its precincts. Yet it is historically certain that all the Hindoo temples of consequence in Benares were pulled down by Aurungzebe, the contemporary of Charles the Second, and that the present structure must have been raised since that time. The observatories of Benares, Delhi, and Jagpoor, I heard spoken of in the carelessness of conversation, not only as extremely curious in themselves (which they certainly are), but as monuments of the ancient science of the Hindoos. All three, however, are known to be the work of the Rajah Jye Singh, who died in 1742 ! ' A remote antiquity is, with better reason, claimed for some idols of black stone, and elegant columns of the same material, which have been collected in different parts of the districts of Rotas, Bulnem, &c. — These belong to the religion of a sect (the Boodhists) of which no remains are now found in those provinces. But I have myself seen images exactly similar in the newly-erected temple of the Jains, a sect of Boodhists, still wealthy and numerous in Guzerat, Rajpootana, and Malwah ; and in a country where there is literally no history, it is impossible to say how long since, or how lately, they may have lost their ground in the more eastern parts of Gundwana. ' In the wilds which I have lately been traversing, at Chittore Ghur more particularly, there are some very beautiful buildings, of which the date was obviously assigned at random, and which might be five hundred or one thousand, or a hundred-and-fifty years old, for all their present guardians know about the matter. But it must be always borne in mind that one thousand years are just as easily said as ten, and that in the mouth of a Cicerone they are sometimes thought to sound rather better. ' The oldest things which I have seen, of which the date could be at all ascertained, are some detached blocks of marble, with inscriptions, but of no appalling remoteness ; and two remarkable EssATl.] THE CHURCH IN INDIA. 35 pillars of black mixed metal, in a Patau forest near Delhi, and at Cattab-Misar in the same neighbourhood ; both covered with inscriptions, which nobody can now read, but both mentioned in Mussulman history as in their present situation at the time when " the Believers " conquered Delhi, about a.d. 1000. But what is this to the date of the Parthenon ? Or how little can these trifling relics bear a comparison with the works of Greece and Egypt? 'Ellora and Elephanta I have not yet seen. I can believe all which is said of their size and magnificence ; but they are without date or inscription : they are, I understand, not mentioned, even incidentally, in any Sanscrit MS. Their images, &c., are the same with those now worshipped in every part of India, and there have been many Kajahs and wealthy individuals in every age of Indian history who have possessed the means of carving a huge stone- quarry into a cathedral. To our cathedrals, after all, they are, I understand, very inferior in size. All which can be known is, that Elephanta must probably have been begun (whether it was ever finished seems very doubtful) before the arrival of the Portuguese at Bombay ; and that Ellora may reasonably be concluded to have been erected in a time of peace under a Hindoo prince, and there- fore either before the first Afghan conquest, or subsequently, during the recovered independence of that part of Candeish and the Deccan. This is no great matter certainly, and it may be older; but all I say is, that we have no reason to conclude it is so, and the impression on my mind decidedly accords with Mill — that the Hindoos, after all, though they have doubtless existed from very great antiquity as an industrious and civilized people, had made no great progress in the arts, and took all their notions of magnifi- cence from the models furnished by their Mahometan conquerors.' He closes this letter with some remarks on the Burmese war. — We must repeat the date — March 14, 1825 : — ' We are now engaged, as you are aware, in a very expensive and tedious war, in countries whither the Mahometans were never able to penetrate. This tediousness, together with the partial reverses which the armies have sustained, have given rise to all manner of evil reports among the people of Hiudoostan, and to a great deal of grumbling and discontent among the English. After all, I cannot myself perceive that there is anybody to blame. Everybody cried out for war in the first instance as necessary to the honour of the Government, and murmured greatly against Lord Amherst for not D 2 36 THE CHURCH IN mOIA. [Essat T. being more ready than he was to commence it. Of the countrj which we were to invade, no intelligence could be obtained, and, in fact, our armies have had little to contend with except a most impracticable and unknown country. It is unfortunate, however, that after a year and half of war, we should, except in point of dear-bought experience, be no further advanced than at the begin- ning ; and there are very serious grounds for apprehending that if any great calamity occurred in the East, a storm would follow on our North-western and Western frontier, which, with our present means, it would be by no means easy to allay. Something, how- ever, has been gained : if we can do little harm to the Birmans, it is evident, from their conduct in the field, that, beyond their own jungles, they can do still less harm to us. And the inhabitants of Calcutta, who about this time last year, were asking leave to send their property into the citadel, and packing off their wives and children across the river, will hardly again look forward to seeing their war-boats on the salt-water lake, or the golden umbrellas of their chiefs erected on the top of St. John's Cathedral. I was then thought little better than a madman for venturing to Dacca. Now the members of Government are called all manner of names because their troops have found unexpected difficulty in marching to Umme- rapoora.' His sojourn at Bombay was rendered somewhat remarkable by the arrival, nearly at the same time, of a bishop from Antioch, to saperintend that part of the Syrian Church which refuses allegiance to the Pope. After a suspension, for some years, of all intercourse with the country from which its faith originally sprung, and which in later times, by a fresh supply of ministers, had enabled it to throw off, in a great measure, the usurpations of the Church of Eome enforced by the Portuguese, it was now destined to rejoice once more in a nursing-father from Syria. The favourable disposition of this hranch of the Syro-Malabaric Church towards our own had long been known. It is a curious fact, however, and one that may be new to our readers, that Principal Mill, in 1822, found their coUege and parochial schools at Cottayam, under the direction of three clergymen of the Church of England, who, without compro- mising their own views, gave no offence to the Metropolitan, who consulted and employed them ; using for themselves and Essay I.] THE CHUECH IN INDIA. 87 their own families the English Liturgy in one of his chapels ; and condemning hy their silence those portions of the Syrian ritual which, as Protestants, they could not approve, and which they trusted the gradual influence of the knowledge they were helping to disseminate would at length, and by regular authority, undermine. Nor was this friendly feeling less con- spicuous in the readiness with which Mar Athanasius (the Syrian prelate) attended the service at Bombay, according to the English forms, and received the communion at the hands of Bishop Heber. Neither was it likely to be diminished by a small viaticum for the prosecution of his journey to Malabar, and a donation to the poor students in theology at Cottayam, which the Bishop was enabled to bestow from the bounty of the Christian Knowledge Society, — an application of their funds which, if disproved — (he writes with his usual modesty and disinterestedness) ' I will most cheerfully replace.' We think it right to quote a passage from another letter, addressed, while at Bombay, to the same correspondent to whom the Bishop wrote from Burrecar : — ' The attention of all India is fixed on the siege of Bhurtpore, in Eajpootana, on the event of which, far more than on anything which may happen in the Birman empire, the renown of the British arms, and the permanency of the British empire in Asia must depend. The Jats are the finest people in bodily advan- tages and apparent martial spirit whom I have seen in India, and their country one of the most fertile and best cultivated. Having once beaten off Lord Lake from their city, they have ever since not only regarded themselves as invincible, but have been so esteemed by the greater part of the Mahrattas, Rajpoots, &c., who have always held up their example as the rallying point and main encouragement to resistance, insomuch that, even when I was passing through Malwah, " galantee shows," like those carried about by the Savoyards, were exhibited at the fairs and in the towns of that wild district, which displayed, among other patriotic and popular scenes, the red-coats driven back in dismay from the ramparts, and the victorious Jats pursuing them sabre in hand. Their fortress, too, has really all the advantages which can arise from an excellent situation, an imposing profile, a deep and vride ditch, a good show of cannon, and a very numerous and hardy 38 THE CHURCH IK INDIA. [Essay I. garrison ; while the means which Sir D. Ocbterlony has been able to collect against it, though really far more considerable than could, under all circumstances, have been expected, are described in a letter from General Eeynell as very barely adequate to all which they have to do, — and the present intensely hot season is a circumstance greatly unfavourable. Still I do not find that any of my military acquaintance despond. On the contrary, they all appear to rejoice at the opportunity offered for effacing the former veiy injurious impression which had been made by Lord Lake's failure, though they admit that, should our army faU again, few events would go so near to fulfil the shouts of the mob a few months back in the streets of Delhi: — " Company ka raj ho guia!" " The rule of the Company is at an end." Meantime, heartily as I desire the success of our arms, — and the more so because the cause, I believe, is really a just one, — I am very sorry for the Jata them- selves, with whose rough independent manner I was much pleased, and who showed me all possible civilities and hospitality in passing through their country But this is one among many proofs which have fallen under my notice, how impossible it is to govern these remote provinces from Calcutta, and how de- sirable it is to establish a separate presidency for Northern and Central India, either at Agra, Meerut, or perhaps Saugur.' — Letter dated Bombay, May 10, 1825. Ceylon, which Heber next visited, might seem to be a Para- dise on earth. Gentle undulations of what in England might be called well-dressed lawn (we speak of the S. W. quarter) — rivers rapid, deep, clear — cocoa-palms peeping forth from vast tracts of jungle, and marking to an experienced eye the site of some sequestered village — mountain sierras of no inconside- rable height, and of shapes the most fantastic — plants of all hues, the choicest ornaments of an English hot-house-r-pre- cious stones of every variety, unless, -perhaps, the emerald — such are some of the riches of Ceylon. But the picture has its deep shadows. Along the borders of those romantic streams there lurks an air, that no man can breathe long, and live ; — a fact the more remarkable, as the tanks or standing pools of the same country are said to exhale an atmosphere of health, and to one of these Kandy has been supposed to owe its com- parative salubrity. Snakes and other reptiles are so abundant. Essay I.] THE CHURCH IN INDIA. 89 so active, and so deadly, that but few birds are seen, and, for the songsters of an English grove, the traveller must be con- tent to receive in exchange ' apes that mow and chatter at him," as if the island were Prospero's. Female infanticide is reported to prevail in some districts to a considerable extent — and we can easily believe this of a country in which several brothers of the same family are accustomed to share the same wife; and, to crown all, at night the blaze of the sacrifice, the dance, and the drum, proclaim that those who worship at all, worship the devil. Yet, with all this, the island holds out a prospect of better things. The noble experiment of Sir Alex- ander Johnstone, as to the introduction of a species of jury trial, appears to have been crowned with most encouraging success. The prejudice of caste is far less powerful than on the Continent ; and the Dutch had long ago established in it a system of parochial schools and parochial preaching, which, though for some time fallen into decay, the Bishop hoped, with the concurrence of Government, which he solicited, to restore to more than former usefulness, and connect with the national church. Meanwhile, as a secondary measure, he moved the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge to establish one or more central schools in the island, for the board and education of a certain number of native Christian youths, who might thus be qualified to act as schoolmasters ; and, in case of promising talents, become recruits for the college at Calcutta, thence to return in due time, and shed blessings on their native island. Before quitting Ceylon, the Bishop paid a visit to Kandy — a spot where the honour of England suffered a stain, and which our troops must have taken possession of once more, with feelings not unlike those of the army of G-ermanious, when they reached the secluded scene where the legions of Varus had left their bones to whiten. Little, indeed, could it have been thought twelve years before, that a capital which was then the den of the most blood- thirsty and treacherous savage that ever disgraced a throne, and in whom, if his subjects must needs have a devil to adore, they might have found him to their hands, was destined so 40 THE CHURCH IN INDIA. [Essay I. soon to be the peaceful abode of a Cbristian minister, and the resting-place of a most Christian Bishop. After an absence of about fifteen months, in October, 1825, he again arrived at Calcutta, where he remained long enough to make his reports to England — to preside at meetings where his presence was required — to hold an ordination, and, what was of no small importance, to promote the building of a church in the native town at Calcutta, where service might be performed by the missionaries on the spot, or in the neighbour- hood, in the Bengalee and Hindostanee languages, according to the Liturgy of the Church of England. Such a measure had been adopted elsewhere with the happiest eflfects, amongst the Hindoos, a people remarkably alive to what is graceful and decorous in external worship ; and here, it was hoped, might prevent the few right ideas, which the youths had gathered at the schools, or in the perusal of Christian books, from being entirely eflfaced by the idolatrous practices they were daily con- demned to witness. This done, the Bishop hastened to, Madras, a presidency which he had reserved for a separate visitation, and wherein it was ordained that he should end his course. On Good Friday, he preached at Combaconum, on the crucifixion ; and on Easter Sunday, at Tanjore, on the resurrection. The day following he held a confirmation at the same place ; and in the evening delivered an address to the assembled missionaries, as he stood near the grave of Schwartz, a name which he had ever venerated. He arrived at Trichinopoly on the first of April, 1826, and the same evening wrote a letter, of which the following is a part : — ' I have been passing the last four days in the society of a Hindoo Prince, the Rajah of Tanjore, who quotes Fourcroy, Lavoisier, Linnseus, and Buffon, as fluently as Lady Morgan — has formed a more accurate judgment of the poetical merits of Shakspeare than that so felicitously expressed by Iiord Byron — and has actually emitted English poetry very superior indeed to Rousseau's Epitaph on Shenstone — at the same time that he is much respected by the English officers in his neighbourhood as a real good judge of a Essay I.] THE CHTJECH IN INDIA. 4 1 horse, and a cool, bold, and deadly shot at a tiger. The truth is, that he is an extraordinary man, who, having in early youth received such an education as old Schwartz, the celebrated Missionary, could give him, has ever since continued, in the midst of many disadvan- tages, to preserve his taste for, and extend his knowledge of, Euro- pean literature, while he has never neglected the active exercises and frank soldierly bearing which become the descendant of the old Mahratta conquerors, and by which only, in the present state of things, he has it in his power to gratify the prejudices of his people, and prolong his popularity among them. Had he lived in the days of Hyder, he would have been a formidable ally or enemy, for he is, by the testimony of all in his neighbourhood, bold, popular, and insinuating. At present, with less power than an English noble- man, he holds his head high, and appears contented ; and the print of Buonaparte which hangs in his library is so neutralized by that of Lord Hastings ia full costume, that it can do no harm to anybody To finish the portrait of Maha Kajah Sarbojee, I should tell you that he is a strong-built and very hand- some middle-aged man, with eyes and nose like a fine hawk, and very bushy gray mustachios — generally very splendidly dressed, but with no effeminacy of ornament, and looking and talking more like a favourable specimen of a French general officer than any other object of comparison which occurs to me. His son. Rajah Sewajee (so named after their great ancestor), is a pale, sickly lad of seven- teen, who also speaks English, but imperfectly, and on whose account his father lamented, with much apparent concern, the im- possibility which he had found of obtaining any tolerable instruction in Tanjore. I was moved at this, and offered to take him with me in my present tour, and afterwards to Calcutta, where he might have apartments in my house, and be introduced into good English so- ciety ; at the same time, that I would superintend his studies, and procure for him the best masters which India affords. The father and son, in different ways, the one catching at the idea with great eagerness, the other as if he were afraid to say all he wished, seemed both very well pleased with the proposal. Both, however, on consult- ing together, expressed a doubt'of the mother's concurrence ; and, accordingly, next day, I had a very civil message, through the Resi- dent, that the Ranee had already lost two sons ; that this survivor was a sickly boy ; that she was sure he would not come back alive, and it would kill her to part with him ; but that all the family joined in gratitude, &c., &c. 42 THE CHURCH m INDIA. [Essay I. ' So poor Sewajee must chew betel, and sit in the zenanah, and pursue the other amusements of the common race of Hindoo Princes, until he is gathered to those heroic forms, who, girded with long swords, with hawks on their wrists, and garments like those of the king of spades (whose portrait-painter, as I guess, has been retained for this family), adorn the principal room in the palace. Sarbojee (the father) has not trusted his own immortality to records like these ; he has put up a colossal marble statue of himself by Flaxman, in -one of his halls of audience, and his figure is introduced on the monument (also by Flaxman) which he has raised in the mission church to the memory of his tutor, Schwartz, as grasping the hand of the dying saint, and receiving his blessing. ' Of Schwartz and his fifty years' labour among the Heathen, the extraordinary influence and popularity which he acquired, both with Mussulmans, Hindoos, and contending European Governments, I need give you no account, except that my idea of him has been raised since I came into the south of India. I used to sus- pect that, with many admirable qualities, there was too great a mixture of intrigue in his character, that he was too much of a political prophet, and that the veneration which the heathen paid, and still pay him (and which, indeed, almost regards him as a superior being, putting crowns andburning lights before his statue), was purchased by some unwarrantable compromise with their pre- judices. I find I was quite mistaken. He was really one of the most active and fearless (as he was one of the most successful) mis- sionaries who have appeared since the Apostles. To say that he was disinterested in regard to money is nothing; he was perfectly careless of power, and renown never seemed to affect him even so far as to induce an outward show of humility. His temper was perfectly simple, open, and cheerful ; and in his political negotia- tions (employments which he never sought, but which fell in his way) he never pretended to impartiality, but acted as the avowed, though certainly the successful and judicious agent of the orphan prince entrusted to his care, and from attempting whose converaion to Christianity he seems to have abstained, from a feeling of honour. His othei: converts were between six and seven thousand, besides those which his predecessors and companions in the cause had brought over. The number is gradually increasing, and there are now in the south of India about two hundred Protestant con- gregations, the numbers of which have been sometimes vaguely Essay I.] THE CHURCH IN INDIA. 43 stated at forty thousand. I doubt whether they reach fifteen thou- sand ; but even this, all things considered, is a great number. The Roman Catholics are considerably more numerous, but belong to a lower caste of Indians (for even these Christians retain many pre- judices of caste), and in point of knowledge and morality, are said to be extremely inferior. 'The Brahmins, being limited to voluntary votaries, have now often very hard work to speed the ponderous wheels of Suon and Bali through the deep lanes of this fertile country. This is, how- ever, still the most favoured land of Brahminism, and the temples are larger and more beautiful than any which I have seen in North- ern India. They are also decidedly older ; but as to their very remote age, I am still incredulous.' The date of this letter gives it a melancholy interest. It was probably the last that this admirahle man wrote. Next day being Sunday, he again preached and confirmed, a rite which he administered once more on Monday morning in the Fort Church. He returned home to breakfast; but before sitting down, took a cold-hath, as he had done the two pre- ceding days. His attendant, thinking that he stayed more than the usual time, entered the apartment, and found the hody at the bottom of the water, with the face downwards. The usual restoratives of bleeding, friction, and inflating the lungs, were instantly tried, hut life was gone, and, on opening the head, it was discovered that a vessel had burst on the brain, in consequence, as the medical men agreed, of the sud- den plunge into the water whilst he was warm and exhausted. His remains were deposited, with every mark of respect and unfeigned sorrow, on the north side of the altar of St. John's Church at Trichinopoly. The disastrous intelligence of his decease was communicated with every caution to his unfortunate widow (who had been left at Calcutta with her two children) by her relation, Lord Combermere. She is left to mourn an irreparable loss, but not without that resignation and acquiescence in the will of Providence, which the precepts and example of her husband were so calculated to inspire and confirm in her mind. True it is that an apparent accident was the immediate cause 44 THE CHURCH IN INDIA. [Essay I. of the abrupt termination of the Bishop's life, but it may well be thought that his constitutiou was becoming more frail and susceptible of injury through his unremitted exertions — exer- tions which he was led to make by habits formed in a more temperate climate — by a fear which beset him of sinking into that supineness which a residence in India is so apt to engender — and by a spirit thoroughly interested in the pursuit of the great object before him. So long as this immense portion of the globe, extending from St. Helena to New Holland, is con- signed to the ecclesiastical superintendence of one man, and that one man is not deterred from doing his best by the im- possibility of doing much, it is to be feared there must be a certain waste of valuable life ; for what European, arriving in India at the age which a bishop has usually reached before he obtains his appointment, is likely to preserve his health long, in the midst of the disquietudes attending a new establishment — remote from the mother-country — incomplete in its subordi- nate parts — in its fruits perpetually disappointing the hopes and efforts of the labourer — whilst to all this must be added, the extreme difBculty (to say the least of it) of timing all the joumies right, where so many, and of such length, must be made, and of always selecting for them those seasons of the year, and those hours of the day, which are least deadly.* Thus died this faithful servant of God, in the 43rd year of his age, and the third of his episcopacy, labouring to the last in the cause that was nearest his heart,' and, like Fletcher of Madely, almost expiring in the very act of duty. The world may honour his memory as it will, though such as were best acquainted with him can scarcely hope that it should do him justice — for he had attached himself to no party, either in church or state, and therefore had secured no party-advocates, and of forms, by which mankind at large (for the want of less fallacious means of estimating character) are almost com- pelled to abide, he was not, perhaps, a very diligent observer : > We are happy to learn, as this is going through the press, that India is about to be divided into several separate dioceses. Essay I.] THE CHURCH IN INDIA. 45 but in India a strong sense of his worth has manifested itself, as it were, by acclamation. At Madras, a meeting wa§ held, a few days after his death, in the Government Gardens, the excellent Sir Thomas Munro in the chair, where to say that lamentation was made over him would be a weak word — there was a burst of affectionate feeling, which proves, were proof wanting, how grievous a loss the cause of Christianity has sustained in the removal of an advocate whose heart and head were equally fitted to recommend it. A subscription was forthwith commenced on a scale of Indian munificence, for a monument, to be erected to him in St. George's Church ; and this was taken up with the warmest zeal everywhere, and among all ranks and conditions of men throughout the presi- dency." At Bombay it was determined to found a scholarship for that presidency, at the college at Calcutta, to be called Bishop Heber's Scholarship — a testimony of respect the most appropriate that could have been devised ; and examples so generous have not been lost upon the capital of Bengal. It is very pleasing to hear all this. Still, none could know him truly as he was, without visiting (as we have often done) the parish where he had chiefly resided from his childhood upwards — where he had been seen as the son, the husband, the father, the brother, the master, above all, as the shep- herd of the flock. There, we are told, the tidings of his death were received by all as if each had lost a personal friend ; and though a considerable interval had elapsed since he bade them farewell, their sorrow was as fresh as if he had just breathed his last under that roof which, in doubt, in difficulty, and in distress, had so frequently been their refuge. These are argu- ments of his worth the most genuine that can be offered, and which it would now be injurious to suppress ; others may speak of the richness of his conversation, the playfulness of his fancy, the delicacy of his taste, of the almost unequalled vigour and retentiveness of his memory, which, had it not been over- ' The native subsoriptions in the lists are numerous, beyond what we could have heUeTed. 40 THE CHURCH IK INDIA. [Essat I. shadowed by higher intellectual qualities, would alone have constituted him an extraordinary man — of that memory which always supplied him with the apposite quotation, the suitable illustration, the decisive authority — but it has been the main object of these pages (however imperfectly attained) to discover something of ' the hidden man of the heart,' and to hold out to those who cannot hope to rival the high endowments of Bishop Heber, or to follow him in the public and splendid parts of his career, the imitation of those virtues which the under-current, as well as the palpable course, of his life pre- sented — of his charity, his humihty, his abandonment of every selfish feeling, his piety, at once enthusiastic and practical, exhibited in the unobtrusive and heartfelt purity of his own hfe, and in the tempered fervour and happy fruits of his labours as a minister of the Gospel. II.-MILTON.^ . (June, 1827.) We are sorry to be opposed on any occasion to the authority of the learned and yenerable Bishop of Salisbury ; but that the recently-discovered ' Treatise of Christian Doctrine' is the long-lost work of Milton, appears to be now established be- yond all controversy. By evidence from the state-paper office, brought to light since Dr. Sumner's translation appeared, and incorporated in the present edition of Mr. Todd's Life of the great poet, it seems that Daniel Skinner, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and probably nephew of Cyriack, con- signed such a treatise, together with Milton's state-letters, to the hands of Elzevir, .to be printed at Amsterdam — that Elzevir declined pubhshing them, as containing things which, in his opinion, bad better be suppressed, and wrote to that effect to Sir Joseph Williamson, then one of the secretaries of state — that meanwhile Dr. Barrow, the master of Trinity, sent a peremptory order to Skinner, who was at Paris, to repair immediately to college, and to desist from making public ' any writing mischievous to church or state,' on pain of forfeiting his fellowship ; and, by a conjecture, almost amounting to certainty, it is supposed, that the said Daniel Skinner did, in » The Poetical Worhs of John Milton ; with Notes of various Authors. The Third Edition. "With other Illustrations, and -with Some Account of the Life and Writings of Milton ; derived principally from Documents in His Majesty's State-Paper Office, now first published. By the Kev. H. J. Todd, &o. 6 vols. 8vo. 48 MILTON. [Essay II. obedience to this summons, return to England, and deliver up the suspected papers to the secretary. It was natural enough that the exhumation of such a work should again direct the attention of the world more parti- cularly to the writings of its illustrious author; and that, after, the lapse of a century and a half, we should look on the relic with the feelings of the Eoman peasant whose ploughshare happened to turn up the bones of his forefathers, and, with him, wonder at the gigantic stature of the men who lived in the civil wars. Still we must not suffer a great name to lead us astray — ' Unusquisque valeat in arte sua.' — Cicero was an admirable orator, yet a very ordinary writer of verse ; and Sir Isaac Newton is pronounced, by no mean authority, to have been, out of his own province, but a common man. Whilst we bow, therefore, to Milton as the poet — in Milton as a divine or a statesman we can only see a visionary ; and cannot but think that, to assert his merits in these latter departments, is to come forward (if we may use the words of a great master of eloquence) ' with hymns and cymbals to adore the mighty luminary when he is suffering an eclipse.' The character of Milton, long as it has been before the world, has, until lately, been but partially understood. It is not to be gathered from his poetry alone, and his prose (vi- gorous as some of it is) has been little studied ; nor indeed are his views on many points so fully developed in any of his former works as in this most curious 'Treatise of Christian Doctrine." In him we now possess, filled up with all the ac- curacy of detail, a magnificent specimen of the Puritan in his least offensive form ; the fervour, the devotion, the honest indignation, the moral fearlessness, the uncompromising im- petuosity, the fantastic imagination of the party, all conspi- cuous ; unalloyed, however, by the hypocrisy, the vulgarity, the cant, the cunning, and bad taste which have so generally made the name to stink in the nostrils of men. It is only by the study of individuals that we can make a tolerable estimate of the merits and defects of a "body of men. EasAT II.] MILTON. 49 which is one of the most remarlcable in our annals, and which has not left itself without witness in the civil, religious,, and even domestic relations of our country, to this very day. Happily materials for forming such a judgment are abundantly supplied in the fruitful biography of those times : for ill in- deed should we fare were we compelled to put our trust in the professed historian of Non- Conformity. With Neal, we must even walk like Agag, when suspicious of danger, ' delicately.' He may not always directly assert what is false, but he per- petually suppresses what is true — where he has not the bold- ness to make a charge, he can imply a suspicion — where a plain tale would set him or his party down, he can be ambi- guous as an oracle, prepared with one sense to mislead his reader, with another to save himself. It would be at least as fair to go to Hudibras or Drunken Barnaby for a picture of a Non-Conformist, as to trust to Neal for that of a Churchman. With him, every refractoi7 freak of a Puritan is a struggle of conscience, and every act of resistance in a bishop an argument of bigotry. The one the most reasonable, the other the most narrow-minded of men^ the scruples of the'Eoundhead are to be treated with tenderness, as respectable and innocent, those of the ecclesiastic to be over-ruled as mere cloaks to ambition and avarice; the crazy projects of the one are so many in- stances of lofty and seraphical virtue, the prudential consi- derations of the other are low, time-serving, and earthly. That many amongst the Puritans acted in the most perfect sincerity of heart, there can be no dispute. They no doubt believed that the doctrines they taught, and the schemes they proposed, were for the best — and the same may be said of most of the inmates of Bedlam. Certain, however, it is, that had it fallen to their lot to conduct the Eeformation under Elizabeth, the great cause would have run infinite risk of miscarriage. That arbitrary monarch had a leaning towards Rome in almost everything but the doctrine of papal supre- macy. To the real presence she was understood to have no objection; the celibacy of the clergy she decidedly approved ; the gorgeous rites of the ancient form of worship she admired. 50 MILTOK. [Essay II. and in her own chapel, retained. There wanted little hut a Sampson or a Cartwright at the head of affairs at this critical period, instead of a Parker or a Whitgift, to put out the candle that old Latimer had lighted, and to sacrifice the substantial interests of reUgion to a cope and surplice. Those, truly, were days when gnats were strained at and camels swallowed; else it should seem strange indeed, that persons who could not tolerate a piece of innocent Irish hnen because it had decorated the shoulders of a priest, should find no qualms at abandoning their congregations (which was often the alternative) to that very priest in disguise ; or that men, who in all things professed to take the Scriptures for their guide, should have forgotten that those very Scriptures do not require us to consult the conscience of every capricious humorist — that St. Paul would not circumcise Titus to please the captious brethren, nor our Lord himself forbid his dis- ciples to eat with unwashen hands, or to pluck ears of corn on the Sabbath, for fear of giving offence to those who had no right to be offended. It is most true that we owe much of the present beauty of our constitution to this rigid scrupulosity ; and so it is true, that we owe much of the present beauty of our metropolis to the great fire ; yet small praise is due to the element itself, in either case, for the good of which it was the accidental cause. Out of the fury of the flames arose spacious and regular streets; out of the commotions of the zealots the Bill of Eights and Act of Toleration. But we should feel more grateful for the benefit, did we perceive less selfishness in the benefactor. The Puritans, Uke many others, were just patriots enough to struggle manfully for the possession of power, and to keep it carefully in their own hands when they had got possession. Tithes, pluraUties, the disabilities of dissenters, and the restrictions of the press, were the anathema mara- natha of the conscientious Presbyterian in distress. No sooner is it his turn to be king, than he seizes for himself benefices with both hands, preaches extirpation of schism, and the necessity of a censorship; in short (as Swift says), ' gets Essay II,] MILTON. 51 on a horse and eats custard,' with as few compunctious visitings as the worst of those whom he had supplanted. The scene again changes, and enter the Independents — men who had been, of all others, the most clamorous for liberty, and most abusive of the parliament for their cruelty to the king — and how do they act ? Scarcely are they firm in their seats, Before they publish their repentance of their former clemency; cry God mercy for their kindness to a forlorn and fallen monarch; confess that they were under a temptation, deprive him of his chaplains, and cut off his head. If Cromwell himself was more magnanimous than his party, it was probably from policy rather than principle — more from expansion of head than of heart, though that heart was not always dead to kinder impulses. It is certain that he sanc- tioned some measures of gross oppression and intolerance (that of the Tryers for instance), where he could so act with- out dread of conseq[uences. Like Frederick of Prussia, how- ever, he in general felt himself above the fear of "' paper pellets,' or divisions of the people : he kept aloof, with the lion in the fable, till the contending bulls had exhausted one another, and then he well knew the spoil would be his own. — It was his strength to sit still. After the defeat of Worcester (the period when the lord- general began to know his own purposes, and to discover that the vision which flitted before him ' the semblance of a kingly crown had on'), the Royalists lay grovelling and prostrate; they, therefore, might he safely neglected. The Presbyterians, who had been made drunk by success, only needed to be left to themselves, that they might uncover yet more of their own nakedness, and sink themselves into a contempt that should render them harmless, by the gross inconsistency of their practice with their professions—' the latter end of their commonwealth most grievously forgetting the beginning.' The Independents, the ftiends of the usurper, whilst he allowed every man to vent what nonsense and run into what extrava- gances he pleased, would have soon discovered that he no longer wielded ' the sword of the Lord and of Gideon,' had he E 3 53 MILTOir. [Essay II. used it to suppress those fantastic movements amongst them, ■which, as many helieved, and many more affected to helieve, were the suggestions of the Spirit. To constrain them was, therefore, no pohcy for him. They were fulminating balls, which would be quiet till they were crushed. Indeed, of the explosive materials of which this latter body consisted, it is difficult to form a notion in these less tumultuous times. Every man amongst them thought for himself, and probably no ten men of them all thought alike. If the world could have been emptied of all but John Lilbume (it was said by Judge Jenkins), John would have quarrelled with Lilburne, and Lilburne with John. Each individual had his peculiar political or religious nostrum at the service of his friends, who wondered in their turn that he could be so absurd as not to see the superiority of their own. It would be as rational, therefore, to produce the single brick for the sample of a house, as the single Independent for that of the party to which he belonged. In every sense of the word, both as politicians and divines, their name was ' Legion.' Nevertheless, as it is only by an induction of par- ticulars that we can come to a general conclusion, we shall venture to attempt one portrait, out of many belonging to this heterogeneous body; and at the same time, by collecting our facts from his several writings, and bringing them together, endeavour to show at a single view the British constitution in church and state, as it would have come fresh from the hands of the Arch-Puritan, John Milton. We commend it to those who look to this great poet for maxims of practical wisdom in the affairs of men ; declaring for ourselves, that we know not where a parallel case can be found to its extravagance, unless it be in the projects of some of the male and female reformers in Aristophanes, the notable commonwealth of Gonzalo, or, perhaps, in those still more insane burlesques, the prize- constitutions of the Harrington Club. Detesting, as we do from our hearts, much of the conduct of the Parliament, we should equally scorn to justify every act of King Charles: yet this we cannot help remarking, that whatever disposition he might have had to conciliate and satisfy Essay II.] MILTON. 53 his people, his people were not in a condition to he satisfied or conciliated. He would have had as much chance of success as the Sicilians, when in terms the most insinuating they coax Mount ^tna to abstain from an eruption : a crisis was at hand which had been in preparation through several reigns, and which no wisdom on the part of this unfortunate man could have warded off. Charles committed errors, no doubt; no doubt he struggled hard to retain that which he honestly believed he had inherited — the possession of absolute power : it was natural that he should ; but, to make him and his obstinacy responsible for the great rebellion, is to argue without any reference to the temper of the people he had to rule. The elements of society were as ungovernable as the winds. The picture of the mental commotion in England, which Milton draws in his ' Areopagitica,' is truly appalling. ' Behold,' says he, ' this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion- house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with its protection ; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in de- fence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present as with their homage and their fealty the approaching Reformation : — others as fast read- ing, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and con- vincement ; what could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge ? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers to make a knowing people a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies ? ' It is an easy matter for modern patriots sitting over their claret and filling a bumper to the ' Constitution,' to bring heavy charges of delinquency against Charles ; but we must remind them that the Constitution, as it now is, even in theory, would have been far from satisfying the cravings of that unhappy monarch's subjects, who partook, in a very remark- able degree, of the taste of the horse-leech's daughters. That the king should have a negative voice on the decisions of his parliament, Milton treats as a mere chimaera, — or that a law 5i MILTON. [BssAT II. should not be 'bincling without the consent of the Lords, —or that taxes cannot be legally levied by the Commons alone.^ But we need not stay to examine how Milton read the con- stitution, as it had been : it is better to proceed, as we pro- mised, and set forth what he wished it to be for the time to corne. The Miltonian government of England, then, is to consist of a grand council, elected by the people, and supplied from lime to time with new members, as vacancies may occur, but in itself perpetual. It is curious, however, and it is a fact which it would be unfair to supress, that the poet's plan of election is that recently adopted, with some modiiScations, in France, — ' which does not commit all to the noise and shouting of a rude multitude, but permits only those of them who are rightly qualified to nominate as many as they will, and out of that number others of a better breeding to choose a less number more judiciously, till, after a third or fourth sifting, or refining of exactest choice, they only be left chosen who are the due number, and seem by most voices the worthiest ? ' Nor is it less singular that he suggests, in case objection be made to a permanent council, the annual retirement of a third part of the senators, according to the precedence of their elec- tion, a provision which, like the former, has been admitted by the Trench, though not exactly in the proportion here assigned, and of which David Hume is commonly supposed to have originated the idea. Meanwhile, every county is to be erected into a separate and subordinate republic, the chief town being the seat of the local government, whither the gentry who com- pose it may resort, to appoint their own judges, model their own courts, and execute their own laws in their own way, without revision and without appeal — a plan in some sort resembling what has been adopted in the United States of North America. Should the grand council propose enactments affecting the ''Vol. i. p. 405, Iconoclast; vol. ii. p. 212, Defenos, &o.; vol. ii. p. 222, Bur- nett's abridged edition. Essay II.] MILTON. 55 country at large, it shall be left to these lesser commonwealths to express, within a limited time, their assent or dissent, so as to be bound, however, by the opinion of the majority of the shires. The specific nature of the changes which Milton con- templated in the laws of the land does not fully appear: it seems probable, however, from a passage in the ' Sampson Agonistes,' that in this he would have gone hand-in-hand with Ludlow, making a clear stage in the constitution, sweeping away all existing statutes, and so giving room for others more conformable to the new order of things — the sin of omission being that which he has the modesty to think brought upon the saints their political reverses and the indignation of heaven.* The question of the Church is to be disposed of next, a subject upon which he explains himself in yet more ample detail. Now, the bishops having been found to infect religion with the ' dead palsy,' the clergy in general being ' hirelings and grievous wolves,' and their proctors a ' hell-pestering rabble,' it is high time that these should be all done away. It being possible, however, that ministers may not be found ready to teach for nothing (which is much to be desired, and the primitive practice), tithes, moreover, being 'unjust and scandalous,' and all fees ' accursed and simoniacal,'. it remains for the clergy to depend for support on the voluntary alms of their hearers; but, it being hard, and altogether contrary to the freedom of the gospel, that people should go to their own parish church, where they might possibly sit with as much profit as 'the sheep in their pews at Smithfield," they are to follow whom they will, and bestow their charity on him they like best. Here, however, 'it occurs that, under such a dis- pensation, some luckless mar-texts might be left without sheep or shearing : to them, therefore, it is humanely suggested that they may go preaching through the villages, where their ' ' Nor only dost degrade them, or remit To life obscured, whjcli were a fair dismission, But throw'st tliem lower than thou didst exalt them high ; Unseemly falls in human eye, Too grievous for the trespass or omission.' — t. 690. 56 MILTOK. [Essay II. aadience will be less critical, or add to their pastoral charge the more lucrative functions of tradesmen, surgeons, brick- layers, and cai-penters. — (C D. 489. y. i. 169. Burnett's edi- tion.) Thus would they resemble St. Paul, at least by work- ing with their own hands, and (in the characteristic language of the great anti-puritan divine) have the advantage of 'being able to drive the nail home, in the literal sense, and to make a pulpit before they preach in it.' It may be true that, under such a system, the learning of the church would be but scanty; ecclesiastical literature, how- ever, is worthless, or worse, for ' whatsoever time, or the heed- less hand of blind chance hath drawn down from of old in her huge drag-net, whether fish or sea-weed, shells or shrubs, un- picked, unchosen — these are the Fathers.' The study of the Tatbers, therefore, may be safely dismissed ; it is enough that the Bible be read without comment, without prejudice, and without fear. Then will it be perceived that the great doctrine of Christian liberty is the master-key of the whole : use this, and it will be found that the minister needs no call besides the consciousness of gifts within him — no interpreter besides his own assurance of the truth. Let him be fully persuaded of any proposition in his own mind, and it is enough : even the Scripture may deceive him, for its text may be corrupt — the Spirit cannot, for its characters are pourtrayed fresh from the finger of God. The evidence, thereforCj of his own heart is the paramount evidence of all. ' He who receives Light from above, from the fountain of light, No other doctrine needs, though granted true.' P. B. iv. 290. C. D. 476. The Scriptures being yet further opened by the same key of Christian liberty, it will be manifest that prayers are not to be circumscribed by place or time, by church or Sabbath, all situations and all seasons being equally suitable — that set forms of devotion are to make way for extempore efiFiisions, the Lord's Prayer itself being intended rather to be copied in E^sAY II.] MILTON. 57 its spirit than used in its letter— that acts of self-denial and bodily mortification profit not, and therefore are to he dis- carded as onerous — that the whole law of Moses, moral as well as ceremonial, the Decalogue no less than the ritual, is abolished, and that the love of God, and of our neighbour, enjoined in general terms, and admitting of an enlarged and liberal interpretation, has superseded all specific injunctions — that marriage is to be disencumbered of its inconvenient re- strictions, and a greater latitude allowed it, the unmeetness of the parties being a satisfactory ground of divorce, and the niggardly allowance of one wife at a time being a frivolous and vexatious regulation." Measures, however, so novel, and so much in advance of the times, require a corresponding change in the system of educa- tion. Our universities and public schools, therefore, are to give place to ' spacious houses fit for academies,' one of which is to be established in every city, offering a wholesome and happy nurture to our youth, instead of that ' asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles which is commonly set before them, as all the food and entertainment of their tenderest and most docible age.' Here will every stripling, by the time he is one- and-twenty, have read more Latin and Greek authors than, per- haps, the most veteran scholar in these degenerate days : he will, besides, have mastered the Italian, the Hebrew, the Chaldee, and Syrian at ' odd hours.' He will have made him- self, in his school-room and play-gi'ound, a complete farmer, architect, engineer, sportsman, apothecary, anatomist, law- giver, philosopher, general officer of cavalry, skilled in ' em- battling, marching, encamping, fortifying, besieging, and battering,' equal to the command of an army the moment he has escaped from the rod ; and thus will he prove himself, ' in a dangerous fit of the commonwealth, no poor, shaken, un- certain reed, of such a tottering conscience as many great coun- sellors show themselves, but a steadfast pillar of the state.-" * » We wish we could afford room for quoting at length the defence of polygamy. It is, perhaps, the most curious thing in the whole Treatise of Christian Doctrine, b See Treatise 'of Education,' pp. 260 268, 269, 270 274, vol. i. 58 MILTO:^r. [EssatII. Inconsistency in its notions was the natural infirmity of a spirit thus visionary, acting, as such a spirit is wont to do, on momentary impulse, rather than mature principle ; and surely no man's conclusions are more discordant with one another than those of Milton — ' Nil fuit unquam sic impar sihi.' He reviles Charles I. for interfering in the return of memhers to parliament hy ' intimations and court letters,' and commends Cromwell for his discretion in nominating them by ' his own writ,' and thus ' allowing the privilege of voting to those only to whom it was expedient to allow it ;' — the privileged, — it is needless to say, — being Cromwell and his council — the happy result of their choice, the Bare-bones parliament. He abhors every restraint upon the freedom of the subject, yet would put into the hands of the magistrate ' the managing of our public sports and festival pastimes,' that mirth might not become licentiousness. He. reproaches, in the bitterest terms, the weakness of those who (in the language of his day) ' did the work of the Lord negligently;' yet denies not but 'it is the part of prudence to comply with the necessity of the times, for the sake of public peace and private safety.' — (C. D. 704.) He ascribes evei-y ' social perfection in this life, civil or sacred,' to discipline, (v. i. 54,) yet discovers, from the church claiming to herself ' worldly, authority,' (without which, in some degree, there can be no discipline) that the ' apostolical virtue is de- parted from her.' — (p. 80.) He despises the idea of making the senses auxiliary to devotion, yet he loves, poetically at least, ' the cloyster,' the ' pealing organ,' and the cathedral's ' dim re- ligious light.' He allows of individual inspiration, and yet pronounces a general council of bishops and elders altogether incompetent to making decrees. — (G. D. 493.) He considers the Mosaical law, moral as well as ceremonial, abolished ; yet, throughout his book on Christian Doctrine, proves moral obli- gations to be binding, by texts from that law. He advocates the interpretation of Scripture exclusively according to its spirit, yet argues the questions of polygamy, divorce, and false- hood, on grounds of the most servile adherence to its letter. He reproaches Tertullian (when it answers his purpose to Essay IL] MILTON. 59 shake his authority on the subject of episcopacy) as an unfaithful expounder of Scripture, ' because he goes about to form an imparity between God the Father and God the Son ' (v. i. p. 40) ; yet himself, in his ' Paradise Lost,' makes the Son only the first of created things (iii. 383), and again shift- ing his ground, maintains, in the same poem, the pre-existence of angels (v. 600) ; and in his ' Treatise of Christian Doctrine,' expressly and distinctly avows his Arianism. ' Quo teneam vultus mutantem Protea nodo?' Need we then -wonder that Milton should have had so little influence on the age in which he lived, and even with the party to which he had attached himself? Removed from him by many generations, and regarding him (who can help so regard- ing him ?) as one of the most gifted men that our country has produced; thrown, too, upon times eminently calculated (as might have been supposed) to bring his talents into play ; — it is not without surprise that we find him considered by the rulers of his day, chiefly, if not altogether, as a person pos- sessing an unusual flow of Latin and vehemence of invective, and in so far fit to be made the minister of their purposes, but not the partner of their counsels. The master-spirits of that age might talk, and pray, and sing psalms with those who had -the innocence of the dove, but they preferi'ed consulting with such as had the subtlety of the serpent. Milton was too visionary to be followed; too sincere to be controlled; too ambitious of what he thought perfect, to acquiesce in what others might think practicable. He -would admit of no com- promise; he would hear of no obstacles; seasons were never to be watched ; prejudices to be respected ; nor allowance to be made for inveteracy of habit, dulness of apprehension, or con- flict of opinion. On he -would go right to his end, through flood and fell, with the obstinacy of a Eoman road. — 'In- veniam viam, aut faciam.' In Milton's phrase, Oranmer and Eidley were ' time-serving and halting prelates;' yet, whilst the sublime reveries of himself and his friends are now scarcely known to the antiquary, the changes which those ' time-serving and halting prelates' wrought in the religion of their country. 60 MILTON. [EssAT II. are to this day stedfast as ever; and the mighty effects with which their measures, their tame measures, were pregnant, have only heen made more manifest hy the revolution of years. Milton was ahout as well qualified to act a part in the practical business of life as Plato would have heen, if, according to his wish, he could have ' unsphered him.' He might, for aught we know, have legislated admirably for the inhabitants of the moon, but for those of the earth it was out of the question. He lived in a world of his own creation, and peopled it with beings of other passions than ours. Jacob Behmen, who could teach his followers to smell angels, was not too mystical for him ; and had he been bom in later times, he would pro- bably have preferred Joanna Southcote or William Huntington, S. S., to the whole bench of our bishops, and the Fasting Woman of Tutbury to the most florid of her sex. Those temptations which practically fill the world with con- fusion and misery, which stock our prisons, and madhouses, and hospitals, he threw out of his reckoning, as utterly con- temptible and powerless. In his sight they, doubtless, were so ; for far are we from charging him with any deliberate intention of producing the mischief to which his system would have necessarily led. The Sabbath might have been abolished, and Milton would still have employed it in devotion ; the Liturgy might have been suppressed, and he would still have poured out his soul before God with the eloquence of a prophet ; churches might have been demolished, but still would he have erected for himself a chapel in his heart ; austerities might have been discouraged, but his rule would have ever been that which the ' strictest temperance taught ;' indolence might have been made no reproach, but he would still have been stirring before the chime of the matin-hell; hbertinism might have rejoiced at his doctrines of polygamy and divorce, but their author would still have remembered that the high reward of accompanying the Lamb with celestial songs is I'eserved for those who have not ' defiled themselves with women.' We do not charge him with had intentions, hut with bad Essay II.] MILTON'. CI theories — with making no allowance in his machinery for friction. He forgets that men are made of flesh and blood; he only sees them, as Madame de Stael says, en huste ; he supposes that, 'because he is virtuous, there will be no more cakes and ale ;' in all his speculations the body is regarded as a mere engine, which the soul condescends to employ for the present, and over which its control is as absolute as that of an astronomer over his telescope, or a carpenter over his plane ; — 'animus cujusque, is est quisque.' Is the king to be im- prisoned ? Then why not killed, for what matters it whether the ' useless bulk of his person ' be stowed in a coflBn or a gaol ? Is the marriage-bed violated ? Why call for a divorce, whilst mutual aversion is not permitted to annul the contract ? The injury of a worthless vessel is not to be compared with that of a wounded spirit. Do the martyrs expire in the flames? What of that? Who would not give his body to be burned, if the occasion called for it ? A man who was thus all his life long dwelling in the third heaven, was not the material out of which Cromwell could fashion an adviser, or a confidant. Time was, when the Pro- tector had been living there himself, but he had thought better of it, and was now content to walk the earth. Accordingly, Milton had not interest enough to procure for his friend Marvell a laborious appointment of two hundred pounds a year ( Todd, V. i. 163) ; and when Peter Heimbach sohcits his good offices towards obtaining a subordinate situation in the embassy to the Dutch, he at once declares his inability to serve him by reason of his very little intimacy with those in power (p. 246) ; so ludicrous is the efi'ort of his biographer. Dr. Symmons, to exalt the secretary of foreign tongues into the secretary of state for foreign affairs! {Life, p. 230.) We do not speak thus of Milton wantonly. Who would take delight in using irreverently a name which is bound up with the glories of England ? But, surely, in proportion as his authority is great, we ought to be jealous of its misappli- cation : — ' Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile.' The most judi- c'.ous of his admirers will admit that, in his political writings. C3 MILTON". [Essay II. the author of 'Paradise Lost' has fallen ; and their aim will be, not to expose that fall, by making it a subject of eulogy, but to contribute towards its decency, and to hide it with their mantle. Nor do we speak thus of Milton unadvisedly; it is his own acknowledgment, that, in writing on matters of pohty, ' he knew himself inferior to himself;' and that, ' led by the genial power of nature to another task, he had in this but the use of his left hand.' Clarendon, who omitted none of the men that stamped the times in which he lived, makes no mention of Milton, either in his History, or (where he had a fair opportunity of introducing him, incidentally, amongst the other great wits of his day), in his Life ; Baxter, a voluminous writer on the side of the Presbyterians, and who severely censures some of the coadjutors of the poet in the cause of independency, passes him over in profound silence. His doc- trine of divorce was received with ridicule f and when he was summoned before the House of Lords, at the instigation of the Presbyterians, to answer for this act of heterodoxy, he was speedily dismissed, as though the sentiments were too absurd to do injury, or to provoke censure. On the eve of the Eestoration came out his 'Eeady and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth,' which met with a jocular reply, and scarcely deserved any other; and though after the return of the king, he was taken before the House of Commons, in custody of the sergeant-at-arms, he was forthwith released on paying the fees. Persecution, to a man of Milton's spirit, would have been a mercy ; toleration and neglect he could not endure, nor forgive. In the querulous address to Heaven of his Samson, we may recognize the language of the mortified poli- tician : — ' He led me on to mightiest deeds, Above the nerve of mortal arm, Against the uncircumcised, ouy enemies: But now hath cast me off, as never known.' The fact is, that the estimation in which Milton is now held * See Sonnet XI. , and Warton's Note. EssAT 11.] MILTON. 63 disables us from judging calmly of the rank in which he stood with his contemporaries. Many years after the pubhcation of the delightful poems of his youth, he speaks of himself to Salmasius as of a person but little known (v. ii. 381). Waller, not Milton, was long reckoned the ' Virgil of the nation ;' and, strange as it may now seem, there were probably very few, even among scholars, during any part of Milton's life, who would not have preferred the posthumous fame of the elegant panegyrist of Cromwell and Charles the Second, to that of the author of 'Comus' and 'Paradise Lost.' Milton's lesser poems, indeed (unaccountable as it may seem), appear, for a long while, to have fallen into utter neglect ; and the first attention paid to the 'Penseroso' and 'Allegro,' by a writer of any note, is in the 'Eloisa' of Pope, where some remarkable expressions from those exquisite pieces are adopted without acknowledg- ment, and, perhaps, under the impression that, to works so little known, no acknowledgment was due. Even in a paper of the Spectator, some lines are quoted by one of the corre- spondents, as taken from a ' poem of Milton's, which he entitles II Penseroso,' a form of speech which, as the context shows it not to be intended for something characteristic of the individual using it, argues the poem itself to have been but little read at the time. It is difficult to conceive a stronger proof of the gross depravity of taste which prevailed during the reign of Charles II. than the simple fact, that these two noble efforts of human imagination for a season expired under its sensual influence : — ' Fie on sinful phantasy ! Fie on lust and luxury ! ' We have thus entered into the personal character of Milton somewhat more at large, because its leading feature has not been hitherto sufficiently marked. All the world knew that he was an eloquent, a high-minded, ' an austere man,' mighty in the Scriptures; but how visionary he was (though Warburton threw out hints that could not have been altogether neglected by able inquirers) none of his biographers ever told us — not indeed, perhaps, until the 'Treatise on Christian Doctrine" was 64 MILTON. [Essay II. brought to light, could they tell us at full; yet here, and here alone, will be found the solution of many anomalies in his history, and of many peculiarities in his poems. A Life of Milton is yet a desideratum in our literature. Johnson hated his democratic principles, and despised his impracticable philo- sophy : the severity with which he handled him was only re- strained by veneration for his piety, and perhaps ignorance of his Arianism ; but the bias of his mind is not more discover- able in the sternness of his criticism, than in his selecting for his dictionary, as an example of a sonnet, that very one by Milton which he pronounces ' contemptible.' Johnson was in nothing more remarkable than in his reverence for common sense ; to this he appeals on all occasions — in his maxims of government, in his regulations of society, in his canons of criticism : his wisdom was the wisdom of Socrates, practical rather than speculative, homely rather than sublime ; he thought that its true* province was on the earth, not in the clouds ; its proper minister, experience, not conjecture : all this was against Milton, and in favour of Pope ; the latter of whom he, perhaps, extravagantly commends — from the former he no less extravagantly detracts. Dr. Symmons, who has since produced a hfe of the poet, has the advantage of ad- miring his subject to idolatry, but his style is pitiable— feeble, inflated, aiming at that of Johnson, and succeeding, as he who stuffs himself as large as Falstaff makes himself a prince of wits. This Doctor is a great lover of liberty in church and state, and, therefore, chants forth Milton and independence for ever, with the discrimination of a burgess for Westminster: yet discrimination he has, for he characterizes Ovid as ' diffuse and languid ;' talks of the ' flexibihty of Dr. Parker,' ' who might be regarded' (we presume on that account) 'as the Horsley of his age ;' discovers a still more accurate knowledge of this latter prelate, by ascribing (because others had done the same) a famous sermon, which he preached before tlie House of Lords, (or, at least, the appendix to that sermon), to Bishop Watson, who, as any Doctor ought to have known, would have been the last man on earth to preach, or wiiie, Essay II.] MILTON. 05 anything like it; wastes, accordingly, much good sarcasm upon that excellent whig ; and, with a blind- determination to run a-muck in his politics at every man whose memory we have been accustomed to respect, he creates an opportunity of ascribing ' Burke's crusading zeal against the French Eevolution' to his pension — alike unmindful, that, when his own hero defended the regicides, he was writing by order of a council, and upon an annual stipend, while the calumniated Burke, when he puMished his ' Reflections,' &c., had neither superior to control, nor pension to pervert him. We have seldom met with a finer example of ' the thread of your verbosity spun beyond the staple of your argument,' than the following : — the egregious Doctor introduces Milton to Grotius, and, after a flourish of trumpets, such as might precede a Dialogue of the Dead in Lucian or Erasmus, thus continues — ' Were we able to ascertain with precision all the circumstances of this interview between two extraordinary men.emiaently raised above the level of their species by their talents and their attain- ments,' — [well, what then ?] ' we should probably acquire nothing from our knowledge to excite our wonder, or, if our expectations were high, to save us from disappointment. In the formality and coldness of a first meeting, and especially where one party would be restrained by the consciousness of having much to lose, and the other by the felt impropriety of pressing upon established rank and reputation, no great display of erudition, or brilliant interchanges of fancy, were likely to take place — compliments requited with civili- ties, some inquiries respecting the traveller's plans, and some advice respecting their execution, constituted, perhaps, the whole of the conference between these two memorable men.' — p. 80. The laudable delicacy of Milton upon this occasion we venture to recommend to Dr. Symmons's consideration ; and then (we trust) we shall have no more talk of Dr. Symmons' ' honouring with his notice ' a work of Dr. Johnson, nor hear a pigmy like this begging pardon of the admirers of a giant, whilst he assures them, that 'Johnson actually wanted the t)6 MILTON. [EssAT II. power to comprehend the greatness and elevation of Milton's mind.' The new Life by Mr. Todd will not supply the defect of which we have spoken. It disarms criticism by its perfect modesty and absence of pretension ; but it has more the aiir of a legal instrument than of a poetical memoir. It.contains, indeed, some novel facts, the fruits of Mr. Lemon's researches in the State-paper Office, and it was the announcement of these in the title-page that turned our attention to an edition of Milton with which, in all other respects, we had long been sufficiently acquainted. Those facts, however, are few in number, and (except so far as they decide the ' Treatise on Christian Doctrine' to be Milton's) of trifling importance; for it scarcely can be considered a matter of grave concern to know that Milton received his orders from the council, as a clerk from his employers — that his salary was ^288, which was afterwards, on his blindness, commuted for a pension of £150 — that he was reluctant to pay his mother-in-law, Ann Powell (with whom probably he had no great reason to be satisfied), her thirds, out of the estate of her deceased hus- band, to which he had succeeded, by discharging the fine upon it — or that she, on the other hand, was afiraid to press her suit against a man, who held her daughter as a hostage, and whom she represents as ' hasty and choleric' Mr. Todd is, no doubt, a laborious man, but he is miserably out of his vocation as an editor of our poets. To edit an author is not to empty upon him the contents of a pedantic common-place book ; notes are only useful or desirable when they serve to illustrate. If the writer has stolen from others, let him be exposed — if he has adverted to an obsolete custom or an obscure history, let him be explained — if his readings be doubtful, let him be corrected by appropriate reference to the phraseology of the times. But Mr. Todd's quotations seldom show anything but that other writers have expressed a common thought like Milton, where it would not have been easy for them to have expressed it ditferently ; and, after the fashion of his craft, he is too apt to desert us in our distress, and Essay II.] . MILTON. 67 cumber us with help when we are safe on land. Thus the meaning of ' Smoothing the raven-down Of darkness till it smiled,' is left to the reader to discover how he can ; whilst the phrase ' bosky bourn,' which occurs shortly after, elicits a whole page of needless exposition — 'For commentators each dark passage shun, And hold a farthing-candle to the sun.' — If our memory does not fail us, he gives a couple of pages of notes, in his edition of Spenser, on that dark phrase — ' A gentle knight was pricking on the plain.' And so he goes on through the two great poets who have had the misfortune to engage his kind offices. Of Milton's j)ecu- liar sources of thought and illustration — of the rabbinical writings, for example— he knows absolutely nothing. But enough of Mr. Todd : his edition of ' Paradise Lost ' is so heavy a disgrace to our literature, that we may, perhaps, be induced, on some future occasion, to make it the subject of a separate critical notice; and, for a similar reason, we shall certainly ere long devote some pages to his edition of John- son's Dictionary. But our present concern is with Milton. Let us now turn to him in a new character ; — and here we are ready to avow that the same quality of mind which made his politics worthless, gave to his poetry its superlative charm. The very ' Light which led astray Was light from heaven — ' Excess of imagination is commonly to be paid for, whether dearly or not, by defect of judgment. The growth of the one faculty is the decline of the other: years, which make us more wise, make us less imaginative; and, in the madman, where the reason is prostrate, the fancy triumphs. Shakspeare, who in this, as in almost everything, was a splendid exception to all general rules, united both these faculties in their F 2 68 MILTON. [EssAT ir. exuberance— and, of all the singular features of his mind, none is perhaps so singular as this. The opinion of Shak- speare would have been worth having, not merely on the construction of a poem, but on the making of a will, on the purchase of an estate, or the committal of a culprit at a justice's meeting. This union of powers nature denied to Milton ; she gave him an imagination equal to that of the great dramatist, but she refused him his common sense. Nothing was ever so unearthly as his poetry. The most unpromising subject, after passing through his heated mind, comes out purged, and purified, and refined; the terrestrial body dis- solves in the process, and we behold in its stead a glorified body. That which was by nature a frail and perishable flower, when transplanted to his fancy, becomes 'immortal amaranth.' A young girl and her brothers are benighted and separated as they pass through a forest in Herefordshire. How meagre is this solitary fact ! — how barren a paragraph would it have made for the Herefordshire journal, had such a journal been then in existence. Submit it to Milton, and beautiful is the form which it assumes. Then rings that wood with the jocund revelry of Comus and his company, and the maiden draws near in the strength of unblemished chastity, and her courage waxes strong as she sees ■ A sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night' — and she calls upon Echo to tell her of the flowery cave which hides her brothers, and Echo betrays her to the enchanter. Then comes the spirit from the 'starry threshold of Jove's court,' and in shepherd-weeds leads on the brothers to her rescue; — and the necromancer is put to flight, but not till he has bound up the lady in fetters of stone; — and Sabrina hastens from under her ' translucent wave ' to dissolve the sp§ll — and again they all three bend their happy steps back to the roof of their fathers. This is not extravagant rhapsody — the tale is still actually preserved ; but it is preserved like a fly in amber. The image Essay II.] MILTON. C9 is a mere thing of wood, but Milton inshrines it, and it be- comes an object of worship. Deprive Milton of the privilege of sending Milton's thoughts forth, and the secret of his strength is gone. In translation he is not only below him- self, but below those who have not a thousandth part of his genius. His version of the Psalms is not above that of Stern- hold and Hopkins. The arrival of Lady Derby at Harefield is to be greeted by her friends and household. Then is Harefield (after the fashion indeed of the times, but by no common artist) converted into an Arcadia, and the noble guest is ushered in by a company, of peasants, and their homage is directed by the genius of the wood, who chaunts the praises of the new queen of Arcady in. strains of exquisite delicacy — ' ipsa mollities ' — strains which he had learned to sing by listening, ' in deep of night,' to the harmony of the spheres. • His friend perishes by sea as he passes from Chester to Ire- land. Again Milton clothes this naked fact in imagery of his own, and Mr. King is no longer his college companion, but the shepherd with whom he had been accustomed ' to drive a-field under the opening eyelids of the morn ' — and the crazy vessel is no more a material hulk, but capable of perfidy, and rigged with curses, and built in an eclipse ; — and the Church does not- lament the loss of a promising member, but the pilot of the Galilean lake moans over one who would so well have plied the herdsman's art, and put to shame the careless hinds ; — and his fellow-students are not besought to honour his memory with their funeral songs, but the muses who loved him are called upon to purple the ground where, in imagination at least, he lies, with fresh flowers, and to lavish upon it the embroidery of spring. It has been said that this is not the natural mode of express- ing passion — that where it is real, its language is less figura- tive — and that ' where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief.' In general this may be true; in the case of Milton its truth may be doubted. In his verses on the death of an infant he indulges a similar vein, yet the concluding stanza could 70 MILTON. [Essay II. hardly have been wiitten by one who wrote without sympathy — and in his 'Epitaphium Damonis/ where he laments the early death of Deodati, his schoolfellow, his coeval, him in whom his soul delighted, and whom he lost before civil war could have hardened his heart, it is still under the same pastoral figures. The mind of Milton was perfect faii-y-land ; and every thought which entered it, whether grave or gay, magnificent or mean, quickly pai-took of a fairy form. It is in illustration of this circumstance, and with a view to the vindication of Milton's better feelings, that we have given a brief analysis of one or two of his lesser poems. We do not believe that he loved his friend less because he chose to call him Lycidas instead of Mr. King ; and we are sure that he did not love the clergy more because he represented them as shepherds instead of rectors.* He thought in romance ; the daily occurrences of life were translated into romance almost before his mind could act upon them. It happened as naturally as an analyist mechanically translates his propositions into algebra before his investigation begins. There is no universal language of grief. It takes its complexion from the country, the age, the indi- vidual. In its paroxysms no man thinks of writing verses of any kind ; then the rhymes of a ballad-singer would be as much out of place as the strains of a Theocritus. We exclaim, as King David does, ' My son ! My son !' When the paroxysm is past, every man will write such verses (if he write them at all) as the ordinary turn of his mind dictates. Bishop Andrews said his prayers in Greek : who would, on that account, doubt the sincerity of the great scholar's devotion ? Milton lamented his friend in the language of romance : who would, on that account, deny that the poet's sorrow was unfeigned ? Men act and speak under sufi'ering agreeably to the manner in which they act and speak in general. Cicero was, by habit, a reader and writer of philosophy ; and therefore, when his daughter dies, he gives vent to his grief by studying philosophical treatises on that affection of the mind. Mavmontel was, by habit, a reader and writer of plays; and, therefore, when he EssAT II.] MILTOK. 71 loses his favourite child, and witnesses the nfEiction of his wife, he betakes himself to composing (so he tells us), as an analogous subject, the opera of ' Penelope." The one acted like a Roman, the other like a Frenchman ; yet the distress of both parents was, no doubt, sincere. The objection which has given occasion to these remarks has arisen, in our opinion, from that imperfect view of Milton's character, with which we have charged both his enemies and his friends. They forget that he was a visionary — they insist upon his grieving like a man of this world, though he lived in a world of his own — they expect that Tippoo Saib's dreams should be those of an European prince, instead of an Asiatic sultan — that the stuff they are made of should be the clamours of the people, the insolence. of the press, the intriguings of a diplomatist, instead of tributary raonarchs, and white elephants, and extermination of the infidels. Milton was a visionary ; he was so by consti- tution — he was so through loss of sight — he was so through the form of religion which he had embraced. Even his earliest poems breathe little or nothing corporeal. A boy of eighteen must have had more than the usual share of taste for metaphysical masks, to put into the mouth of Ens a speech to his eldest son Substance, and to start a conversation between Quantity, Quality, and Relation. After he became blind, his images were supplied him by reflection more than by sense : they were, therefore, abstract, indistinct, undefined — the essen- tials present with him, the accidents perhaps absent. We may think that we have a good idea of a hippogriff ; yet where were his wings, what was their construction, — was he ten hands high, or twice ten ? Yet all this we should have known at once had we ever seen him in the yard at Tattersall's. The eye of flesh was wanting to Milton, and therefore he had to trust to that inward eye, before which, however he might desire it, all mist could not be purged and dispersed. His very coloursin 'Paradise Lost' and 'Regained' are recollections : they are either ff olden or black ; all the intermediates are forgotten. But his rehgion was, perhaps, the most influential cause of the three : it was in the spirit of his party to despise all outward 72 MILTOK. [EssAT II. and Tisible signs, and herein Milton was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. The state of religion has in every country, and at every age, in a great degree regulated literature and the arts. Sculpture never succeeded in Egypt, because scarcely one of all the gods of the Egyptians was of a human shape : mon- keys, monsters, onions, and leeks, ' these were thy gods, O Egypt !' The statuary, therefore, never felt his piety stimulate his chisel. In Greece, the artist was conscious that his own brain, like that of Jupiter, might give birth to a deity — his spirit kindled within him, and the marble started into a shape scarcely unworthy an immortal. After the revival of the arts, the Virgin Mary may be strictly reckoned the patroness of painters — devotion refined the conceptions, and guided the pencil of the Italian. There is scarcely a great picture of which the subject is not sacred: magnificent scenes were to be found elsewhere, but they would not do — Andromache was extinguished by the Madonna, and Priam by St. Erancis. The rehgion of Protestants did not admit of pictures or statues, and consequently the art of making them with success in Protestant countries decayed — medals, academies, exhibi- tions were lavished in vain— they were beggarly substitutes for the afflatus from on high : wanting this, the painter became a worker on canvas, the sculptor a stone-mason. Nor have the effects of the Eeformation been less perceptible on poetry. This was not necessarily confined, like painting and sculpture, to the expression of material and sensible objects. There was no need, therefore, for the Protestant to reject it altogether as a help to devotion ; but he would be disposed to limit its pro- vince, far more than it had hitherto been, to the operations of pure spirit. An attempt, indeed, has since been made by the Moravians to restore the reign of anthropomorphism to sacred poetry; but the attempt was eminently unsuccessful, and has only proved the more clearly how offensive is that taste to the feelings and faith of a reformed people. There is wanted, for the endurance of such poetry, the spectacle, the sacrifice, the procession, the drama, the life and actions of the goddess or saint — all, in fact, which fills the hymns of Homer or Pindar Essay II.] MILTOK. 73 with imagery appropriate to tbe appetite and experience of tliose for whom they were written : neither may it be here out of place to remark that the devotions of Protestant congre- gations are seldom, perhaps, improved by that spirit of theo- pathy sometimes perceptible in hymns selected for their use by individual ministers. It is well if such compositions do not more frequently disgust than edify — if they do not rather debase the Deity than elevate the man. Tor these reasons, wherever the Reformation has extended, poetry in general, and sacred poetry in particular, has assumed a new character. It is become more sublime and less picturesque, more philo- sophical and less popular, more argumentative and less de- scriptive. And here, we conceive, is to be found the true cause of the remarkable difference which subsists between two poems written on somewhat similar subjects, and by authors of a somewhat similar taste — the 'Divina Commedia' and the ' Paradise Lost.' Dante had in him much of Milton — more of him than a cur- sory perusal of his writings would discover, for the direct coincidences between them are not numerous. We believe that Milton might be more frequently traced to Tasso and Ariosto than to Dante, though, in spirit, he had not much in common with either of them — with the former scarcely anything. It is probable, indeed, that Dante was naturally more of an Epicurean than our great poet, yet it was by the influence of Divine wisdom, (if Beatrice is to be considered in that light, which is questionable,) that he was preserved or rescued from the thraldom of the flesh, an influence to which the puritan ascribed the same practical and important consequences. — (Purg. XXX.) Both had a strong taste for satire, and were not unfrequently content to sacrifice poetry and propriety to the inordinate and unseasonable indulgence of it. — Both were remarkable for their love of pohtical liberty, which drove them into active opposition to the governments under which they lived; nor was Dante less alive than Milton himself to the abuses of the church, or more temperate in the language with which he exposed them. Indeed, it is not without some 74 MILTON. [EssAT II. astonishment that we perceive the boldness with which both he and succeeding poets of Italy (Bojardo, Berni, Ariosto, &c.), to say nothing of the novelists, levelled their ridicule and in- vective against the clergy : a good deal of this, however, was only ridicule and invective in manuscript. For a long while ignorance of the art of printing, and, subsequently, the paucity of those who could read, disarmed these weapons of their sting : it was probably on this account, no less than through the happy schism of the papal see, that Wickliffe was suffered to die quietly in his bed, and the vial of wrath reserved for later and more enlightened times. Dante does not confine himself to expressions of regret for the fatal gift of Constan- tine : he attacks the pope as an unclean thing, chewing, in- deed, the cud, but not having the cleft-hoof,* and reprobates the ' woman that sits upon the scarlet-coloured beast, and plays the wanton to the princes of the nations,' with the indignation of a soldier of Cromwell.'' But, for all this, the rites and ceremonies of his gorgeous church had taken fast hold of him, and in spite of his inclina- tion for an ideal world — (which may often be traced both in the choice of his subject and in his treatment of it, and which, had he lived in Milton's age and country, would have made itself more manifest) ; in spite of a fondness for mysticism and theological speculation such as the Schoolmen taught him — in spite of a rage for the metaphysics of his day, in which he buries (especially in his ' Paradise ') both himself and his reader beyond redemption — in spite of all this, the dramatic character of his church had made itself felt on his susceptible imagination, and the disposition of that church to embody every religious conception in some corporeal form had nurtured in him (that which he had not by nature) a taste for poetical materialism. Accordingly, the 'Divina Commedia' is a Eoman Catholicpoem, the 'Paradise Lost' a Protestant, almostapuritan poem throughout. Milton was singularly happy in the choice of his subject, which, whether good or bad in itself, was ad- » Purg. xvi. "' Purg. xxxii. Essay II.] MILTOK. 75 mirably adapted to the temper and genius of the man : he had consulted well — ' Quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent !' It is by no means certain that he could have written an 'Iliad,' an 'iEneid/or a 'Jerusalem Delivered ;' it is hy no means certain that he would have succeeded in 'Arthur:' none of those themes would, in the same degree, have called forth that pecu- liar quality of mind, which is the only key to the right under- standing of Milton. In 'Paradise Lost' he could revel in a creation of his own : nothing like any part of it had ever been matter of human experience. The proceedings of good or evil spirits are things of which we are profoundly ignorant ; they were fair subjects for speculation — so were the feelings, the occupations, and the circumstances of our first parents. They were living in a condition of which so little is known with certainty, that much might be conjectured without offence. They were living, too, in a stftte where Milton's moral and political notions were in their proper place. The multiphca- tion of mankind, and the depravity which attended it, had not as yet rendered restraints needful — no system of government was as yet called for — the rights of man were as yet uncircum- scribed — forms and ceremonies were not as yet wanted. Mil- ton's visions of church and state wei'e precisely intended for Paradise : they adorned and improved his subject. We would rather meet with them there, than with the schemes of the most rational and sober-minded statesman in the world. The very genius of human sagacity could never have legislated for the garden of Eden with half the effect. 'Paradise Lost' is a poem which a painter can scarcely touch : a living artist of considerable talent has been trying of late to illustrate it throughout, and the results are deplorable ; we doubt if they would have been much better had Martin been a Michael Angelo:'' the 'Divina Commedia' teems with ' We are not so atsxxrd as to think that the ' Paradise Lost ' contains no pas- sages which might inspire a true painter. Satan calling on his host to arise, by the present President of the Royal Academy, is one proof to the contrary — a noble picture, almost as much superior, we imagine, to any other historical piece of any other living artist, as Sir Thomas Lawrence's portraits are above contem- porary rivalry. 76 MII.TON. [Essay II. subjects which challenge the bold brush and substantial colours of a mortal man : the one cannot be translated into bodily parts — much of the other may. There is that difference between them which subsists between the 'Tempest' and 'Oorio* lanus/ — both noble productions of the mind, but the one losing in representation on the stage as much as the other gains. Milton's similes exalt his subject, but do not illustrate: Dante's illustrate, but do not always exalt. When the spirits in council applaud, it is ' as the sound of waters deep,' — when they rise, ' their rising is as thunder heard remote,' — when they pursue their sports, it is 'as when armies rush to battle in the clouds.' On the other hand, when the robber is dissolved into ashes by the sting of a serpent, he revives astonished like a man from an epilepsy. {In fern, xxiv.) When Beatrice casts upon Dante a look of pity for his igno- rance, it is as when a mother ^azes upon her crazy offspring. {Var. i.) When the halo of glory envelopes the beatified spirits of the moon, it is like the ball which incloses the silk- worm. {Par. viii.) When Dante and his companion shoot up into the second heaven, the immortal inhabitants con- gregate around them like fishes about a bait. {Par. v.) Milton delights in abstract terms, far more than his illustrious forerunner in the paths of Hell and Paradise. It is not the round shield that hangs upon the shoulders of Satan, but ' its hroad circumference.' The swan does not row her proud body, but ' rows her state with oary feet.' The Tempter in the wilderness does not hypocritically bend his aged head to the Saviour, but ' bows low his grey dissimulation.' Milton's descriptions, again, are broad, general, in the mass — Dante's sharp, dramatic, and touched from the life. The covetous spirit in ' Paradise Lost ' admires — 'The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold.' In the 'Inferno' he lies with his face upon the earth, and ex- claims — ' Adhesit pavimento anima mea.' Milton astonishes, but does not interest : we have too little in common with him or his. His subject does not allow him to EasATlI.] MILTON. ' 77 be much conversant with human passions, for into Paradise human passions had not entered. We listen to the speeches of his mortal and immortal agents, as to the words of superior beings whom we may fear and reverence, but — not love. Dante, on the contrary, is perpetually striking a note, by which all our sympathies are awakened : it is one of his characteristic charms, that he contrives to introduce man, and the feelings of man, into all his scenes, animate or inanimate. How exquisite is his picture of evening ! — we know not how to translate it — indeed Gray knew not how, for he tried the last lines. ' Era gia I'ora che volge '1 disio A' naviganti, e 'ntenerisce '1 cuore Lo di, ch' ban detto a' dolci amici, A Dio : E che lo nuovo peregrin d'amore Punge, se ode squilla di lontano, Che paja '1 giorno pianger, che si muore.' — Furg. viii. Who would exchange this touching thought, which must come home to the heart of every man (especially if his steps have ever led him to a foreign land), for the most faithful repre- sentation of twilight, Hesperus, and the nightingale ? We have said that Dante not unfrequently writes in Milton's vein, and, laying aside his materialism, assumes a lofty indis- tinctness, which gives abundant scope to the fancy of his readers. Thus, when Virgil inqaires his way from the Souls of the Proud, an answer reaches him like that from the spirit in Job : there comes a voice, but he can discern no form from which it comes. When the Spirits of the Envious fly rapidly past the two poets, they hear the rustle of their wings and their dolorous cry, till it dies in the distance; but the shades themselves are invisible. Of the same kind is his picture of the approach of an angel with a boat, freighted with souls for Purgatory, a mountain-island, according to Dante, on the opposite hemisphere. ' Meanwhile we tarried near the rippling tide As men that mused upon their destined way, Who move in thought, though still their limbs abide — 78 MILTOIf. [Essay II. When lo ! as sometimes Mars, with fiery ray. Gleams through the grosser air at dawn of day, From forth the western ocean — such the sight, (Strongly my memory can that hour portray), As onward o'er the v^aters rushed a light In speed surpassing far the eagle's nimblest flight. ' Thence, for a little space, I turn mine eye, Bent through my guide that mystery to explore. And look I once again, and now espy The object larger, brighter than before — Somewhat of white on either side it bore. But what I knew not— shapeless all it seemed. And issuing by degrees ; and somewhat lower, A like appearance indistinctly gleamed. Till plain, at length,confessed, an angel's pinions streamed.' — Purg. ii. We may be forgiven for citing one passage more of the same character; for we do not think that credit has been always given to Dante for possessing the faculty of filling the mind by one ample, undetailed conception. Access to the city of Dis, where the heretics receive their reward, is denied to Dante and Virgil by the refractory gate-keepers: they pause awhile, well assured that the Almighty will soon dispatch his swift angel to open for them a way. His advent is thus described : — ' And now came up along that turbid tide A crashing uproar pregnant with dismay : Trembled thereat the shores on either side. No less than when the whirlwind tears his way, Invited, where the sultry vapours play, To fill the void impetuous. At one swoop It storms the wood — nor brooks it there delay ; Before its dusty vanguard proud trees stoop Branchless and bloomless — flies each herd and shepherd troop. ' My eyes unhooding — " Now," quoth he, " thy nerve " Of vision stretch along yon ancient lake " Mantling with yeasty foam — and- well observe " Where chief the dusky vapour throngs opaque." — As scud the frogs at sight of hostile snake. Essay IT.] MILTOK. 79 And hie them all for safety to the shore, — So did I mark those abject spirits quake, And haste their flight by thousands : one before Who crossed with foot unstained the Stygian torrent o'er — ' And he, his left hand waving to and fro, Cleaved from before his face that murky sky, Unwearied but for this — and now I know In him heaven's sovereign messenger was nigh. Then turn I. to my guide — his eloquent eye Bade me be still, and lowly to the plain Bow, as the spirit immortal passed me by — He toward the gate, ah ! in what huge disdain, Advanced, and with his wand he smote and oped amain — ' " Outcasts of heaven ! race accursed ! " he cries. While yet his steps on that dread threshold stand, " What hardihood is this ? What bold emprize " Dares ye to kick against his high command " Whose word is steadfast — whose Almighty hand " Can vex your senses with a tenfold hell ? " Have ye for this your mastiff's sufferings scanned, " Whose chain- worn throat and muzzle still may tell, " Where fate ordains her law, 'tis bootless to rebel?" ' He said — and back that noisome path pursued, Nor word to us he spake — but seemed like one Whose thoughts on other, deeper subjects brood, Than care of aught his eyes might light upon.' — Infern. ix. There are many other passages in this beautiful poet of a similar class, which justify us, we conceive, in our assertion, that the general style of his poetry was the result of the circumstances in which he was placed, rather than of the temper with which he was born. Though Milton had been both an Italian, and a Catholic, it may be doubted whether he would have been as graphic as Dante — but had Dante been an Englishman, and a Protestant, it is not improbable that he would have been as sublime as Milton. In the foregoing passage will be seen some of that learning which Dante is so fond of producing, and so frequently mis- 80 MILTON. [EssAT ir. applies. His gates of purgatory, on being opened, grate like tlie doors of the Eoman treasury when Caesar entered and plundered it. The Indolent are punished, not only like the Israelites, ■who were cut off in the wilderness, and did not live to see the promised land ; but, like the Trojans, who deserted iEneas in Sicily, and thereby had no share in the glory of laying the foundation of Eome. Statins relates the primary cause of his conversion to have been the reading of Virgil's PoUio ; and, in the true spirit of those times, when Christianity and Paganism were almost confounded, we hear of Jupiter having been crucified for the children of men. Often, indeed, he is more happy ; but in general his mixture of the sacred and profane argues his participation in that depravity of taste, which has not been thoroughly corrected, even in our country, till very recent times; and the prodigality with which he illustrates his subject, by reference to Roman history, and occasionally to that of Greece (which he obtained at second- hand), savours, to us, of the crude learning of a school theme. In the management of his scholarship, as, indeed, in the measure of it, Milton far surpassed him. It was said by Bentley, of Warburton, in relation to his learning, that he never knew a man with so great an appetite and so bad a digestion. Milton's digestion was admirable; whatever he borrowed from the ancients he made his own ; in him it does not seem quotation, but coincidence. This was not the virtue of his day: applications of passages from the classics abound to profusion in contemporary authors; but they are seldom properly assimilated to the subject matter — they are fragments of the Parthenon in the mud walls of a Turkish cottage : Milton used them (if we may be allowed so homely an illus- tration) as the manufacturer uses rags, not for patchwork but for paper. His likeness to the ancients is much more often that of expression than oi feature. Sometimes, indeed, he makes an open and lavish display of his vast acquirements ; but even here there is a ripeness in his knowledge wliich bears witness that it is not forced for the occasion, but is the fruit of Essay II.] MILTON. 81 years. The catalogue of the evil spirits in 'Paradise Lost' is, perhaps, the most masterly account of ancient idolatry, hrief as it is, in the English language ; and at the same time serves to show, that Milton had not only framed for himself a system of divinity, but a system of mythology also, — the latter, indeed, far the more mature of the two. But in none of his works is his reading made so directly subservient to his ends, as in his 'Paradise Eegained' — a poem arguing in. its author a more than common confidence in the exuberance of his own resources. It was a bold scheme, indeed, to undertake the structure of even so short an epic as this', out of the history of our Lord's temptation, — comprised, as that history is, in half a score verses of St. Matthew, and forbidding, by its very na- ture, any violent interference with recorded facts ; yet the imagination of Milton, duly exercised upon those elements with which his memory was stored, enabled him to expand his subject, without profaning it, into a poem which, had it been only an episode (as it should have been), would have borne a comparison with the happiest that have been written. Our Lord is ' an hungered,' and through that appetite tempted of the devil. Narrow as this ground is, for Milton it is enough ; and he forthwith raises a table in the wilderness, furnished from 'Pontus and Lucrine lake and Attic coast,' and the charming pipes are heard to play, and Arabian odours and early flowers breathe around, and nymphs and naiads of Diana's train are summoned forth to dance beneath the shade ; and the whole is combined into one of those splendid banquets with which nothing but a most perfect knowledge of antiquity could have supplied him. Again, Satan takes ' the Saviour into an high mountain, and showg him the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.' Then is the scholar awakened once more : the hint suffices to unlock the magazines of his learn- ing ; the fountains of that great deep are broken up ; and now the Parthians, with all their martial appointments, and the evolutions peculiar to them, appear before us in the most faith- ful array ; and now, in her turn, Rome under Tiberius is de- •picted, with the spirit, indeed, of a post, but with the accuracy G 82 MILTON. [Essay II. of a contemporary annalist; and her imperial palace, the houses of her gods, the conflux of divers nations and lan- guages at her gates; the embassies from afar crowding the Emilian and Appian roads ; the praetors and proconsuls hast- ing to their provinces, or on their triumphant return ; aU fill the mind's eye : till it is again carried away ' to the westward,' and the flowery hill of Hymettus offers itself to our notice ; and Athens, with its picturesque suburbs, is unfolded with a perspicuity and precision that might challenge the most scrupulous critic to quarrel even with an epithet (so true is Milton to his Grecian masters) ; whilst her schools of philo- sophy, the sects into which they are divided, the dogmas they severally espoused — all pass in rapid review, leaving us con- founded at the mental plenitude of this extraordinary man. Yet it has been argued by some modem critics, that Milton de- rived no benefit from his books ; that he would have had fewer difficulties to encounter had he Hved when the world was younger and refinement less. Many years before the appear- ance of 'Paradise Lost,' however, he gave it as his own opinion, that 'industrious and select reading' was demanded of him who could write an epic poem with success: Deprive him of those treasures ' out of which he could bring things new and old,' and his characteristic attribute of force is gone. If there be one circumstance more than another which sets him above Virgil and Homer, it is this, that he takes more violent pos- session of the mind of his reader by crowding upon him a phalanx of thick-coming thoughts. Satan's legions lie in- tranced upon the sea of fire, ' thick as the leaves in the brooks of Vallombrosa.' Here another poet might have ended. Not so Milton : — they are, moreover, Lke the scattered sedge on the coast of the Red Sea, when Orion hath vexed it with fierce winds. Still something more is wanted — not to complete the simile, hut to overwhelm the reader ; and in throng Busiris and the Memphian chivalry, and floating carcasses, and broken chariot-wheels. Tne fallen Archangel is compared to the sun vfhen he shines through the horizontal misty air, shorn of its beams: this is a splendid picturei in itself; but Milton does EssAT II.] MILTON. 83 not think it enough: he presses on with another magnificent feature, the eclipse. Nor is this all : the concomitant horrors of the disasters it is believed to portend, perplexity to mo- narchs, and revolution to nations, are superadded, — and then ' the charm's wound up.' Now, for much of this profusion, the poet is indebted to his reading — probably a noble frag- ment of Pindar supplied him with no inconsiderable part of the latter passage. Be that, however, as it may, such copious- ness, we maintain, can only belong to the poet of a civilized age^to the poet who can lay under contribution the stores of generations past — whose possessions are by inheritance as well ashy acquirement; — without this, he would be apt to weary his reader, for want of affluence and variety of matter. He would be an Ossian, perpetually among mists and mountains. Natural objects may supply materials for an eclogue; but for an epic they will not suffice. It will not do to be ' bab- bling of green fields' for four-and-twenty books, or even for twelve. It must be confessed, that while knowledge thus accumulates and ideas multiply, language will be necessarily losing much of its primitive character — it will be rendered more expeditious — words will become winged — a syllable will express a sen- tence — a fable will contract itself into a simile — a simile into a metaphor, and the metaphor itself, by habitual use and novel application, be at length forgotten as a figure : just as, when property increases, barter gives way to copper money, and that again to silver and gold, and these in their turn to pound notes, so called long after their name has ceased to excite any idea of real f,ounds. Poetry may lose something in expression by the one process, and commerce may lose something in security by the other; but the substantial gain will, in both cases, be far more than enough to balance the inconvenience. ' Words are, after all, but the daughters of the earth ; things are the sons of heaven.' Milton came into the world when it was filled with knowledge, which he could employ in his art ; and if this was a misfortune, it was the misfortune of him who eats the honey which he never helped G 2 84 MILTOK. [tessAT II. to make. He came into the world when the language of his country was formed, and by consequence less figurative than it had been ; but was it on that account an instrument less fitted for his peculiar genius ? The vocabulary which he wanted, was one that should be rather conversant with spirit than matter; and we cannot but think that Milton's most sublime and unearthly conceptions would have sunk under the phraseology (however* in many respects admirable) of Chaucer's times. Let us not hear a pohshed language blamed for the defects of those who know not how to put it forth. It must be wielded by the master before its true force can be known. The philip- pics of Demosthenes were pronounced in the mother-tongue of every one of his audience; but who amongst them could have answered him in a single sentence like his own ? Who amongst them could have guessed what Greek could do, though they had spoken it all their lives, till they heard it from his lips ? The bow of Ulysses is not to be cast away, because in common hands it will not discharge an arrow. The- secret of using a language with effect, is to use it from a full mind. If it is the means by which we seek deliverance of thoughts that are struggling for a vent — ' Thoughts that rove about, And loudly knock to have their passage out,' it will be almost infallibly eloquent. Indeed of eloquence, whether in speaking or writing — ' Sapere est principium et fons.' Let the same individual treat of a subject which he has mastered, and of one where his knowledge is only super- ficial, and how different will be his powers of expression — in the former case, how rich and elastic — in the latter, how poor and cramped ! With what justice, then, can Milton complain of being born an age too late for epic poetry, when, had he been born earlier, his mind could not have been enriehed with half the knowledge, nor, by consequence, his tongue with half the utterance ? But what is to become of the poets of •Essay II.] MILTOjST. 85 former times under such a theory ? We have said that they are inferior to Milton, chiefly hecause they had not his know- ledge : they could not, therefore, overwhelm their readers hy such a tempest of thought; but, nevertheless, much know- ledge they had, and without it, we maintain, could not have been what they were. No barbarous age has ever yet seen the birth of a great poem. Of the author of the ' Inferno' we have already spoken — his settled intention to avail himself of the learning of former times is sufficiently manifested by his taking Virgil bodily for his guide. Of the latter we need not say a word — his age was confessedly an epoch of intellectual refinement. But what is to be done with Homer ? Let us but listen to the expounders ' of his genius and writings,'^ and we must believe that, in his time, letters were unknown, or but newly known, in Greece — that his poems — yes, poems of seven-and-twenty thousand lines — were preserved for some generations by memory ; nay, that the author of the ' Iliad' could hardly count ten — that the word ■KifiTrarrcirai, applied to Proteus, when he was taking account of his sea-calves, indi- cates that he had a difficulty in getting beyond Jive, and that his earnest invocation to the Muses, as the daughters of .Mnemosyne, to help him in reckoning his ships and soldiers, is inspired from his own very limited knowledge of arithmetic ! When the spirit of Homer was introduced to the spirits of his Commentators in the presence of Lemuel Gulliver, that saga- cious observer remarked, that they appeared, on meeting, to have had no previous acquaintance whatever. We are not surprised at it. If we turn to the poet himself, we shall find indeed a few traces — voluntary in all probability, and assumed — of barbarism; but many, by no art to be explained away, of refinement. Were the case otherwise, we know not what right we have to identify the manners of the age in which he lived, with the manners of the age in Which he wrote. But even if we take the standard of refinement from the ' Iliad' and ' Odyssey,' nothing appears to warrant the most improbable " See Wood's Esaay. - 80 MILTOX. [EssAT II. and monstrous conclusion, that in Greece literature had no infancy, hut came forth at once in the fulness of the stature of a perfect epic. "In extracting from the 'Iliad' and ' Odyssey' proofs of barbarism, persona are too apt to measure other countries by their own : for instance. Englishmen have divided and subdivided labour, till some thirty or forty hands are wanted to make a pin ; yet it does not follow that we are to set down the people of Ithaca as mere savages, because Ulysses, with an immense establishment, bad his clothes manufactured in his own house. In this case, the age of Augustus would be an age of barbarism, for in classical Italy a similar system prevailed. Englishirien maintain a lofty carriage towards their servants ; Telemachus allowed the keeper of his swine (who probably, however, was viewed in the light of a bailiff) to sit at his own table ; yet nothing follows from this, except that the notions of the . Greeks were less aristocratical than our own — not that they were less refined ; for again we say, in the most polished ages of Greece and Rome, servants were treated \vith a familiarity that now astonishes us. Witness the scenes in Aristophanes, in Terence, in Plautus. Columella reproaches, with unheard-of barbarity, certain gentlemen of his time, who would not let their footmen talk whilst they were waiting at dinner. Homer's princes are often employed in operations that would devolve upon butchers in these days, and the halls and courts of their palaces converted into slaughter-houses and shambles ; but with the Greeks and Romans, the butcher par- took of the character of priest, — the. cow, of the victim — the shambles, of the altar. Their associations were, from ours, ' wide as the poles asunder ;' and those terms of sacrifice which are apt to set our thoughts to run upon a rufiBan in a blue frock, with one spur and a carrion horse, would more probably have suggested to them a venerable man in a vesture of white, with a chaplet of flowers about his head, and clouds of incense shrouding bis person. On the other hand, we see positive symptoms of courtesy, of dehcacy, of luxury in the manners of Homer, which cannot be mistaken. The urn out of which water is poured on the Essay II.] MILTON. 87 hands of the guests, is of gold, and the ewer which receives it, of silver (Od. i. 136) : the wine is preserved in earthern jars to be eleven years old, and is then drunk out of vessels of the precious metals (Od. i. 142; ii. 290; iii. 830): the plate is wrought and ornamented (iii. 440) : Helen's distaff is of gold, the basket for the yam of silver edged with gold (iv. 182) : the chair of Penelope is of ivory and silver (xix, 56) : the doors of the palace of Alcinous are adorned with gold, the posts with silver ; and figures of dogs, of the same metals, and worked with great perfection, repose on either side the en- trance ; golden images of boys, bearing torches, light the banqueting-room (vii. 91-100); servants are clad with some- thing of the fastidious parade of modern times (xvi. 880). On the Continent there were sufiicient roads : Nestor offers Telemachus his carriage and horses, to convey him to Sparta, with the politeness of a modern squire (iii. 326) : Menelaus presses him to prolong his stay ; urges the pleasure he should have in showing him Greece ; yields with perfect good-breed- ing to his earnest wish to go ; presents him with a silver cup at parting ; and, whilst Helen gives him a mantle to keep for his future bride, he conducts him to his carriage, and pouring forth a libation of wine, wishes him good speed (xv. 126) : when Penelope determines to go down into the hall amongst the suitors, and boldly counsel her son to come out from among them, she shrinks from the indelicacy of appearing alone, — requests two of her maids to attend her, — veils her- self, — is received by the suitors on their feet, — and, addressing Telemachus aloud, reproaches him with a want of spirit in suffering (as he had done) a stranger to be insulted under the roof of his father (xviii. 188-224). In all this we profess ourselves unable to discover anything like a barbarous state of society ; and think that, to draw such a conclusion from such premises, would require something of the ingenuity of Hardouin, who seriously assured the world that Virgil and Horace were the productions of the monks of the dark ages. But we must have done. We can see, then, no reason for despairing o'f another epic poem, at least on the 88 MILTON. [Essay II. score of the ' age having hecome too picked.' The true poet will find himself strengthened by the wholesome study of past times, and, hke the ' Matine Bee,' extract, from whatever he settles upon, additional sweets. The renewed interest for the writings of Milton, which has recently manifested itself, is a proof that the taste of the public is still undepraved ; and in the more diligent contemplation of those writings the seeds of future poetical excellence may at this moment be scattered abroad. At a period when the fugitive pubHcations of the day are so apt to engross the time and attention of the reading world, to the utter neglect of the great authors who are gone, it is the duty of every well-wisher to the sound literature of his country, to take advantage of any temporary disposition to try hack which may discover itself, and, as far as in him lies, to cherish the good spirit, and keep it alive. Therefore it is that we make no apology for having devoted so many of our pages to Milton, whose personal character the newly- discovered treatise has helped to develope, and whose defects we have set down, assuredly not in malice, but in honest opposition to those who would make them matter of praise; considering that the errors of Plato are the more dangerous, because with such a man, it is hardly a disgrace to err. The politics of Milton had been consigned to oblivion by common consent, until recent circumstances accidentally re- vived them ; and now to oblivion they had better return — they are his ' uncomely parts.' Of his poetry, it would require a tongue like his own to speak the praise; it invi- gorates the understanding, it purifies the affections, it lifts up the heart to God — ' Virtue goeth out of it.' Ever will it endure, to put to shame those who pervert the noblest gift of heaven to low and sensual abuse. Ever will it remain a triumphant memorial that the lamp of genius shines with the brightest lustre when it is fed with the purest oil. III.— REFORMATION IN ITALY. (JiN., 1828.) It has been often ashed, with an air of triumph, by the Roman Catholics, where was the religion of Protestants before Luther ? And it has been as often replied, in the Bible. But though this answer was enough, another might haye been given, and one, perhaps, more to the purpose. Diflfering, as we do, from Milner, in his Church History, on very many points, in this we concur with him — that from the time when Christianity was first planted, there has ever been in existence a body of men, obscure, perhaps, as the seven thousand in Israel, to whom the name of the True Church more especially belonged ; and who, amidst the corruptions, the discouragements, and the dangers of a world with which they had but little in common, and which was not worthy of them, pursued their pure course in privacy. It is not easy, indeed, to get with accuracy at the state of religions opinion, where it differed from the Church of Eome, before the Eeformation. Then it was that the strings of the tongue were thoroughly loosed, and many sentiments, which, though in being, had been nearly without witness, first found a free utterance. It has been the boast of that church, that for many previous centuries she was at union with herself, and that divisions and dissent were not known within her borders. " History of the Progress and Suppression of the Reformation in Italy, in the Sixteenth Gentwry; including a Sketch of the History of the Reformation in the Orisons. By Thomas M'Crie, D.D. 8vo. Edinburgh. 1827. 90 REFORM A.TION IN ITALY. [Essay III. The boast, like many others from the same quarter, requires qualification, as Bishop Jewel has ahundantly proved ; but allowing it to be founded in truth, what could be more natural, than that ' when the strong man, armed, kept the house, his goods should be at peace ' ? — and who has ever heard of Whigs, Tories, or Eadicals in Turkey ? Yet it would be contrary to all experience to believe that such a revolution in the world as Luther effected could have been wrought by one private individual, -without the aid of powerful predis- posing causes. It is not usual with men, who are more than half a century in advance of their generation, to make any great and permanent change in its character — Luther happened to be the first to put the world into the waters, after the angel had sufiBciently troubled them. But some hundred years before the reformer was bom (perhaps, in one instance, from the earliest ages of Christianity) there had been communities of men to be found, in the south of France, in England, in the valleys of the Alps, in Calabria, in Bohemia, perhaps in Spain itself, who held doctrines essentially the same as those afterwards established at the Eeformation, and by means of whom the leaven could not fall to be propagated in some degree throughout Europe : for it is a mistake to suppose that the familiar intercourse of nations is a thing of modem growth, and that turnpike-roads and mail-coaches, canals and steam- boats, are the only methods by which we can bring together distant lands, dissociahiles terras. Commerce undoubtedly does great things in this way now, but so it did heretofore by other ways ; and it may even be doubted whether the custom of resorting in person to the great fairs holden in various parts of Europe, lasting for eighteen or twenty days, and whilst they lasted giving to an uninclosed waste the appearance of a populous and well-ordered city — it may be doubted, we s£\j, whether these points of annual concourse did not bring together a much greater number of foreigners (Umited as trade then was) than can be seen upon all the exchanges of a country at this day, wrhen the safe and rapid transmission of letters, and the universal institution of banks, have rendered EssAT III.] EEFOEMATION IN ITALY. 91 any closer commumoation among merchants for the most part unnecessary. Then the traffic in the wooden saint, in the rosaries that had hung about the neck of the famous Virgin of the spot, or in the girdles that had encircled her waist (who- ever has seen the stalls of a Eoman Catholic fair in our own times will well believe that such ' hallowed trinkets, which brought a benediction to the buyer,' would not be wanting), might chance to be the occasion of some casual confession of faith in the parties who dealt or refused to deal, and thus might they, perhaps, teach and learn some scriptural heresy, whilst, like children, they were playing in the market-place. But whatever commerce might do to promote an intercourse amongst the different States of Europe, pilgrimage did more — the more distant the object of devotion, the greater was the merit in visiting it ; and every country took care to be pro- vided with a source of gain so simple and commodious. Many were the bones left to whiten on their road to St. James of Compostello, or our Lady of Walsingham. The wife of Bath ' Thries hadde ben at Jerusalemej She hadde passed many a strange streme, At Eome she hadde ben, and at Boloine, In Galice, at Seint James, and at Coloine.' Indeed, so common appears to have been the practice amongst our own countrymen of visiting Rome, that the name of that holy city has, perhaps, furnished us with our most familiar term to express wandering to a distance. The Eter- nal City was long the political capital of the world, and was then frequented by the nations as the seat of arts, of arms, and of lucrative employment. She was now the religious capital of the world, and frequented, with perhaps equal zeal, as the seat of the true faith, and the fountain of ecclesiastical preferment. Like Jerusalem at the feasts, it was the resort of persons dwelling in every region under heaven, and a certain circulation of ideas was by this means established throughout the whole of Christendom. The spirit in which those religious rambles were undertaken, and the motley character of the pil- 92 EEFOEMATION IN ITALY. [Essay III. grims brought together, are well seen in the ' Canterhui7 Tales," or the humorous ' Peregrinatio' of Erasmus ; and all that curio- sity could extract or loquaciousness impart, would not fail to come out by the way. Nor was this all — under various pretences, the pope claimed a right to present to benefices even in co^lntries beyond the Alps ; and Italian priests, who would naturally maintain a cor- respondence with their friends at home, were everywhere to be found. The universities of note, again, collected students from distant lands. In the beginning of the sixteeenth century, there were so many English at the University of Ferrara as to form a distinct and influential body in that learned society. An interchange of professors, moreover, which was constantly taking place, contributed to expedite the communication of thought and knowledge amongst those classes of men who were precisely the best fitted to speculate, and to impart their speculations to others ; and Latin, being then an universal language, both among scholars and diplomatists, removed at once the obstacle to intercourse, which must have arisen out of a difference in vernacular tongues, by providing a medium common to all. Freemasons, again, were a kind of nomade tribe, who journeyed on, and, like the patriarchs of old, marked their resting-places by setting up noble altars to their God; their very occupation must have rendered them conversant with religious matters, and the suspicion with which they were soon regarded, and which, in a measure, has descended to our own times, may possibly have had its origin in some heretical opinions they might be supposed to entertain and propagate. John of Gaunt, who patronised Wicklifie, patronised them. Minstrels were ever upon the stroll from abbey to abbey, and from hamlet to hamlet, retailing their own adventures, or the wonders they might have heard, to the monks and villagers, who, like the Athenians, and for the same reason, were always right glad 'to hear some new thing,' though it should be (as it often was in the case of the monks) to their own prejudice : and mendicants by profession, often, no doubt, assuming the cowl, as they now do the sailor's jacket, rambled over a country Essay III.] REFORMATION IN ITALY. 93 in the spirit of Autolycus, in numbers of which we may judge from the multitudes executed in our own land after the dis- solution of the monasteries, when they betook themselves to plunder for their bread. These were some of the channels through which, in former times, province communicated with province, and nation with nation ; and how effectually, may be guessed even from the vocabulary of our own tongue. We have often thought that it would be a subject of curious and most interesting inquiry, to trace the history of England, political, religious, and domestic, in its language, and in its language alone. We are persuaded that it might be done, and that upon such an in- vestigation it would be found that our intercourse with Italy has been far greater than our vulgar annals, or even our litera- ture itself, would lead us to conclude: though our literature bespeaks it to have been considerable, and especially in its more popular department of ballads, plays founded upon ballads, and gossips' stories, the substance of which must have circulated chiefly ' per ora virum,' from mouth to mouth ; as now a favourite air creeps by degrees throughout Europe. The nature of that intercourse (the arts, the conveniences, the vices introduced by it) would be discovered in the class of Italian words we have naturalized. Independently of eccle- siastical and theological terms (which would, of course, pre- vail), from Italy we derive, in a great measure, our terms of war, of book-keeping, of cookery, of gambling, the names of some of our commonest sports and pastimes (blind man's huff, for instance), and very many of our strongest expressions of abuse, contempt, and abhorrence — these last the dregs, perhaps, of the camp of the crusaders. Johnson, who is least happy in the etymological department of his dictionary, has not kept Italy sufficiently in sight, and has, consequently, sometimes embarrassed himself, (as in his miserable exposition of the word 'rubbish,') where an atten- tion to this principle would have set him at ease. But we must hold our hand from a seductive subject, which we have been led incidentally to touch upon, whilst we have been 91 EEFORMATION IN ITALY. [Essay III. eudeavouring to show the communication which in ancient times subsisted between remote countries, and the facility with which opinions might be spread, and knowledge conveyed, throughout the civilized world. Thus it was, we apprehend, that many of those religious truths, which the Eeformation brought out, had been akeady dispersed, with more or less local success, over a great part of Catholic Europe ; and that Luther's province was, not to call into existence the spirit which shook the popedom to its foundations, but to call it into action. Wickliffe, indeed, has been usually allowed to have been the forerunner of Huss, and Huss of Luther ; but even WieklifFe seems to have been but the avowed representative of a very large portion of his countrymen, and the organ by which they spoke sentiments hitherto suppressed through dread of conse- quences. He neither believed in the supremacy of the pope, nor in transubstantiation, nor in the right of the clergy to monopolize the Scriptures; yet so far were his doctrines from being offensive to the people, that when he was brought before the bishops, at Lambeth, they clamoured for his release — so far were his tenets from being unpopular, that persons holding them travelled from county to county, preaching them, not only in churches and churchyards, but in markets and fairs, ' to the great emblemishing (as it was said) of the Christian faith.' Knyghton, a contemporary historian, does not scruple to say, ' that you could not meet two people in the way, but one of them was a disciple of Wickliffe ;' and Wickliffe him- self asserts that the third part of the clergy thought with him on the Lord's Supper, and would ' defende that doctrine on paine of theyr lyfe.' Nor will this be matter of surprise, when it is recollected that some centuries before Wickliffe's translation of the New Testament, Saxon versions of portions of the Gospels at least had been made, 'for the edification,' as it is expressly said, ' of the simple, who know only this speech.' Spirits congenial to Wickliffe were already in Bo- hemia, where the effect of his writings was acknowledged by the severity with which they were suppressed. The Albigenses EsSAT III.] EEFOEMATION IN ITALY. 95 had been denounced by canons, preached at by St. Bernard, and tortured, by St. Dominic, so early as the twelfth century. About the same period Peter Waldo lifted up his voice at Lyons, with a success that called forth the anathema of the pope ; — and the valleys of the Alps were peopled, from an age the most remote, with a race of hardy mountaineers, whose seclusion had preserved their faith from corruption, and whose protestant tenets are the subject of authentic record to this day. It is the testimony of an enemy (Eaynerius), and, therefore, above suspicion, that they did not believe in modern miracles, rejected extreme unction and offerings for the dead, denied the doctrines of transubstantiation, purgatory, and the invocation of saints, and, to sum up all, regarded the Church of Eome as the woman of the Eevelations. It is true, that he mixes up these accusations of heresy with heavy charges against their morals ; but this has ever been the artifice both of Pagans and of Roman Catholics, to crush a rising sect. In the pre- sent instance, nothing is wanted to expose the futility of such charges, but to compare them with those of others no less hostile (as the learned Usher has done), when it will be found that ' their testimony agreeth not together.' On the other hand, the more friendly voice of La Nobla Leygon, a Walden- sian document written about the y^ear 1100, and the authority of which has never been questioned, enforces the law of the ten commandments, that against idols not excepted — the duty of searching the Scriptures — as also of praying to the Trinity, though without a word in favour of the invocation of saints or the Virgin, and represents confession and absolution as unavail- ing, the power of forgiving sins, though claimed by the priest, belonging to God alone. With the history of this heroic band of brothers the public has, of late, been made familiar ; but whilst the sufferings and the constancy of the original stock of the Vaudois have claimed and received the sympathy of every man who has a heart, the fate of a colony, which it sent forth to seek its fortunes in the south of Italy, has been unworthily overlooked : — ' In the year 1370,' writes the learned and able author now before 90 REFORJIATION IN ITALY. [Essay Ilf. us, ' the Vaudois, who resided in the valleys of Pragela, finding themselves straitened in their territories, sent some of their number into Italy, to look out for a convenient settlement. Having dis- covered in Calabria a district uncultivated and thinly peopled, the deputies bargained with the proprietors of the soil, in consequence of which a number of their brethren emigrated thither. Within a short time, the place assumed a new appearance : villages rose in every direction; the hills resounded with the bleating of flocks ; and the valleys were covered with com and vines. The prosperity of the new settlers excited the envy of the neighbouring villagers, who were irritated at the distance which they preserved, and at their re- fusal to join with them in their revels and dissipation. The priests — finding that they received nothing from them but their tithes, which they paid regularly, according to the stipulation entered into with the proprietors, and perceiving that they practised none of the ceremonies usual at the interring of their dead, that they had no images in their chapels, did not go in pilgrimage to consecrated places, and had their children educated by foreign teachers, whom they held in great honour — began to raise the cry of heresy against the simple and inoffensive strangers. But the landlords, gratified to see their grouuds so highly improved, and to receive large rents for what had formerly yielded them nothing, interposed in behalf of their tenants ; and the priests, finding the value of their tithes yearly increase, resolved, prudently, to keep silence. The colony received accessions to its numbers by the arrival of their brethren, who fled from the persecutions raised against them in Piedmont and France ; it continued to flourish when the Reformation dawned on Italy ; and after subsisting for nearly two centuries, it was basely and barbarously exterminated.' — p. 4. Thus do we find, that at either extremity of Italy itself, (to say itotbing of other heretical countries, which were in constant communication with Italy,) bodies of men were living deposi- tories of the true faith, more or less complete, during a period which, as the Eoman Catholic church would persuade us, ex- hibited universal concurrence in her doctrines and submission to her decrees. Meanwhile, in spite of the jealousy with which the clergy endeavoured to keep exclusive possession of the Scriptures several translations into the Italian — ill done^ indeed, but still EssAT III.] EEFOEMATIOJSr IN ITALY. 97 indicating the latent spirit, whose workings we are examining — made their appearance in the fourteenth century, if not earlier ; while that of Malermi, a monk of Camaldovi, was printed at Venice in 1471, and is said to have gone through no less than nine editions in the ensuing thirty years. Indeed, the establish- ment and continuance of the Inquisition, a contrivance ex- pressly for the extinction of freedom of opinion in matters of faith, is of itself a most distinct acknowledgment, on the part of the Eoman Catholic church, ho# early there existed a formidable opposition to her dogmas ; and, accordingly, when that opposition developed itself more fully after the preaching of Luther, those sanguinary tribunals were proportionally multiplied, as the legitimate and approved extinguishers of heresy. The limits of a review will not allow us to enter into details necessary to do justice to this part of our subject; sufficient, however, has been said to show, that long before the era of the Eeformation, commonly so called, many of the sentiments of the reformers were cherished in several places, to our certain knowledge, and, probably, in still more, -where the tyranny of the times has left us in ignorance of them. Dante, undoubtedly, was not speaking at random, in his assertion, (and it is worthy of attention, if it were only for its very early date,) that the burning sepulchres of his heretics were far more abundantly stocked with victims than was commonly supposed : — ' Qui son gli eresiarche Co' lor seguaci d' ogni setta, e inolto Piu, che non credi, son le tombe carche.' — Infem. ix. Thus were the doctrines ' which they call heresy,' ready at all times, as it were, to be slipped 'from the couples, and to supplant the superstitions and idolatries of the papal system whenever, by any intrepid assailant and propitious crisis, that system could be overthrown. It is probable, however, that it would have been long before the mere force of truth could have prevailed against a fabric constructed with the worldly wisdom of the Eoman Catholic H 98 REFORMATION IK ITALY. [Ebsat III. church ; hut it was cankered at heart, and its corruptions cried aloud to heaven. Here was the secret of its weakness— the lives of the clergy, both regular and secular, were disgusting multitudes, and preparing mankind to hail the day when they should he exposed and put to shame. In a history of the progress of the Eeformation, whether in Italy or elsewhere, the - feelings of disaffection to the established forms of worship, which the sight of gross abuses occasioned, ought not to be passed over. Dr. M'Crie might have added to the interest, and indeed to the value of his volume, by more ample reference to the poets and novelists of Italy, who lived during those ages in which the papacy was fiUing up the measure of its iniquities. We single out this class of authors, because they afford a fair sample of the state of pubHc opinion in the times when they lived ; and because their own incidental reflections on the condition of reUgion and its professors, ought to have that weight which belongs to undesigned and unobtruded tes- timony. Of the novelists we shall not stay to say more, than that, in general, those innocent fairy tales in which they abound, and many of which our nurses still teach us, are usually made to relate to some lucky peasant or luckless prince, whilst any discreditable adventure is as sure to be sad- dled upon a priest or a nun. The poets will engage more of our attention, and are better worth it. Of Dante's hostility to the Church of Eome, we had recently occasion to say something in our review of Mr. Todd's edition of Milton. His feelings, however, towards it were perfectly distinct from those of the parties with whom we have been hitherto deaUng. These latter denounced the doctrines of the church ; the poet embraced its doctrines, but execrated their aluse. Signor Rosetti, indeed, in a most elaborate, learned, and ingenious commentary on the Inferno^ recently pubHshed, pro- nounces the 'Divina Commedia' to have nothing to do with theology ; that it is a purely poUtical poem ; that it attacks the pope as the head of the Guelphic party, without any re- ference to his spiritual character; that it is, in short, a covert Essay III.] REFORMATION IN ITALY. 99 enterprise of the Gliibellin against the Guelph : and that its language is a kind of freemason's phraseology, only to be understood by the initiated. Thus amor, for instance, stands for Roma, by inversion ; or, if it be written amove, then it stands for amo-re; by division ; and in these senses combined, it implies, that the Ghibellin loved a king for Rome, or, in other words, thought that Italy would prosper best under the single sceptre of the emperor; — Donna, ov Madonna, is the power of the emperor; — salute is the emperor himself, for, like the Marquis of Carabas, the emperor is here and there and everywhere; — / morti are the Guelphs ; I vivi are the Ghibellins, &c. With these keys, and some others of the same sort. Signer Kosetti unlocks all the mysteries of Dante for a considerable time — till at length it pleases the poet, for some reason or another, to lay aside these symbols and adopt a fresh set, which are discovered, however, by the commentator with the same sagacity as before, and the treasure-house is opened with the same success as before. Nor is this all : other secrets are to be got at by piecing syllables together which are scattered throughout a whole line, or even half a dozen lines, when up starts a Ghibellin, or your old friend the emperor — like harlequin, whose limbs being collected from diiferent quarters of the stage, combine at once into a perfect and living man. For example, that glorious passage in the ninth canto, descriptive of the approach of the angel to the city of Dis, of which we spoke in the article already alluded to, wraps up the emperor in a way which certainly might have escaped an ordinary reader; — non altrimenti h fatto che d'un vento impetuoso per gli avversi ardon Che fier la selva; e senz alcun rattento, &c., where it will be perceived by the letters in italics, that the emperor Enrico is very intelligibly expressed. Now, supposing this scheme to be as sound as we are afraid it is visionary, we should think it a misfortune to be thoroughly versed in it. In our eyes, it would be the utter ruin of Dante as a poet ; and sundry curious conundrums would be all that we should get in exchange for those noble bursts of inspira- H a 100 EEFORMATION' m ITALY. [Essat III. tion wlilcli we had found in him, or thought we had found in him, in the days of our happier ignorance of these rabhinical expositions. Besides, to us it is an offensive idea, that the sublime scenes of an invisible world of souls, a hell, a purga- tory, and a paradise, should, after all, be only parables rela'ting to a factious squabble in Italy. This seems to us to be re- versing the order of things grievously, and making the thing typified of ten-fold less consequence than the type. Who, for instance (to advert once again to the passage in the ninth canto), would not rather believe that the city of Dis meant the city of Dis than the city of Florence ? — that the heretics it contained were really heretics than Guelphs ? — that the angel who descended to open the gates which were shut against Dante and Virgil, was actually a messenger of God, empowered with his wand to smite the portals, and make a way into that infernal town, than that it was the Emperor Henry, with his sceptre, demanding admission for the GhibelHns into Florence ? We do not dispute the ingenuity of Signor Eosetti, we are only contending that it is misapplied; indeed, when this, his favourite theory, does not cross his path, his commentary is excellent, keeping close to the text, completing the ellipses, and leading his reader by the hand, step by step, through the .rough places of his difficult author, with an admirable know- ledge of the road. For the reasons, therefore, which we have given, we shall continue to regard Dante more as the theologian than the politician, and proceed, as we were about to do before this digression, to say a word or two on the view he took of his church. Its doctrines, we repeat, he allowed, and only exclaimed against their perversion. For the accommodation of heretics in another world, he provides, like a good son of liis intolerant mother, sepulchres glowing with fervent heat, and no suspicion seems to cross his mind that they were thus out of their proper element. A purgatory, he admits, and stations at its gate in angel duly armed with his keys and commission from St. Peter : yet he tells us that the apostle had cautioned him against opening too freely, and admitting a herd of miscreants who Essay III.] EEFORMATION IN ITALY. 101 ■would trample him to death (Parg. xi) . He believes it to be the duty of those who are alive to pray for the souls that are therein, and he represents them, in their turn, making suppli- cation for their friends on earth (Purg. xi) ; but he adds, in direct opposition to all excessive merchandise of souls, that purgatory did, in fact, receive very few — that its doors creaked on their hinges for want of use, and that mankind, in general, rushed headlong, and at once, to the bottomless pit (Purg. x). Priestly absolution he does not dispute, yet he reckons it pro- fitless without repentance ; and a luckless friar, who had sinned at the pope's suggestion, and upon the faith of his promise that he would open heaven for him notwithstanding, finds him- self, to his surprise, amongst the damned (Infern. xxvii). He condemns to a joyless abode, among the spirits in prison, all who had died without baptism, however innocent their lives (Infern. iv). He constantly addresses the Virgin in language of the most chivalrous devotion, and sometimes with the most touching tenderness (Purg. xx). He kindles at the thought of a crusade, and bitterly reproaches the pope and cardinals with brooding over their gains, whilst Nazareth, 'where Gabriel spread his angel wings,' was left a prey to the infidels (Par. ix). He had no wish to interfere with the rights of the clergy as ministers of God, and gratuitously selects as a sub- ject for sculpture, the death of Uzzah, when he stretched forth an unconsecrated hand to bear up the ark (Purg. x). But the union of secular and ecclesiastical dominion he holds in abomination ; this he would tear asunder ; to this he imputes the spiritual downfall of the church (Purg. xxvi) ; and pour- ing out upon its consequent corruptions the fiercest vials of his wrath, he denounces it as the destroyer of his country (Purg. x), the beast (xvi), the harlot (xxxii). He peoples his hell with its ministers, plaguing them with divers plagues ; and they dash against each other huge stones in disorderly conflict; and they stand on their heads in burning jars; and are closed up in regions of thick-ribbed ice; and make their moan from the summits of pyramids of flame in which they 102 EEFOEMATION IN ITALY. [Essay III. are enveloped ; and are crushed under excessive weights; and are torn by the forks of vindictive fiends, when they venture to peep out of the boiling pitch wherein is their everlasting portion. Dante would have rejoiced to see his church efficient and prosperous. To its radical errors in faith he was not ahve, for he was a reader and admirer of Thomas Aquinas (Par. x. et seq.), and was evidently better versed in the historical and pic- turesque parts of the Scriptures, than in the doctrinal; but that there was something in it grievously wrong he was fully aware, and so was Petrarch who succeeded him. Petrarch, like Dante, was a good Eoman Catholic ; he had no desire to quarrel with the established creed ; he was himself a churchman ; he had a priest in his house, and built a chapel to the Virgin, at Arqua : but his own powerful language almost sinks under the indignation he feels at the abominations which had polluted the sanctuary. He calls down fire from heaven upon his church, as the mother of all the wickedness which was abroad in the world (Son. 194). Bacchus and Venus are its gods (195). Beelzebub sits in the midst of its bishops, blowing up with his bellows the flames of their lusts (J 94). In an old edition of the Sonnets of Petrarch, which lies before iis, these to which we have referred, and others like to them, have been carefully effaced by the hand of some former owner, whose manes we have no intention to disturb, whilst we offer to our readers the following translation of the hundred and ninety-sixth : — ' Thou fruitful spring of woe ! thou hapless home Where heaven's displeasure finds its place of rest! Temple of heresy ! foul error's nest ! Thou impious Babylon, once hallowed Eome ! Forge of all fraud ! dread prison-house and tomb Of virtue thou, while vice thou fosterest ! 'T is strange, O hell, by living fiends possessed, If Christ, at length, decree thee not thy doom ! Essay III.] EEFORMATION IN ITALY. 103 For at thy birth thou lowly wast and chaste, Now at thy parents dost thou, lift the horn, A shameless harlot ! Where then hast thou placed Thy hope ? In chainberings and in wealth ill-born ? Take, Oonstantine, take back thy gift, or haste And purge thy world, O God ! o'er which we mourn.' The spirit which spake in these men (and in Petrarch it spake yet more vehemently, if possible, in his letters than in his poetry) was preparing the way for the reformers : and an abhorrence of the abuses of a system, was the natural fore- runner of an inquiry into the cause of those abuses, and a suggestion of the remedy. The corruption, however, continued unabated, and the effect it now began to produce was no longer a feeling of indigna- tion, — that had died away, — but a feeling of levity and heart- less unbelief: religion itself seemed ready to founder under the insupportable weight of the vices of its professors. Now an air of jesting and licentious badinage, upon subjects the most sacred, was gone forth, and we look in vain for the earnestness of a former age, which, amidst all its errors, could not behold with patience the prostitution of a blessing it knew how to value, and loathed the wickedness of men who could find in their hearts to poison the fountains of living waters. It was now the fashion to ascribe to Turpin, an archbishop, (a fictitious one to be sure,) whatever monstrous and incredible lies a romancer might invent, and to appeal with mock gravity to the authority of such a character for their truth. The ad- dresses to the Deity or saint, with which the cantos of the ' Morgante Maggiore ' begin, seem often to breathe sincerity, and even devotion ; yet it is very difficult to reconcile the frequent burlesque application of the language, the imagery, and even the doctrines of the Scriptures, in which this poem abounds, with a belief in their authority. Pulci, perhaps, was not after all an infidel professed, as the French (who never lose one for want of claiming him) would persuade us ; but he was one of thousands, both clergy (to whom he belonged) and laity, whose motto still was ' vive la bagatelle,' and who wenfthoughtlessly 104 EEFOEMATION IN ITALY. [Essay III. dancing to the grave of their faith like flies to a candle. The same spirit manifests itself in the poets that followed him,— a spirit of ill-timed levity on the gravest subjects. We do not deny that passages might be produced both from Ariosto and JBerni, which, taken by themselves, would seem to show that they were Christians and even Eoman Catholic Christians ; but still they are perpetually laughing in their sleeve. If they affect to look serious, they succeed, like Cicero's augurs when they met in the street. If a thought of religion comes across them, it is sure to be associated with Friar Tuck. They feel no loyalty (how should they ?) towards the system by which such men earned their bread, and without heeding what distant consequences might result from their sportive sallies, they amuse themselves at the expense both of clergy and creed, and let the world pass. They forwarded, however, the Eeformation, without meaning it. They might say with the boy, who threw a stone at a dog and hit his step-mother, that, though it was intended otherwise, it was not quite lost. Such passages as the following must have operated like one of Luther's carica- tures. Astolfo climbs to the moon, and, amongst other odd furniture which has escaped to that planet from the earth, ' Of soups all spilt an ocean he espies, And of his doctor asks the interpretation ; 'Tis alms, quoth he, which, when the good man dies. He leaves behind him for his soul's salvation : A mount of flowers he sees, of stately size, Once sweet, but now a vile abomination. This is the gift (with reverence be it said) That Constantine to good Silvester made.'— Orland. Fur. xxxiv. 80. Again, the angel Michael is represented by Ariosto, as hav- ing received orders to look for Silence, and to lead -him to the assistance of some recruits, who were on their march to join the Christian army at Paris, but were anxious that the enemy should have no intelligence of their approach. When he had executed this commission, he was to find Discord, and turn Essay III.] EEFOEMATIOK IN ITALY. 105 lier loose amongst the pagan troops, to waste and divide their strength : — ' Now Michael, pondering where to go in quest Of Silence, came to this determination, That to search church and abbey would be best, Where friars lead a life of contemplation, And to be speechless is a vow professed — So, where these good men meet in congregation, Where sleep, and where they make their frugal cheer ; In short, where not? — is writ up, ' Silence here.' ' Trusting to find him thus, away he hied, And wared impatiently his wings of gold ; Nor thought he less, that here too at his side, Rest, Charity, and Peace, he might behold : But all his hopes he quickly found belied. When, as he reached the cloister, he was told, No more does Silence this abode delight in. Nor tarry here at all, except in writing. ' Nor Pity, no nor Peace can he descry. Nor Love, nor Eest, nor Meekness, all are fled — Time was they dwelt here, but 'tis long gone by, P-ride, Hate, Sloth, Lust, Eage, Avarice, in their stead. Have made it their resort. The angel's eye Looked on the novel sights, and wondered — ■ Then passed the hideous legion in review, And, lo ! perceived amongst them Discord too. ' Now, touching Discord, it was heaven's command, That Silence found, he search for her as well ; So Michael had most naturally planned To seek her, where he thought she lived — in hell. Who would have guessed, that in this hell at hand. Mid mass and matins, she should choose to dwell ? Doubtless to him extremely odd it seemed. To find her so much nearer than he deemed.' Orland. Fur. xxiv. 79. Some time after, it appeared that this malicious lady had deserted the task assigned her, so that the angel had to fetch her back. Accordingly, another opportunity is afforded the 106 REFOEMATION IK ITALY. [Essay III. poet of a fling at the monks, of which he does not fail to avail himself: — ' Down to the abbey Michael winged his way, Where Discord might be, such was his reflection. And found her in the chapter-house that day. Presiding at an officer's election. High mirth she took in witnessing the fray, For breyiaries flew in each direction ; But Michael of her hair seized tight possession, And gave her kicks and bufiiets at discretion.' Orland Fur. xxvii. 37. Berni treats the regular clergy with as little ceremony as Ariosto. Banter is the weapon which he also generally uses, and with nearly as great eff'ect. Now and then, however, he is serious and severe : — ' Another tale my verse must now express, Suffice it for my twentieth canto's theme ; Whereby perchance a man may shrewdly guess That all are not such saints as they would seem ; And though grey, purple, damask be their dress, Nor without glove to touch a coin they dream, And stoop with visage pale and downcast eyes, 'Tis doubtful if they go to Paradise : — ' Nay ! though with crucifix in hand they pace. Alone, in sackcloth, humbled to the dust. And though the rochet they most tightly lace, And look like sausages expertly trussed ; And though as fed on horsebeans frowns their face, And though their unctions, unshorn beards disgust, And though they seek caves, grottoes, rocks, and holes. As craw-fish, rabbits, hedge-hogs do, and moles. ' Let holiness in holy life begin. Not in the saintly tongue or face or weeds : Weep ye a brother's wrong, a brother's sin, Be peaceful, courteous, merciful your deeds. Scorn, by dissembling, praise of man to win : No mask the single-hearted Christian needs ; But through the door he enters brave and bold, Nor, like some sly thief, skulks into the fold — ■ Essay III.] EEFORMATIOK IN ITALY. 107 ' These are the sinful generations, these, Of whom God's fiercest hatred is the lot — All errors else his eye with pity sees, Beholding them, his anger waxeth hot. Wretches ! ye glow without, within ye freeze ! Ye whited tombs ! while bones beneath ye rot I Away with trimming thus the outward part. Inward direct your looks, and cleanse the heart.' 1 Land. Innamor. b. i. c. xx. § I. We do not scruple to bring forward Ariosto and Berni as ■witnesses of the temper which was abroad before Luther. Both died before him, the one ten, the other thirteen years ; but so familiar had the times long been with writings of this kind, and so little danger was apprehended from them, that they were licensed, read, and even encouraged by pope and prelate, •whilst they were uncovering their nakedness before Italy and Europe. Even Erasmus himself does not appear to have been aware of the effect his ' Colloquies' would have upon the temporal interests of the church. That admirable scholar delighted in exercising a talent for humour, which he possessed above any man of his time ; and the monks and friars chanced to furnish him, as they did the poets of Italy, with excellent materials on which to employ it. This circumstance, probably in some measure decided him in the choice of his subject : for Erasmus was too timid — too fond of literary ease — too ambitious of the favour of the great — too undecided in his own notions, both as to the doctrines and government of the church, to embark with spirit in such a sea of troubles as the Reformation. Accord- ingly, like a faint-hearted recruit, he shuts his eyes when he pulls the trigger, and recoils from the report of his own piece. Indeed, when we now look back, and calmly consider the many sad presages, which for generations had been warning the church of its danger, nothing seems more remarkable than its apparent security and unconcern. Even the clergy themselvesj some as poets^ and more as novelists, ventured to act the part of ill birds, as if nothing was further from their thoughts than the evil that was in store for them. The fact, however, seems ] 08 REFORMATION IN ITALY. [Essay III. to have been, tliat before the discovery of the art of printing, manuscripts were chiefly in possession of the monks, who bought them up with avidity, and purposely stood in the way of all private purchasers. Whatever exposures, therefore, these manuscripts might make, were looked upon as esoteric doctrines, which might serve to enliven the listless seclusion of the cloister. And even after this noble invention had been perfected, it was some time before the world (or which was the same thing, the church) was aware of its powers. It was like the acquisition of a new sense — its functions were to be learned by experiment alone — their nature and wonderful extent could not be conjectured with any certainty. The pope, who had so long governed with despotic authority all the springs of human action, might have well supposed that such an engine as the press would not be beyond his control ; there was now, indeed, no chance of letters becoming the private property of the priests, like the hieroglyphics of Egypt, but he might still flatter himself that types would be innocently employed in giving more ample circulation to his bulls, and propagating the gainful impostures of his office. Certain it is, that, even after the press had been laid under restrictions, works, the most adverse to the church in her then condition, were sanctioned, not from indifference to her present interests, not from ignorance of the contents of such publications, but simply because safety long enjoyed had begot a notion that there could be no danger, and authority long undisputed the flattering dream that it was indisputable. But, in truth, the vitals of religion, vigilance and earnest- ness about it, were gone. The rehgious world was a stage, and men and women merely players. If God was to be praised, it was not to be done with the heart, but with the very best organs and choristers that could be got together for love or money. The robe of righteousness might not be put on ; but if lace, brocade, embroidery could be of any service, there they were at heaven's command. The prayers which were said might not be a very sweet-smelling savour, but then there was the choicest incense from Arabia to make up for it. The light Essay III.] KEFOEMATION IN ITALY. 109 ■within was not so bright as might be wished, but if candles could do any good, candles were abundant. The soul was not literally humbled with fasting, but the body undertook to dine upon ten or a dozen sorts of choice fish, with soups, vegetables, and fruits, dressed after the most cunning fashion, and what in reasoii could be required more ? Nay, when the crisis was at hand, when the rams' -horns had already sounded round the city walls to tell them they should fall, we find the pope of the day expressing his admiration of the ' fine genius of brother Martin,' as though he judged him by himself to be a mere re- ligious adventurer endeavouring to make a fortune by his wits — we see him disencumbering himself of his robes, with the prayer, perhaps (none was more likely), that for a season, at least, ' heaven would send him no need of them' — striding in his leathern boots through the Ostian woods after wild boars, and returning to meet a company of buffoons at his table, and laughing at the dexterity with which they defended and im- pugned the soul's immortality. In short, it was the fashion of the day to do the work of God after the zealous manner of that patriarch of Constantinople, of whom Jeremy Taylor re- minds us, ' who ran from the altar in St. Sophia to his stable, in all his pontificals, and in the midst of his ofiioe, to see a colt newly fallen from his beloved and much-valued mare, Phorbante.' It was in the midst of this scene of lukewarmness and self- indulgence, even whilst the clergy were eating and drinking, (not indeed marrying and giving in marriage, — it would have been better for them if they had,) that Luther arose, like an Ajax Mastigophoros among the sheep. Luther must, under any circumstances, have made a noise in the world; but had the church been wise enough to reform her practice in time, it is probable that her mere eiTors in faith, gross as we now think them, and as he very soon learned to think them himself, would not have provoked his scrutiny ; that his zeal, like that of many other good men before him, would have found a vent in establishing a new order; and that St. Martin by this time might have figured in the Eoman Catholic 110 REFORMATION IN ITALY. [Essat III. calendar, by the side of St. Benedict or St. Francis. It is evident that the doctrine of the church, which we are accus- tomed to reckon the most repugnant to common sense, would have been no stumbling-block in his way (for he who could teach the doctrine of consubstantiation was not the man to be shocked by the doctrine of transubstantiation) ; and if not this doctrine, why should any other be thought hkely to have opened his eyes ? The great and leading doctrine, indeed, of the Eeformation, both in Germany and England, justification by faith alone, appears to have been lurking in Luther's mind some years before he gave it utterance ; and no doubt this principle once established, might, in the end, have undermined his allegiance to a church of which the very foundations were laid in the opposite doctrine of merit : still this was not the rock upon which his submission to the pope first split. Milner (whose history of Luther is an admirable corrective to the un- worthy insinuations and philosophical indifference of Hume on the same subject) is evidently disposed to think otherwise ; but some allowance must be made, on the one hand, for the theo- logical views of the church historian ; and, on the other, the scandals which Luther had witnessed in a visit to Eome, and the shameless sale of indulgences, which had troubled him in Germany, may be thought enough to account for the beginning of that new light which, by degrees, broke upon him. The necessity of a reform, indeed, bad been admitted, and the Council of Pisa had been recently called, for the express pur- pose of examining into ecclesiastical abuses. But the examina- tion was not undertaken and pursued in an honest and good heart, otherwise it is possible the Church of Eome might have continued unscathed for some years longer, at least till a better knowledge of the Scriptures should have exposed (as it always must) its unsoundness and error. For it is not to be disputed that much there was in it to attach its members, and engage their best sympathies in its behalf. Evil as the system was, it was far from a system of unmixed evil. Many of its incentives to devotion were admirably contrived to answer their end ; and some, which were congenial to the habits and feelings of the Essay III.] EEPORMATION IN ITALY. Ill people, have (unfortunately, we think) in our own land been suffered to expire. They survived the shock of the Eeforma- tion itself, but could not struggle through the fury of the fanatics, who hated all that had been popish ; and still less through the profligacy of the succeeding generation, who laughed to scorn all that was godly. We confess that we look back with some pleasure, though not without drawing some mortifying comparisons, on those good old usages ■ of our fathers, which were in existence almost a century after the times of popery, when they wrote upon windows and doors some appropriate text, and made even the furniture of their houses to speak parables ; when they ushered in the candles at night, with 'God send us light from heaven;' when they be- stowed a father's blessing on their children, as they knelt before them ere they retired to rest ; when they walked their parish boundaries, giving thanks for the harvest, relieving the needy, reconciling the contentious ; when the parson blessed aloud those whom he met, or overtook, by the way ; when the church- doors stood open most of the day, and the ploughman, as he heard the sound of the saint's bell, left for a moment his 'laboured ox,' that he might join his prayers with those of a Herbert, and beg the favour of heaven on the works of his hands. But this age of simplicity is gone by, and a new order of things has arisen in its stead. Perhaps even what we have written will be read with a supercilious smile at the darkness of men, who, in the nineteenth century, are not convinced that Eng- land is becoming more happy or more moral by the conversion of her peasantry into operatives, and of her fields into one huge workshop ; of men, who have the weakness to confess their fears, that amidst the tumult of engines that cannot stop, and fires that must be fed, and mines that must be worked, and boats that must be navigated, and goods shipped, and letters written, and the eternal clatter of wheels, and looms, and sledge-hammers, ' the still small voice' may run a risk of being unheeded. But we beg pardon, and proceed. The Council of Pisa was rendered abortive by the intrigues of the pope, and in- stead of strengthening the church, only served to supply Luther 112 EEFORMATION IK ITALY. [Bssat III, ■with an additional argument, that, hy its own confession, it was full of abuse. The critical opportunity of self-correction was thus lost, and at last the sound of a reformation indeed, wherein the pleasure of the pontiff was no longer to be consulted, reached the Vatican. Now was the power of the press, for the first time, made known. Heretical pamphlets, catechisms, ballads, and carica- tures, broke loose in a body. Now were to be seen on tavern walls foxes preaching in full canonicals, with the neck of a goose peeping out of a pocket ; wolves in sheep's clothing confessing and granting absolution ; monkeys, in the habit of Franciscans, sitting beside a sick man's bed, with one hand on the crucifix and the other in his fob. It was a war without quarter. A medicine which if well-timed may cure, given out of season may kill. The queasy stomach of the Eoman Catholic church had kicked at a council which might have done it good, but now cries out in a panic for another which has disagreed with it. Before the Council of Trent nothing could be more hopeless than to argue with a Eomanist. It was im- possible to drive him to a corner; he was the ghost in Hamlet. Urge him with the decrees of assemblies of his church — one was not convened lawfully ; another did not pro- ceed conciliariter ; a third was not general ; a fourth was not approbatum ; a fifth was reprohatum ; a sixth was partly approbatum, partly reprobattim. Thus, at the moment when the antagonist counted the victory his own, and was stooping to bind his prostrate foe, he saw him again escape from his hands and vanish into thin air. This state of things some of the wisest heads of the Church of Eome thought it impolitic to meddle with, and lamented the steps taken at the Council of Trent to define and determine her doctrines. Much that was before indifierent was now enjoined by authority, and many were driven to secede who could not assent, and were not permitted to be neutral. But a more important advantage accrued to the Protestants, from an authentic declaration of Eoman Catholic faith (as far as it goes) being hereby put into their hands. They had hitherto been fighting with a shadow ; Essay III.] EEPOEMATION IN ITALY. ] 13 the creed of Pius IV. gave them something more substantial with which to grapple. Doubtless it still left abundant room for evasion ; but, accommodating as it is, arguments may be built upon it which cannot but embarrass its defenders ; and the scrupulous care with which the Church of Rome (though constantly provoked to close) has abstained from calling another general council, which might put forth a yet more dis- tinct and specific exposition of her tenets, proves that she has felt the inconvenience of former restrictions. The Council of Trent was probably the last of its kind, extorted by a belief that the times admitted of no less desperate remedy. The instructions which it sent forth to the parochial clergy, in the form of a catechism (' Catechismus ad Parochos'), give ample token of the alarm which the Church of Rome now felt. The most feverish anxiety for the dignity and authority of the priest may be perceived throughout, and texts are distorted for his praise and glory with a most ludicrous ingenuity. The silver shrines are in danger, and there is evidently no small stir among the craftsmen. As it is a document which is al- lowed by Mr. Butler himself still to speak the sense of his church, we will give our readers a few of its practical appli- cations of Scripture. The gospels for the day are to be made profitable to the edification of the people, as follows : — ' You shall find an ass's colt tied, loose it,' &c. &c. Here the priest may remark, that the right of granting absolution may thus be collected to have been conferred upon the clergy, the suc- cessors of the apostles ; the laity, we presume, by parity of reasoning, being the successors of the ass. The same doctrine is to be derived from the words ' Loose him and let him go ;' which our Lord uttered when Lazarus came forth bound with grave-clothes. That the words were addressed to the disciples in particular does not appear indeed from the Evangelist ; but the Catechism says they were, knowing it probably from tradi- tion. ' Send her away, for she crieth after us/ furnishes an argument that intercession is made for us by the saints. ' Jesus was casting out a devil, and it was dumh :' who does not here discover the doctrine of confession ? The devil pre- I 114 EEFORMATION IN ITALY. [Essay III. vents the sinner from confessing to the priest, and can only be ejected when the tongue is set free. ' Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?' The bread alone, therefore, had the property of quenching thirst, as well as appeasing hunger ; hence the propriety of communion in one kind only for the laity. 'And He went into a ship that was Peter's.' Here our Lord signifies that Peter was to be the head of the church ; or, as old Latimer has it in one of his sermons. He says in effect, ' Peter, I do mean this by sitting in thy boat, that thou shalt go to Rome, and be bishop there, five-and- twenty years after mine ascension, and all thy successors shall be rulers of the universal church after thee.' ' And there came down a certain priest that way.' This is a text which requires some delicacy in the handling, seeing that the priest does not figure to any advantage in the history. The man that fell among thieves, however, is human nature; sin inflicted the wounds ; our Lord is the Samaritan ; and when He gives twopence to the host. He teaches that the care of the church is to be committed to a single individual ! According to the interpretation of the same Catechism, the fifth commandment, ' Honour thy father and thy mother,' &c. implies, amongst other things, that children are bound to provide their parents with confessors before they die, to bury them with handsome obsequies, and to establish annual masses for their souls : and lest the congregation should be at a loss to know why there are seven sacraments, neither more nor less, it iustnicts their pastor to explain, that natural religion points to this number; — that man, as a social being, has need of seven things : 1. to be bom ; 2. to grow up ; 3. to be sustained ; 4. to be recovered from sickness ; 5. to be recruited in strength; 6. to be subject to government; 7. to propagate his kind: — that, therefore, as a spiritual being, he has also need of the seven anti-types, namely, 1. Baptism; 3. Confirmation; 3. The Eucharist; 4. Penance; 5. Extreme unction; 6. Orders; 7. Marriage. Finally, as if further to exalt the dignity of his office, the priest is to communicate to his flock many of the more secret counsels of heaven, which are hidden from the vulgar; that at Essay III.] EBFOEMATION IN ITALY. 115 the resurrection, for instance, our bodies will be disfigured by no deformity ; that they will be neither too fat nor too lean ; that the wounds of the martyrs will then emit rays of light, exceeding in brightness gold and precious stones. He is to exhort them to confess not only the sin, but the circumstances which attend it, and by which it might be aggravated ; as, for instance, in the case of murder, whether it was committed upon a layman or an ecclesiastic. Moreover, he is to teach that Christ and the priest are the same, the latter when he consecrates the elements, saying, this is my body, not this is the body of Christ ; and that no common reverence is due to a man who can ' produce and present the body and blood of our Lord,' and who hath power on earth ' to forgive sins ;' a faculty, it is added, passing human reason to comprehend, and the like to which cannot be found in the world beside. Whatever weight, however, such arguments ought to have had, the Italians do not appear to have thought them conclu- sive. The writings of Luther and Melancthon, of Zuingle and Bucer, continued to be circulated covertly throughout Italy ; and in translations, and under fictitious titles, some of them made their way even into the Vatican. Dr. M'Crie gives evidence the most satisfactory, that in almost every principal city the cause of the Reformation had numerous friends. Ferrara was full of them ; even foreign Protestants resorted to it as an asylum ; Marot, the not inelegant translator of the Psalms into French, fled thither from persecution ; and Calvin himself sojourned there for several months, receiving distinguished attention fi-om the duchess, and confirming her in the senti- ments of the reformers, which she had . already embraced (p. 70). Of Modena, its own bishop complains in a letter to Cardinal Contarene, that, by common report, ' the whole city was turned Lutheran' (p. 78). Florence was less corrupted; yet Brucioli, whose version of the New Testament, and indeed all his works, 'published or to be published,' were formally interdicted at the council of Trent, was a Florentine ; and so was Carneseca, the martyr (p. 79). The people of Bologna expressed their earnest desire that the emperor should interfere I 2 116 EBFOEMATIOlir IN ITALY. [Essay III. to procure for them liberty of conscience in matters of religion, or, if this could not be granted, that they might at least ' be allowed to purchase bibles without incurring the charge of heresy, and to quote Christ and St. Paul without being branded as Lutherans' (p. 83). Venice was at that time a powerful, independent, and zealous republic, with a printing-press the most efficient in the world, and with opportunities, from her commerce both by sea and land, of making its productions known throughout Christendom. Letters were a branch of trade at Venice. To its merchants were consigned the books of the German and Swiss reformers, and over Italy and else- where there issued from this ark, as it rode amidst the waters, the Dove of Peace. Here ' The evangelical doctrine had made such progress between the years 1530 and 1542, that its friends, who had hitherto met in private, for mutual instruction and religious exercises, held deli- berations on the propriety of organizing themselves into regular congregations, and assembling in public. Several members of the senate were favourable to it, and hopes were entertained at one time that the authority of that body would be interposed in its behalf.'— p. 95. Melancthon addressed a letter to them upon the subject, and though numbers in that city were found (as we shall presently see) faithful to the death, the Government would not declare in favour of the Eeformation at that critical moment, or perhaps a new impulse might have been thereby given to her fortunes, now passing the meridian; and instead of the melancholy wreck of former greatness which she exhibits at this day, she might have continued a queen for ever. The new opinions were not confined to the capital — ^Vicenza, Treviso, and other places in the Venetian territory, partook of them. ' If it be God's will,' write the brethren of those parts to Luther, ' that we obtain a truce, what accessions will be made to the king- dom of Christ, in faith and charity ! How many preachers will appear to announce Christ faithfully to the people ! How many prophets, who now lurk in corners, exanimated with undue fears, will come forth to expound the Scriptures !' — p. 99. Essay III.] EEPOEMA.TION IN ITALY. 117 The Milanese, as early as the year 1524, had caught the in- fection. The vicinity of the Vaudois contributed to spread it in this part of Italy, and the disorders of a district which had long been the seat of war, left no leisure for extirpating it. Nor was it in the north of Italy only that this spirit had gone forth : the German soldiers, who, after the sack of Eome, in 1527, for some time garrisoned the city of Naples, are sup- posed to have carried with them the Lutheran doctrines, which, indeed, were not new in Calabria. Valdez, a layman of re- markable prudence and talent, watered this hopeful plant; and Ochino and Peter Martyr, names well known in the annals of our own church, gave it further increase. For here it was that the theologian who afterwards occupied the divinity-chair at Oxford first studied the Scriptures ; and here it was that the preacher, who was pronounced by Charles V. a man ' to make the stones weep,' first lifted up the reformer's voice. Even Sicily felt the influence of a Luther. ' Benedetti, surnamed Locarno, from the place of his birth, a minister of great sanctity, having gained the favour of the viceroy, preached the truth, under his patronage, to crowded audiences, in Palermo, and other parts of that island. The seeds of his doctrine afterwards sprung up, and gave ample employment to the inquisi- tors. For many years, persons charged with the Lutheran heresy ' "were produced in the public and private autos da fe celebrated in Sicily.'— p. 123. We have run some risk of being thought tedious in our de- tails, though we have not nearly gone the round of Italy with Dr. M'Crie, who has prosecuted this part of his subject with great diligence. Less, however, would not have sufficed to show at all adequately how effectually the state of public opinion (of which we have already spoken) had prepared the way for a reformation in Italy ; and how remarkable a progress the great cause had actually made there. Well might the Church of Eome believe that a movement so universal was not to be put down by a Gatechismus ad Parochos alone, and that the effect of such logic must he accelerated by exile, imprison- ment, and the flames. Persecution, if begun in time, con- 118 EEFORMATION IN ITALY. [Essay III. ducted with discretion, and continued long enough, will break the heart of a stouter nation than the Italians; and if the reign of Mary had been as lasting as that of Elizabeth, and as wary, it is not impossible that the fate of theEeformation in England and Italy might have been the same. Popish his- torians are right enough when they attribute the salvation of the Koman Cathohc rehgion south of the Alps, in a main degree, to the establishment of the Inquisition at Kome, in 1543. There was, at least, wisdom in this wickedness. It drove out of the country, or buried in its dungeons, or pur- sued to the death, all who ventured to think for themselves ; and so the unity of the church was restored — Solitudinem Jaciunt, jpacem appellant. For twenty years and more was this accursed engine in the utmost activity, and so well did it its work, that all traces of the Reformation at length disap- peared ; down it went, with a shriek, like a drowning man, and the waters close over him, and not a sign is left that he has ever been. Now were spies commissioned to disperse them- selves over the country, and, being furnished with recommenda- tions, and disguised under a variety of characters, they gained access to the secrets of their simple hosts, and betrayed them to the Inquisition. To this day may be seen, in the cellars of this cruel tribunal at Venice (for here, too, the policy of the pope had contrived its establishment), "written with an unsteady hand, as in the dark, apophthegms, which may well have had their origin in those days of perfidy : ' Da chi mi fido, guardami Dio ; Da chi non mi fido, mi guardaro io.' For mutual suspicion was now sown amongst the members of the same hearth — husband and wife, parent and child, master and servant, hastened to get the start of each other in the race of unnatural treachery ; and a man's foes literally became those of his own household. But the number of persons thus secretly denounced, and in many cases silently disposed of, must remain a mystery till that day when, amongst other deeds of diukue&s, these, too, shall be disclosed. Essay III.] EEFOEMATION m ITALY. 119 ' Know that I am in great trouble, and danger of my life,' writes Altieri, the Venetian reformer, to BuUinger; 'nor is there a place in Italy where I can be safe with my wife and boy. My fears for myself increase daily, for I know the wicked will never rest till they have swallowed me up alive, Give me a place in your prayers.' — p. 22'1. And no more is heard of Altieri ! The misguided people were stimulated by the inquisitors to supply them with victims, by appeals to their interest, present as well as future. There was no mischief, moral or physical, that befell them, of which the heretics were not at the bottom. The charges were made with as much decency as those against the camel at Jumbo, which was delivered over to the secular arm, as Bruce tells us, for having cursed the sheriff of Mecca, and for having threat- ened to set fire to the town and destroy the wheat. So were these poor creatures held up to the execration of a supersti- tious peasantry, as the evil eye which blighted their corn, and blasted their olive-yards, and sent a murrain among their cattle, and destroyed their substance. Other means, even more unjustifiable than these, were occasionally resorted to, 'A rich nobleman of Modena, in the duchy of Ferrara,' writes Eglin to Bulliuger, ' was lately informed against as a heretic to the pope, who had recourse to the following method of getting him into his claws : — The nobleman had a cousin at Eome, who was sent for to the castle of St. Angelo, and told, either you must die, or write to your cousin at Modena, desiring him to meet you at Bologna, as you wish to speak to him on important business. The letter was dispatched, and the nobleman, having ridden in haste to Bologna, was seized as soon as he had dismounted from his horse. His friend was then set at liberty. This is Dragon's game.' — p. 374. We have sometimes thought that the courage of Milton, in avowing his religious sentiments during his travels in Italy, has been more talked of than the risk justified. But, no doubt, at that time there was danger in it, for the suspicions which the attempt at a reformation had excited were not as yet laid to sleep. Sir Henry Wotton's advice, il viso scioUo, 120 REPOEMATION IN ITALY. [Esbat III. i pensieri stretti ; Galileo's imprisonment, and tlie imprudence Milton was thought to he guilty of in paying him a visit ; the shyness of the Marquess of Manso towards the poet ; the fact also, which Evelyn mentions, of his having met with a Scots- man and an Irishman in Italy, who resided there, and found it needful to conceal that they were Protestants — all these cir- cumstances concur to prove that the alarm of the foregoing century had been great, and its effects lasting. It was not the practice of the Inquisition of Italy to out- rage the feelings of the people by a public display of its terrors. The tribunal was not popular in that country ; to say the truth, the Italians are not a sanguinary nation, nor have ever been so in Christian times. It is a matter of just sur- prise, that with such Governments as theirs, blood should be so seldom shed ; and that society, constructed as it is, should hold together at all, with so little recourse to capital punish- ment. In Spain it was otherwise ; there the hatred of a Pro- testant succeeded to that of a Moor, and the burning of either was a holiday spectacle. ' Drowning was the mode of death to which they doomed the Protestants at Venice, either because it was less cruel and odious than committing them to the flames, or because it accorded with the customs of the place. But if the autos da fe of the queen of the Adriatic were less barbarous than those of Spain, the solitude and silence with which they were accompanied were calculated to excite the deepest horror. At the dead hour of midnight the pri- soner was taken from his cell, and put into a gondola, or Venetian boat, attended only, beside the sailors, by a single priest, to act as confessor. He was rowed out into the sea, beyond the two castles, where another boat was in waiting ; a plank was then laid across the two gondolas, upon which the prisoner, having his body chained, and a heavy stone affixed to his feet, was placed ; and, on a signal given, the gondolas retiring from one another, he was precipitated into the deep.' — p. 233. The persecution throughout Italy was, of course, co-extensive with the heresy ; hut here we feel almost compelled to pause, for in these days it is not gentlemanlike to talk about martyrs. Essay HI.] EEFOEMATION IN ITALY. 121 ' The prices of their ashes/ says Fuller, in his own inimitable language, 'rise and fall in Smithfield market. However' (he justly adds), ' their real worth flotes not with people's phanoies, no more than a rock in the sea rises and falls with the tide ; 8t. Paul is still St. Paul, though the Lycaonians now would sacri- fice to him, and presently afterwards sacrifice him.' We shall, therefore, venture to draw the attention of our readers to a few individuals of that numerous and ' noble army,' which laid down their lives for the religious liberties of Italy, and for the truth. Faventino Fannio (we abridge the narrative of Dr. M'Orie), a native of Faenza, within the States of the Church, having received the knowledge of the truth, by reading the Bible and other religious books, in his native language, imparted it to bis neighbours, and was soon thrown into prison. Over-persuaded by his friends, he recanted, and regained his liberty at the price of his peace of mind. He now determined to atone for his weakness, by spreading amongst his countrymen the reformed faith, with more zeal than before. He travelled through the province of Eomagna, and wherever he had made a few con- verts, he left it to them to make others, and again went on his way rejoicing. At last, he was seized, and sent in chains to Ferrara : — ' To the lamentations of his wife and sister, who came to see him in prison, he replied, ' Let it suffice you, that for your sakes I once denied my Saviour. Had I then had the knowledge which, by the grace of God, I have acquired since my fall, I would not have yielded to your entreaties. Go home in peace.' His imprison- ment, which lasted two years, was to the furtherance of the Gospel, so that his bonds in Christ were manifest in all the place.' He was visited by the princess Lavinia della Eovere, by Olympia Morata, and other persons of distinction. At length, admittance was refused to strangers : he then applied himself successfully to the instruction and conversion of his fellow- prisoners, some of whom were people of rank, confined for ofiences against the State. He was now condemned to solitary confinement, and his prison and keeper were frequently changed 122 REFORMATION IS ITALY. [Essay III. by the priests, who were afraid of the interest he excited in those about him. — But the day of his release drew on — 'In the year 1550, Julius III., rejecting every intercession made for his life, ordered him to be executed. He was accordingly brought to the stake at an early hour in the morning, to prevent the people from witnessing the scene ; and being first strangled, was committed to the flames.' — p. 276. Aonio Paleario was one of the best scholars of his day : he was successively a professor at Lucca and Milan. From the latter place he was meditating a removal to Bologna, when, in the year 1566, he was caught, like many others, in that storm of persecution which followed the elevation of Pius V. to the popedom. ' Being seized by Frate Angelo da Cremona, the inquisitor, and conveyed to Eome, he was committed to close confinement in the Torre Nona. His book on the benefit of Christ's death, (of which it may be remarked, that 40,000 copies were sold in six years,) his Commendations of Ochino, his Defence of himself before the sen- ators of Sienna, and the suspicions which he had incurred during his residence at that place and at Lucca, were all revived against him. After the whole bad been collected and sifted, the charge at last resolved itself into the four following articles : — That he denied purgatory ; disapproved of burying the dead in churches, preferring the ancient Roman method of sepulture without the walls of cities ; ridiculed the monastic life ; and appeared to ascribe justification solely to confidence in the mercy of God forgiving our sins through Jesus Christ. For holding these opinions be was condemned, after an imprisonment of three years, to be suspended on a gibbet, and bis body to be given to the flames ; and the sentence was executed on the third of July, 1570, in the seventieth year of bis age' — it being fit that 'so obstinate a son of Belial' (such is the humane reflection of aEoman Catholic church historian) ' should be delivered to the fire, that, after suffering its momentary pains here, he might be bound in everlasting flames hereafter' (p. 300). What if we should say of him, on the other hand, as a church historian of our own says of Kidley, that, 'like Elijah, he was but going up to heaven in a chariot of fire' ? Bartolomeo Bartoccio was the son of a wealthy citizen of Essay III] EEPORMATIOK IN ITALY. 123 Castel, in the duchy of Spoleto. A companion in arms at the siege of Sienna first communicated to him- the tenets of the re- formers. He soon became an object of distrust to his bishop, and escaped to Venice ; but when he had ascertained that all hope of return to his native place was gone, he retired to Geneva, married, and became a manufacturer of silk. In the year 1567, the concerns of his trade took him to Genoa. He had assumed a name, but having confided his own to a mer- chant, he was betrayed by him, and delivered to the Inquisi- tion. ' The magistrates of Geneva and Berne sent to demand his liberation from the Genoese republic, but before their envoy arrived, the prisoner had been sent to Eome, at the request of the pope. After suffering an imprisonment of nearly two years, he was sentenced to be burned alive. The courage which Bartocci had all along displayed did not forsake him in the trying hour. He walked to the place of execution with a firm step and unaltered countenance, and the cry ' Vittoria, Vittoria ! ' was distinctly heard from him after he was wrapped in the flames.' — p. 305. But the blackest page in the annals of these hard-hearted times will be found in the history of that colony of Waldenses which we have already said had emigrated to Calabria. Here had they been dwelling for some generations, prosperous, and in peace. By the sixteenth century, they had increased to four thousand, and were possessed of two towns on the coast, Santo Xisto and La Guardia. Constant intercourse with their Eoman Catholic neighbours, and a long separation from their kindred in the Alps, had corrupted their primitive simplicity, and though they still retained a form of worship of their own, they did not scruple to frequent mass. The report of a new doc- trine abroad, resembling that of their forefathers, had reached their ears ; they sought to become acquainted with it, and, convinced that they had been wrong in their conformity with the Eoman Catholic ritual, they applied to their brethren in the valleys of Pragela, and to the ministers of Geneva, for teachers, who should give them a better knowledge of these things. The circumstance was not long a secret at Romer and 124 EEFOEMATION IN ITALY. [Essay IIL two monks, Valerio Malvicino and Alfonso Urbino ('tis a pity to defraud them of their fame), were sent to reduce them to obedience. They did their work like genuine sons of St. Dominic. In ancient times, heathen inquisitors required sus- pected Christians to cast a handful of incense upon an altar, and in default of this, they condemned them to the flames. These inquisitors of the holy office substituted attendance at mass as their test of orthodoxy.. The people of Santo Xisto refused to comply, and fled to the woods. Those of La Guardia, deluded into a belief that their brethren had already submitted, reluctantly acquiesced, only to reproach themselves with what they had done, when the truth was known. Two companies of foot soldiers were now sent in quest of the fugi- tives, but these latter were not to be intimidated by cries of 'Amazzi, Amazzi ! ' and, taking their post on a hill, they came to a parley with the captain. They entreated him to have pity on their wives and children : they said that they and their fathers had for ages dwelt in the country, and had given just cause of offence to no man; that they were ready to go by sea or land wherever their superiors might direct ; that they would not take with them more than was needful for their support by the way, and would engage never to return ; that they would cheerfully abandon their houses and substance, provided they could retain unmolested their principles and faith. To this address, as well as to the hope, expressed at the same time, that they might not be driven to a desperate defence, the officer turned a deaf ear. His men were ordered to advance, and most of them fell by the swords of the Vaudois, The monks now wrote to Naples for assistance, which was sent, and all the cruelties which could be exercised by the combined ingenuity of pitiless banditti (for such were hterally the troops now employed), and yet more pitiless inquisitors, were put in force against this devoted race. Of the last scene of their sufferings, a record is preserved in a letter to Ascanio Carac- cioli from his sei-vant, an eye-witness of the facts he relates and a Roman Cathohc. It is given by Dr. M'Crie, as follows: — EssAT III.] EEFOEMATION IN ITALY. 125 ' Most Illustrious Sir, — Having written you from time to time what has been done here in the affair of heresy, T have now to inform you of the dreadful justice which began to be executed on these Lutherans early this morning, being the eleventh of June ; and, to tell you the truth, I can compare it to nothing but the slaughter of so many sheep. They were all shut up in one house, as in a sheep-fold : the executioner went, and bringing out one of them, covered his face with a napkin or benda, as we call it, and causing him to kneel down, cut his throat with a knife. Then, taking off the bloody napkin, he went and brought out another, whom he put to death after the same manner. In this way, the whole number, amounting to eighty-eight, were butchered. 1 leave you to figure to yourself the lamentable spectacle, for I scarcely can refrain from tears while I write ; nor was there any person, who, after witnessing the execution of one, could stand to look on a second. The meekness and patience with which they went to martyrdom and death was incredible. Some of them at their death professed themselves of the same faith with us, but the greater part died in their cursed obstinacy. All the old men met their death with cheerfulness, but the young exhibited symptoms of fear. ■ According to orders, waggons were already come to carry away the dead bodies, which are appointed to be quartered and hung up on the public roads, from one end of Calabria to the other. Unless his holiness and the viceroy of Naples command the Marquess de Bruccianici, the governor of this province, to stay his hand, and leave oflf, he will go on to put others to the torture, and multiply the executions until he has destroyed the whole. Even to-day a decree has passed, that a hundred grown-up women shall be put to the question, and afterwards executed ' The heretics taken in Calabria amount to sixteen hundred, all of whom are condemned ; but only eighty-eight have as yet been put to death. This people came originally from the vally of Angrogna, near Savoy, and in Calabria are called ' Ultra-Montani.' Four other places in the kingdom of Naples are inhabited by the same race, but I do not know that they behave ill, for they are a simple unlettered people, entirely occupied with the spade and plough, and I am told, show themselves suflSciently religious at the hour of death.' —p. 963. 'Lest the reader,' contiiiues Dr. M'Crie, ' should be inclined 126 REFORMATION IN ITALY. [Essay III. to doubt the truth of such horrid atrocities, the following sum- mary account of them, by a Neapolitan historian of that age, may be added.' After giving some account of the Calabrian heretics, he says — ' Some had their throats cut, others were sawn through the middle, and others thrown from the top of a high clifif ; all were cruelly but deservedly put to death. It was strange to hear of their obstinacy ; for while the father saw the son put to death, and the son his father, they not only gave no symptoms of grief, but .said, joyfully, that they would be angels of God : so much had the devil to whom they had given themselves up as a prey, deceived them.' Dr. M'Crie thus winds up this miserable naiTative : — ' By the time that the persecutors were glutted with blood, it was not diflBcult to dispose of the prisoners who remained. The men were sent to the Spanish gallies ; the women and children were sold for slaves ; and, with the exception of a few who renounced their faith, the whole colony was exterminated. ' Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth,' may the race of the Waldenses- say, ' Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth ; my blood, the violence done to me and to my flesh be upon' Rome ! ' — p. 266. Who can read these piteous details without saying Amen to the closing prayer of that collect in verse (as it has been well called), of our great poet, writ on a similar massacre of the original stock ? ' Lord, their martyred blood and ashes sow O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway The Triple Tyrant ; that from these may grow A hundred fold, who, having learned thy way. Early may fly the Babylonian woe ! ' The Protestants who survived were, for the most part, scattered abroad. Those who lived near the borders sought an asylum in Switzerland and France, and some travelled even as far as Flanders and England. They introduced into the countries which received them many of the arts peculiar to their own : silk manufactories, mills, and dyeing-houses, were built under their instructions, and, like the fagitives fi-om the intolerance Essay III.] EEFOKMATION IN ITALY. 127 of the Duke of Alva shortly after, and again from that of Louis XIV., they repaid the hospitality shown them hy open- ing, wherever they came, sources of wealth hitherto unknown. Sometimes they migrated in a body, as did those of Locarno, but with the mark of Cain set upon them by the church, and left to struggle through the snows and ice of the Rheetian Alps, as best they could, it being one of their misfortunes that their ' flight was in the winter.' These achieved their liberties like men, but all had not their hardihood. A band of Neapolitans resolved upon the same course, but when they came to those noble mountains where they were to take a last view of the land of their fathers, ' the greater part, struck with its beauties, and calling to mind the friends and comforts which they had left behind, abandoned their enterprise, parted with their com- panions, returned to Naples/ and lived to find that the loss of self-esteem is a far greater evil than the loss of country, and that infirmity of purpose in a good cause is the last sin which society forgives. Many, again, dwelling in the interior of Italy, where escape in a body was hopeless, stole away singly, and if tempted to return, as they sometimes were, for their families, or the wreck of their fortunes, fell a prey to the vigilance of the Inquisition. Nor were there wanting those, who, dismayed alike at the prospect of banishment or death, looked back from the plough to which they had put an unsteady hand, and made their peace with Eome by timely compliance. Thus ended the Reformation in Italy. It only remains to say a few words on the causes which produced its extinction ; to the chief one of which, indeed, we have already had occasion to allude. 1. In the first place, the system of the Roman Catholic re- ligion was more difficult of eradication in Italy than in any other quarter of the world. It had taken advantage of all the most ancient sympathies of the country and the long-esta- blished practices of Pagan times. The people had been made to slide out of a Gentile into what stood for a Christian ritual ; as little violence as might be was done to their previous pre- judices, and as many of these as possible, and more than were 1*^8 REFORM ATION IS ITALY. [Essay III. innocent, had been spared and cherished. The temples were turned into churches ; the altars of the old gods served for the new saints ; the curtains with which they were shrouded, the finery with which they were bedecked, the incense burnt before them, and the votive tablets suspended to their honour, all con- tinued as they had been. The garlands over the doors had withered— and were replaced; the aquaminarium which held the water of purification, held it still ; the beU was still rung to excite the worshipper, or expel the demon ; and the sacrifice which had been offered, was offered as before, and its well-known name of hostia, or host, retained. In earthquake, pestilence, or drought, the succour of either of these classes of superior being's was successively resorted to, and in precisely the same way. They were entreated, they were coaxed, they were scolded, they were threatened, in terms not distinguishable'; processions were made for them, and tapers, music, tapestry, fraternities, and a box of relics, propitiated them alike. Hills and foun- tains were the asylums of either, and ^the votaries of the saint were exhorted to say their orisons at the one, or crawl upon their knees to the other, as it had been the practice to do by the gods in the days of their ancestors : a figure of St. Peter re- lieved guard at the gate for Mercury or Cardea; the niche in the parlour, or bed-room, was occupied by St. Roque, or St. Sebastian, instead of the Phrygian penates; your person was protected by a St. Vitale next your skin, in the room of an ^sculapius, or an Apollo ; pollution was averted from your walls by a frowning St. Benedict, instead of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and the Twelve Gods ; and you set sail in a ship whose sign was St. Nicholas, and with about the same chance of skill, presence of mind, and self-confidence in the crew, as if her sign had still continued to be Castor and Pollux. But this system of accommodation, whereby sentiments of loyalty to the old religion were to be enhsted for the new, is yet more ap- parent in another particular. The religion of our Lord and his Apostles afforded no plausible pretence for the worship of those nymphs and goddesses to which the Italians had been used. What was to become of the devotion that had thus been Essay III.] REFORMATION IN ITALY. 129 paid to the softer sex ? Where was this to be directed ? The Virgin was tliought of as fitted to stand in the gap, and to the Virgin were the honours transferred : she became practically the Cyhele of a former generation ; she had her title, Deipara ; cakes were offered to her as the queen of heaven; beggars asked an alms ' per la Madonna,' as they had heretofore done, by legal permission, ' pro Matre Deum ;" and the festival of the Idaean Mother was no other than Lady-Bay. Inferior female saints now took the places, in their turn, of the inferior god- desses : in some cases, the very name of the deity descended to her successor, and Anna Perenna, the nymph of the Numioius, is to be found (we believe) to this day, in the same neighbour- hood, under the alias of St. Anna Petronilla. The ancient system of coquetry and stolen interviews between the deities of one sex and mortals of the other, revived, not unfrequently with more than all the grossness, but seldom with, much of the poetry of other times. Thus were Eomans surprised into Eoman Catholics, and the vulgar at least, without being con- scious of having undergone any very sensible mutation, were assured that all was right, and that by some means or other changed they were intus et in cute. This confusion of reli- gious character . strikes us in almost every page of the more ancient Italian writers : it is quite a feature in the early litera- ture of Italy ; sacred and profane images are blended without the smallest regard to decency, though evidently without any consciousness of a want of it in the parties themselves. It was the custom of the day to plough with an ox and an ass ; a mis- take has been often made about it by those who have written on the revival of learning, and the motley union has been im- puted to the pedantry of an age awakening from barbarism, and vain (as sciolists always are) of its new acquirements. This was not altogether the case ; it was the humour of the times which had made men neither Christians nor pagans, which could again confound Jupiter with Barnabas, and Mercury with Paul. From all this, however, it is plain enough, that, inde- pendently of that hold which the Church of Eome takes of any people by engaging their senses, and combining some religious K 130 REFOEMATION IN ITALY. [Essay III. rite with all the ordinary duties and occupations of common life, it bound the people of Italy by a spell of their own, even the natural affection which men have for the rites and customs of their forefathers. 2. Again — In some countries, and more especially in Eng- land, since the reign of Edward III., there had been a constant poUtical struggle going on between the secular and ecclesiasti- cal authorities. The king and nobles had perpetually to dis- pute the tyrannical pretensions of the Eoman Cathohc church ; for though Tityrus might go to Rome in search of liberty (Virg. Ec. i. 27), the men of England thought it the last place where she was likely to be found. A quiet but organized opposition to the pope was thus formed, which the Reforma- tion found in the country and fed upon. In Italy, no spirit of this kind could exist, because the secular and ecclesiastical authorities were there united in one and the same head. In Italy, therefore, there was not that political pabulum for a reformation which existed elsewhere. The seed fell upon stony ground, and sprang up, indeed, but withered for lack of mois- ture. 3. Further — Amongst the Italian reformers themselves there were many unhappy divisions, which wasted their strength. Some of the questions that thus ministered strife were upon fundamentals — the doctrines of the Trinity and Atonement. Here accommodation was impossible, because there was a dis- agreement as to the object of worship. Others were more speculative, and might perhaps have admitted of adjustment. Luther and Zuingle, in their conflicting sentiments on the Eucharist, had each their zealous followers in Italy, and the former, interposing with his characteristic impetuosity, only widened the breach. Dr. M'Crie thinks that, on this occasion, Luther was to be blamed — that he ought to have remembered that the whole cause of evangehcal truth was at stake — that its Mends were few in number and rude in knowledge — that there were many things which they were not yet able to bear — that they were sheep in the midst of wolves — and that the ten- dency of his interference was to divide and scatter, and drive Essay III.] REFORMATION IN ITALY. 131 them into the mouth of the wild beast (p. 148). Luther, how- ever, would not have been Luther had he acted otherwise than he did — he was not the man to conciliate, hut to correct: — we must take the evil with the good — the temper, which made him the fittest instrument in the world for pulling down the strongholds of errors that were pestilent, made him incapable of coming to a compromise with errors (so he thought them) which were Venial. Melancthon would have done so ; but ■would Melancthon have shaken in pieces the popedom ? We can only say of Luther and Zuingle in this matter, as was said of Eidley and Hooper in another, ' that God's diamonds often cut one another, and good men cause afflictions to good men.' Still the cause of the Keformation in Italy, no doubt, suffered in these disputes. 4. Again — It would be monstrous to make it matter of charge against any man, that he does not lay down his life for a cause, in which he feels the greatest interest notwithstanding : yet it is not to be denied that the blood of the martyr is the seed of the church, and that the early retreat of many of the leading reformers from Italy was sadly unpropitious to their cause. Unquestionably, Peter Martyr did a perfectly justifiable act — justifiable even according to the very letter of Scripture — when he fled from Lucca, where it would have been death for him to stay : but when from his place of security he addressed a letter of reproach to his quondam congregation, because, deserted by their leader and dismayed by the sight of the engines of the Inquisition, they had recanted, he was not forwarding the Reformation so successfully, as if, like our own intrepid Rowland Taylor, in the parish which had long been the scene of his labours, he had crowned them all by cry- ing aloud, 'I have preached to you God's word and truth, and am come this day to seal it with my blood.' 6. But that which contributed to the suppression of the Reformation in Italy, above everything else, was, as we have already said, the establishment of the Inquisition, and the wicked wisdom with which it was managed. Though many made their escape before the storm fell, still, as we have seen, K 2 132 EEFOEMATION IN ITALY. [Essay III. martyrs were not wanting ; but the effect of their sufferings was comparatively lost by the secrecy with which they were inflicted. The deed was done in the night — perhaps in the prison — if before spectators, ecclesiastics chiefly or altogether, who could then give out, without fear of contradiction, that they died, after all, penitent sons of the church. In England, the persecution was well meant, but ill conducted. It should have gone upon the principle of quietly exterminating the heretics, instead of exposing them in flames before the people, as a warning that they too might come to that place of tor- ment. To exhibit a fellow- creature leaping up and down under the smouldering faggots, and shrieking, ' I cannot bum,' was not to admonish, but to horrify. How could such things be seen and heard, and the Eeformation stand still ? Nothing, indeed, but the most unaccountable bUndness of heart could have caused the Church of Eome to hazard such experiments as these upon the feelings of a spirited people, or prevent her from perceiving that all terror at such sights would be neces- sarily lost in loathing and indignation. And so it came to pass. They revolted multitudes who witnessed them. They gave force to that spirit of ultra-reformation, which drove the Puritans to ride rough-shod over all that had been popish, both bad and good — and they supplied an honest martyrologist with materials for a work which animates the piety and preserves the protestantism of the country, so that by means of John Fox, the martyr, though dead still speaketh, and to this very day, ' E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries, E'en in fcw cashes live their wonted fires.' IV.-PALEY/ Oct., 1828. The state of religion in this country, in the early and middle part of the last century, was very far from satisfactory, hut the mischief arose out of the events of the century before. Great national convulsions do not pass away at once, perhaps never pass away altogether, and the numberless consequences they involve should be taken more into account than they often are, by those who contribute to them as expedients for some tem- porary end. The immediate effect of the reign of the Puritans was to bring all religion for a season into contempt — to let loose a mob of reprobates, whose pride it was to be thought no hypocrites; and truly they were none. This frenzy soon worked itself out, but the evil did not end here. In physical diseases there is often a secondary fever, more dangerous than the first ; and so there is in moral. Happy indeed would it have been for the nation if it could have been content to set up its religious rest in the tenets of the great divines of our church who lived at that period, or who had recently ceased to live — but their voices could not make themselves heard in the storm. If learning unbounded — if a fancy the most vivid — if devotion, and earnestness, and faith unfeigned, would have sufficed for that generation. Bishop Taylor might have supplied its wants. If the time demanded a sagacity able to exhaust * The Worlcs of William Paley, D.D., with additional Sermons, dkc. London Mag., April, 1825. Essay V.] DR. PARE. 181 hand of possessing so considerable a sum, he would have continued longer in an University which he quitted with a heavy heart, and which he was ever proud to acknowledge as his literary nursing-mother. It is melancholy to reflect on the numbers of young men who squander the opportunities afforded them at Cambridge and Oxford, without a thought; ■ casting the pearl away," Hke the jEthiop, while, at the very moment, many are the sons of genius and poverty, who, with Parr, are struggling in vain to hold fast their chance of the learning, and the rewards of learning, to be gained there, and which would be to them instead of house and land. Thus were Parr's hopes again nipped in the bud, and those years (the most valuable of all, perhaps, for the formation of character), the latter years of school and college life, were to him a blank. Meanwhile Dr. Sumner, then master of Harrow, offered him the situation of his first assistant. With this Parr closed; he took deacon's orders in 1769; and five years passed away, as usefully and happily spent as any which he lived to see. It was while he was under-master of Harrow that he lost his cousin, Frank Parr, then a recently- elected Fellow of King's College. Parr loved him as a brother; and, though himself receiving a salary of only fifty pounds a year, and, as he says, and as may be well believed, ' then very poor,' he cheerfully undertook for Frank, by way of making his death- bed more comfortable, the payment of all his Cambridge debts, which proved to be two hundred and twenty-three " pounds ; a promise which, it is needless to say, he faithfully kept, besides settling an annuity of five pounds upon his mother. It would be unjust to Parr not to give an extract or two from the letters which he wrote to his dying friend. They are such as must serve to cover a multitude of sins in our estimate of him who could write them. ' Oh ! my dear, dear Frank, oh ! were that day arrived to both of us, when every sigh shall be stopped and every evil done away, and our souls lifted up from this vale of sorrows to boundless and heavenly joy. Let me open myself yet further to you. Should it please God to deprive me of you, I know it is my duty, and through 182 DK. PARE. IIEbsat V. His grace it shall be my endeavour, to bear the stroke. But if it falls, I shall, my dear friend, have no vfishes to continue. My hopes, my thoughts, will follow ; and I shall long, perhaps impa- tiently long, for that hour which shall restore us to each other, and bring us to our God. My prayers, my dear friend, I do not fail to offer up in behalf of your body and your soul ; I dare say you do the same for me. May the Almighty, for His dear Son's sake, hear us both ; save, preserve, bless us for ever. I hope to get the towels ready in a day or two. Pray make yourself easy, my heart, about all money, and claim mine as your own. Let no false pride, no superfluous delicacy, no unfriendly, unmanly, unchristian sus- picions keep you from repeating your demands. " Greater love," says our Saviour, " than this has no man, that a man should lay down his life for his friend." God is my judge that I would most readily, most contentedly, most gladly die for you, my dear, dear soul ! Can I then refuse you anything else ? We have a common interest here, a common hope hereafter. Heaven grant our friendship to last to all eternity. If the towels are ready you will perhaps see me for an hour or two on Thursday or Friday evening. Write a line by to-night's post. Write, if it be only a line. Pray eat three or four jellies a-day. Pray take care of your- self. I commend you to the great God and His most gracious Sou the Lord Jesus Christ. Through His mediation and intercession may we live long on earth and meet in heaven.' — Vol. i. p. 48. ' My dear, dear, Frank,' he writes shortly after, ' I could not bear the idea of suffering you to feel one uneasy thought, and therefore I sent you three guineas this morning, on the very moment after my arrival. I will, in a few days, send you some towels, and, if you please, a table-cloth or two, and other necessaries which you iind occasion for. Write me word of the consultation. Tell me what say your physicians about your health and earthly condition ; and tell me, oh ! my dear creature, what your own heart suggests about your future one. May that God, whose mercy is over all His works — that God who will not reject the meanest of His creatures, when they approach Him in the name of a crucified, interceding Saviour; may He mitigate your pains, may He restore your health, may He bless your soul; even so. Lord Jesus. Amen. Yours to eternity, ' S..Parb.' — i. p. 49. In 1771, when Parr was in his twenty-fifth year. Dr. Sum- ner was suddenly carried off by apoplexy. Sir W. Jones, the ESBAT v.] DE. PAER. 183 most illustrious, perhaps, of his pupils, writes to Dr. Bennet on this occasion as follows : — we quote the letter more for the sake of showing the ardour of this extraordinary man, in his pursuit after knowledge and fame, than the want of it towards the memory of his old master, evinced in the opinion expressed of Dr. Sumner. ' You will think more highly of my sincerity than my gratitude, when I tell you that I was not so deeply affected with the loss of Sumner, as you seem to be. My confidence in him had been con- siderably decreased for the last three years, and I began to take pleasure in his company less than ever. As to himself, he had too many misfortunes to make life desirable. I have learned so much, seen so much, written so much, said so much, and thought so much since I conversed with you, that were I to attempt to tell half what I have learned, seen, writ, said, and thought, my letter would have no end. I spend the whole winter in attending the public speeches of our greatest lawyers and senators, and in studying our own admirable laws, which exhibit the most noble example of human wisdom that the mind of man can contemplate. I give up my leisure hours to a political treatise on the Turks, from which I ex- pect some reputation : and I have several objects of ambition which I cannot trust to a letter, but will impart to you when we meet. If I stay in England I shall print my de Poesi Asiaticd next summer, though I shall be at least two hundred pounds out of pocket by it. In short, if you wish to know my occupations, read the beginning of Middleton's Cicero, pp. 13, 18, and you will see my model, for I would willingly lose my head at the age of sixty, if I could pass a life at all analogous to that which Middleton describes. Parr talks of being with you at Christmas ; I fear I shall not be able to ac- company him. Farewell! The time, I hope, will come, when we shall see more of each other than we have been able to do for the last seven years.' — Vol. i. p. 55. Parr now became a candidate for the head-mastership of Harrow, founding his claims on being born in the town, educated at the school, and for some years one of the assist- ants. The Governors, however, preferred Dr. Benjamin Heath, an antagonist by whom it was no disgrace to be 184 DE. PARE. [Essay V. beaten, and whose personal merit Parr himself allowed to justify their choice. A rebellion among the boys, many of whom took Piarr's part, ensued, and in an evil hour he threw up his situation of assistant, and withdrew to Stanmore, a village a very few miles from Harrow. Here he was followed by forty of the young rebels, and with this stock-in-trade he proceeded to set up a school on his own account. This, Dr. Johnstone thinks, was the crisis of Parr's life. The die had turned up against him, and the disappointment, with its im- mediate consequences, gave a complexion to his future for- tunes, character, and comfort. He had already mounted a full-bottomed wig when he stood for Harrow, anxious, as it should seem, to give his face a still further chance of keeping its start. He now began to ride on a black saddle, and bore in his hand a long wand with an ivory head, like a crosier in high prelatical pomp. His neighbours, who wondered what it • could all mean, had scarcely time to identify him with his pon- tificals, before they saw him stalking along the street in a dirty striped dressing-gown. A wife was all that was now wanted to complete the establishment at Stanmore, and accordingly Miss Jane Marsingale, a lady of an ancient Yorkshire family, was provided for him (Parr, like Hooker, appears to have courted by proxy, and with about the same success), and so Stanmore was set a-going as the rival of Harrow. These were fearful odds. Achilles himself could not stand single-handed against the steady course of the Scamander, and an ancient institution, like ' that ancient river,' is pretty sure in the end to sweep its ephemeral opponent away. Whether the system of education adopted at this place, which certainly reminds us of that of Milton, contained within itself the seeds of its own dissolution, or whether the lads who had been hitherto under Dr. Sumner ran away with the coach when Parr held the reins, with a strong indeed, but unsteady hand, solitdque jugum gravitate carebat, — however this was, it came to pass, that in spite of 'Attic symposia,' and groves of Academus, and the enacting of a Greek play, and the perpetual recitation of the Essay v.] DR. PARR. 185 fragment in praise of Harmodius and Aristogeiton," the estab- lishment at Stanmore declined, and at the end of five years Parr was not sorry to accept the mastership of an endowed school at Colchester. To Colchester, therefore, he removed with his wife and a daughter in the spring of 1777. Here he took priest's orders at the hands of Bishop Lowth, and found society congenial to him in Dr. Foster, a kindred Whig, and in Thomas Twining, a kindred scholar. Hitherto Parr had not published anything. The proximity of Harrow had acted upon him like an incubus. Eeleased at length from this op- pression, his spirit began to revive, and the following letter from Sir W. Jones indicates that he had some intention of printing a sermon, an intention which he did not however then fulfil:— ' Worcester, March &th, 1778. ' My Dear Friend, — Your letter overtook me a few days ago, and I am so hurried that I must answer it in very few words. If your sermon be not likely to hurt you and your family, by giving fruit- less offence to men in power, I will answer for your reputation, and exhort you to print it with your name ; without it, you must not expect to have the charges of publication defrayed, as few men read a book with so unpromising a title as a Sermon on the %1th February, 1778. I shall not be in the Temple till the 30th April, then I shall be wholly at your service. You will send a copy of your discourse to me, and may rely on my sincerity as well as ou my attention ; but in the name of the Muses, let it be written iu a legible hand, for to speak plainly with you, your English and Latin characters are so ill formed, that I have infinite difficulty to read your letters, and have abandoned all hopes of deciphering many of them. Your Greek is wholly illegible, it is perfect Algebra; and your strictures on my Isseus, excellent and valuable as they are, have given more fatigue to my head and eyes than the whole trans- lation. Half an hour in the day would be as much time as you could employ in forming your characters, and you would save four times as much of your friends' time. I will speak with the sincerity which you like; either you can write better or you cannot; if you can, you ought to write better; if not, you ought to learn. I "• Field, T. i. 898. 186 DE. PARE. [Essay V. scribble this as fast as I can move the pen, yet to me it is perfectly legible ; it should be plainer still, if my pen were better, or I were less hurried. Farewell ! my dear friend, if I did not love and respect you, I would not give you this chiding, which I know you will take in good part.' — P. 102. Whilst we are on the subject of bad writing, which is a very common and very inconvenient species of affectation, we re- commend to the attention of all whom it may concern, a very amusing letter from Tweddell to Parr. Tweddell, it seems, was superintending for Parr the publication of his ' Sequel,' a pamphlet against the Rev. Mr. Curtis, to whose name there is an allusion in the first line, and who had fallen under Parr's wrath without any just cause. ' Dear Sir, — Curtce nescio quid semper abest rei — Anglice, you will never have done with ; however, you say the last altera- tion shall be the last, and I will take care that it be made. And now, as I suppose I am freed from the danger of any more head- aches, occasioned to me by your amanuensis, let me request of you to give him a jobation upon his villainous penmanship. To a nervous man he is as fatal as a physician. Small, indeed, are the hopes of life, if you enter a correspondence with bim. His abomi- nable hieroglj^hics shake you from top to toe. Pray, my good sir, do labour to convince him that letters were designed to be the intelligible expression of ideas, to convey distant meaning by legible characters, to be the faiihful interpreters of thought between remote friends. But Martin, I perceive, has formed a directly opposite opinion. He thinks that they were formed for the purposes of per- plexity. Why else is he more obscure than the prophetess of Cumae? He differs, indeed, from the Sybil in this respect, that her leaves were worth the pursuit, and rewarded the pains of him who found them. Martin does not commit his to the winds, know- ing that, from their perfect inutility, his correspondent will perform that office himself. You, as a moderate man, ought not to employ Martin as your amanuensis. For why ? His letters put me in mind of tumult and anarchy ; there is sedition in every sentence ; syllable has no longer any confidence in syllable, but dissolves its connection as preferring an alliance with the succeeding word. A page of his epistle looks like the floor of a garden-house, covered with old crooked nails, which have just been released from a cen- Essay V.] DR. PARE. 187 tury's durance in a brick wall. I cannot cast my eyes on his cha- racter without being religious. This is the only good effect I have derived from his writings : he brings into my mind the resurrection, and paints the tumultous resuscitation of awakened men with a pencil of masterly confusion. I am fully convinced of one thing, that either he or his pen is intoxicated when he writes to me, for his letters seem to have borrowed the reel of wine, and stagger from one corner of the sheet to the other. They remind me of Lord Chatham's administration, lying together heads and points in one truckle-bed. And could you, notwithstanding, sir, think that I was so infatuated with Martin's handwriting, that for the sake of perusing it one half-hour earlier, I should all along prefer paying the price of double, and treble, and quadruple postage, to having it inclosed to Mr. Wilbraham ? If it could answer any end df your's better by sending it to me than under cover to Mr. W., I should not have mentioned this, but really I receive it within half an hour of the same time ; and as for your writing on the outside of your letter, single sheet, it answers no one purpose. They consider the weight, and charged me for the last one shilling and eightpence, and for the one before two shillings and sixpence, and in the same way various times of our correspondence lately. In future, therefore, I will be obliged to you to convey every hundred weight of letters in Martin's writing by separate packets to Mr. Wilbraham's. Though now, indeed, I apprehend I shall not receive many more — I really do, as you say, most heartily and unfeignedly rejoice that our joint task is at an end.' — Vol. i. p. 393. Parr was evidently fond of living in troubled waters ; accord- ingly, on his removal to Colchester, he got into a quarrel with the trustees of the school on the subject of a lease. He printed a pamphlet about it, which he never published; re- strained perhaps by the remarks of Sir W. Jones, who con- stantly noted the pages submitted to him, with ' too violent/ ' too strong ; ' and probably thought the whole affair a battle of kites and crows, which Parr had swelled into importance ; or, it might be, he suppressed it, influenced by the prospect of succeeding to Norwich School, for which he wa's now a can- didate, and by the shrewd observation of Dr. Poster, ' that Norwich might be touched by a fellow feeling for Colchester; and the crape-makers of the one place sympathize with the 188 DK. PAER. [Essay V. bag-makers of the other.' If the latter consideration weighed with him, it was the first and last time that any such consider- ation did, Parr being apparently of the opinion of John Wesley, that there could be no fitter subject for a Christian man's prayers, than that he might be delivered from what the ■world calls 'prudence.' However it happened, the pamphlet was withheld, and Parr was elected to the school at Norwich. Soon after his removal there, which was, in January, 1779, be received the following letter from Sir W. Jones, fraught, as Dr. Johnstone observes, with sentences of gold, which it is ever to be regretted were so often forgotten by his revered friend : — ' Worcester, July IQth, 1779. ' My dear Parr, — I take up my pen, after a long interval, to answer your friendly letter of the 4th of April. Remember to reserve for me a copy of your book ' (the pamphlet above alluded to), ' and by the first opportunity to send me all that is printed, together with the preface. I shall value it for the sake of the writer, and for the intrinsic merit of the writing ; besides I am resolved to spheterize ^ome passages of it, and to apply them in the continual war which I maintain against the unjust and the unprin- cipled. Isseus is highly honoured by you. Let me entreat you to take care of your observations on the work, as I shall want your friendliest assistance and freest censure on revising the next edition. In the second edition the notes shall be, at your request, more numerous ; but I cannot destroy the unity of my work by a minute examination of particles and points. Let me beg you, at your leisure, to read with attention the speeches of Demosthenes against Zenothemis, Apaturius, Phormio, Lacritus, and Dionysidorus, and inform me whether they have ever been translated, except by Wolfius and Auger. It is possible that I may amuse myself with translating and explaining them, as they all relate to the foenus nauticum of the civilians, or the bottomry of the modern commercial nations ; and I wish to be informed whether any other speeches on the same subject are extant. I rejoice that your situation is agree- able to you ; and only grieve that you are at such a distance from London. You speak well in your letter of your Dean ; yet I have been told that you are engaged in a controversy with him ! Oh, my friend ! rem&nber and emulate Newton, w}w once entered into a EssAT v.] DE. PAEE. 180 philosophical contest, but soon found, he said, that " he was partirtg with his peace of mind for a shadow." Surely the elegance of ancient poetry and rhetoric, the contemplation of Qod's works and God's ways, the respectable task of making boys learned and men virtuous, may employ the forty or fifty years you have to live more serenely, more laudably, and more profitably, than the vain warfare of con- troversial divinity, and the dark mines and countermines of uncertain metaphysics. Whether the apia-Tsia, have been assigned me in Wales, I know not; but the knowledge of men which I have acquired in my short forensic career, has made me satisfied with my present station, and all my ipiXoxifiia is at an end.' — Vol. i. p. 110. At Norwich, Parr ventured on his first publications, and obtained his first preferment. The publications consisted of a sermon on ' The Truth of Christianity,' 'A Discourse on Edu- cation,' and 'A Discourse on the Late Fast;' the last of which opens with a mistake singular in Parr, who confounds the sedition of Judas Gaulonitis, mentioned in Josephus {Antiq. xviii. 1. 1), with that under Pilate, mentioned in St. Luke, xiii. 1, 2, 3) ; whereas the former probably preceded the latter by twenty years, or nearly. The preferment which he gained was the living of Asterby," presented to him by Lady Jane Trafford, the mother of one of his pupils; which, in 1783, he exchanged for the perpetual curacy of Hatton, in Warwick- shire, the same lady being still his patron : neither were of much value. Lord Dartmouth, whose sons had also beett under his care, endeavoured to procure something for him from Lord Thurlow, but the chancellor is reported to have said, ' No,' with an oath. The great and good Bishop Lowth, how- ever, at the request of the same nobleman, gave him a prebend in St. Paul's, which, though a trifle at the time, eventually became, on the expiration of leases, a source of affluence to Parr in his old age. How far he was from such a condition at this period of his life, is seen by the following incident given by Mr. Field.* The doctor was one day in this gentleman's library, when his eye was caught by the title of ' Stephens' " Vol. i. p. 123. 1 90 DE. PARE. [Essay V. Greek Thesaurus.' Suddenly turning about and striking ve- hemently the arm of Mr. Field, -whom he addressed in a manner very usual with him; he said, 'Ah! my friend, my friend, may you never be forced, as I was at Norwich, to sell that work, to me so precious, from absolute and urgent ne- cessity.' But we must on with the Doctor in his career. In 1785, for some reason unknown to his biographer. Parr resigned the school at Norwich, and in the year following went to reside at Hatton. ' I have an excellent house ' (he writes to a friend), ' good neigh- bours, and a Poor, ignorant, dissolute, insolent, and ungrateful, beyond all example. I like Warwickshire very much. I have made great regulations, viz. bells chitne three times as long; Athanasian creed ; communion service at the altar ; swearing act ; children catechised first Sunday in the month ; private baptisms dis- couraged ; public performed after second lesson ; recovered a £100 a-year left the poor, with interest amounting to £115, all of which I am to put out, and settle a trust in the spring ; examining all the charities,' — Vol. i. p. 827. Here Warwickshire pleases Pan- ; but Parr's taste in this and in many other matters (as we shall have occasion to show by- and-by), was subject to change. He soon, therefore, becomes convinced of the superior intellect of the men of Norfolk. He finds Warwickshire the BoDotia of England, two centuries behind in civilization." He is anxious, however, to be in the commission of the peace for this ill-fated county, and applies to Lord Hertford, then Lord Lieutenant; but the application fails; and again, on a subsequent occasion, to Lord Warwick, and again he is disappointed. What motives operated upon their lordships' minds to his exclusion, they did not think it necessary to avow. Perhaps they were afraid that the great scholar would have dogmatized on the bench till he had dis- gusted his colleagues, and passed sentence on the culprit till he had spoiled their dinner — that he would have condemned » Vol. i. p. 333. EssatV.] DE. PAER. 191 the laws where he was only called upon to administer them, and scrutinized the conduct of the constable with as much severity as that of the thief — that he would have been debat- ing, when he should have been passing the accounts, and have impeded all decisions by showing how much might be said against any — that he would have looked upon a poacher with too much lenity, and a rioter for church and king with too much wrath — that he would have found in every pauper who appealed to him, a victim, and in every overseer, a tyrant — that whilst his brother justices could see no signs of grace in a culprit, from the evidence against him, he would have dis- covered virtue in his looks ; and would have peremptorily pronounced, that if ' that man be lewdly given, he deceived him.' If any, or all of these doubts crossed the mind of the Lord Lieutenant, we confess that we do not think they would have been wholly groundless ; and that, ably as Parr would have descanted on justice in the abstract, it is our belief that -he would have ' ministered it indifferently^ though not in the sense in which this is made the subject of our prayers. A free press is the issue through which all the peccant hu- mours in the body politic make their escape; and the type (that we believe is the phrase) in which Parr's bile presented itself was in a Preface to a new edition of Bellendenus. Amongst the various works of this learned Scot (to some of which Mid- dleton was greatly indebted for the materials of his 'Life of Cicero,' though he makes no acknowledgement of it) was a dissertation ' deTribus Luminibus Romanorum.' One of these Lumina was Cicero ; the two others have been conjectured, but without any adequate ground as far as we can see, to be Seneca, and Pliny the Elder. The first of these portraits, however, was all that he lived to complete. His editor, there- fore, taking up his parab-le in his turn, executes an elaborate dissertation on the characters of the Three Lights of Britain, Lord North, Fox, and Burke. The sympathy in the two cases, it will be perceived, is of the kind which subsisted be- tween the rivers of Macedon and Monmouth. Of the Latin of this Preface there can be but one opinion — it is the work ] 92 DE. PARE. [Essay V. of a scholar, profound in grammar, boundless in acquirement, prompt in its application — but it is a work of art rather than of nature— it appears to us to be a wonderfully skilful solution of a problem 'wherein, all imaginable idioms of the language and all the sentiments of its best authors being given, it is required to construct out of them a panegyric upon Fox and a satire upon Thurlow. It cannot here be said of Parr, as was said of Cowley, that he wears the garh without wearing the clothes of the ancients. His coat may consist of purpurei panni, but the most splendid patches are patches still. In his quotations, however, which are in numbers without number. Parr is often singularly happy (it was his vocation, as he somewhere says, to quote) ; often they follow in the natural train of his thoughts, and, in those cases, give them the sting of an epigram ; but often, again, it is easy to see that they are only traps which he has himself set that he may himself fall into them, and like Burton, in his 'Anatomy of Melan- choly,' he may be suspected of making his matter germane to the phrase if the phrase be not germane to his matter. His characters, as usual, are powerfully and (where his prejudices conspire to such an end) most agreeably depicted ; but if bis fair course be hindered, if he has to speak of an opponent, he forgets what is due to high place, to established reputation, to living genius, and pursues his victim with the acrimony of one who had sustained at his hands some personal wrong. It is then that we remember the warning voice of Sir William Jones, and in sorrow, not in anger, contemplate the enraged and impotent politician, where we might have seen the pro- found and dignified divine. That impatience of restraint which vented itself in unavailing declamation on the people's rights, aided by Parr's scholarship, might have given birth to another 'Liberty of Prophesying.' — That graphic pencil, which could depict the senator with such force, might, under a different influence, have traced out another ' Divine Exem- plar." Those fervid appeals to the duty and responsibility of a minister of state, might have taken another direction, and enforced the ' Duty and Doctrine of the Minister of God.' Essay V.] DE. PARE. 193 'Thus did Parr,' says Dr. Johnstone, ' unsheath his sword against the Pittites, and throw away the scabbard. Yet it is' not certain,' he adds, ' though his party had gained the victory, that he would have been permitted to partake the spoil — for Mr. Fox had not always the power of disposing of preferment even when minister. Had the coalition succeeded, it is only a surmise that he might have been a canon residentiary of St. Paul's. On the appointment of the Regency, it was said he was to be promoted to the see of Bristol ; but when his friends were actually in administration, it was insinuated that Lord Grenville declined promising a bishopric, on the ground of Parr's unpopularity in his own profession. If it were so, he had sacrificed himself for nothing; wasting his powers in praising those who could not serve him ; embarking those great talents in the service of a party or a faction, which were intended for the benefit of his country and his race, and, above all, departing from the great rules of his religion, — net to speak evil, nor to give offence to the least of his brethren.' — Vol. i. p. 208. How well Parr was satisfied with the manner in which he had executed his task, is seen in the following ludicrous effu- sion of self-complacency addressed to his friend Homer : — 'Dear Sir, — What will you say? or, rather, what shall I say myself of myself? It is now ten o'clock at night, and I am smoking a quiet pipe, after a most vehement and, I think, a most splendid effort of composition : an effort it was indeed, a mighty and a glorious effort — for the object of it is to lift up Burke to the pinnacle where he ought to have been placed before, and to drag down Lord Chatham from that eminence to which the cowardice of his hearers and the credulity of the public had most weakly and most undeservedly exalted the impostor and father of impostors ! Read it, dear Harry, read it, I say, aloud ; read it again and again ; and when j'our tongue has turned its edge from me to the father of Mr. Pitt — when your ears tingle and ring with my sonorous periods —when your heart glows and beats with the fond and triumphant remembrance of Edmund Burke — then, dear Homer, you will for- give me, you will love me, you will congratulate me, and readily will you take upon yourself the trouble of printing what in writing has cost me so much greater, though not longer trouble. Old boy, I tell you that no part of the preface is better conceived, or better written ; none will be read more eagerly, or felt by those whom you o 194 DE. PAKE. [Essay V. wish to feel it, more severely. Old boy, old boy, it's a stinger, and now to other business.' — P. 197. Surely Malvolio himself was never more enamoured of his own parts ! ^ At this point in his work. Dr. Johnstone enters upon the History of Dr. White's famous Bampton Lectures, and traces through a long series of correspondence (what may be called without a pun) the double-ieti^ng of the professor, who was at once employing Mr. Badcock, a learned dissenting minister, in Devonshire, and Dr. Parr, at Norwich, to prepare him for appearing with credit in the pulpit of his university. The whole affair, which is now fully cleared up, deserves a short detail as a literary curiosity. The lectures were delivered in 1 784, the three first in March, the last in October. On No- vember 27, 1783, Dr. White writes thus to Mr. Badcock : — ' Our correspondence must be a profound secret. The world sus- pects that my journey (to South Molton) has not been a mere journey of pleasure — you will, therefore, please to direct your letters to me thus : — To John Richardson, Esq., Wadham Coll. Oxford. — Mr. R. has been a member of our college, and now lives in London, and I shall give strict orders to the porter to bring all letters thus addressed to me. The letters I send to you I shall myself give into the hands of the postman as he goes out of Oxford .... 'The parts I particularly wish you to undertake are Lectures 1, 7, 8. Of the first, I have nothing further to say than to desire, if it can be done with propriety, that some elegant compliment may in some part be paid to the university. Lecture 8 I leave wholly to yourself. 'Dec. 9, 1783. — Your introduction to Lecture 1, dated Dec. 5, gives me the most perfect satisfaction. * A hundred other extracts might be given where Parr gloats over his own literary offspring, without apparently the least sense of shajne. But ' enough, and more than enough.' Dr. Wallis, we remember, in one of his controversial tracts against Hobbes, observes, that were any one idle enough to collect together the different passages in which his antagonist had pi-aised himself in iisworks, and to publish them under the title of Hobbiua de ae, they would form a large and most ridiculous volume. In like manner may we say that Parrius de se, deduced arid digested from his Works and Conversations, would present one of the most extra- ordinary exhibitions in literature. His only contemporary equal in this respect was, like himself, a man of great talents. Lord Ersklne. They met sometimes — but we stop. Essay v.] Bll. PAER. 195 'Jan. 8, 1784. — Dr. Parr is at present employed in reviewing this Lecture (No. 2), and has already sent me his revision of the first half, executed in a masterly manner. I request the favour of you to undertake the subject from this place, and to continue it up till the final establishment of Christianity. I devolve the whole business on yourself. I have no hints to suggest to you, and you need none. The part where we encounter Gibbon ought to be bril- liant, and the conclusion of the whole must be animated and grand. I most earnestly entreat you to furnish the third Lecture as soon as it suits your convenience, and to adapt your manner of writing as much as you possibly can to the style of my printed sermons.' Thus was Parr revising the lectures, quite unconscious that Dr. White was receiving assistance from any other quarter. So matters seem to have remained till Mr. Badcock's death, which happened at Sir J. Chichester's in 1788. Then it was that a note for £500 from Dr. White was found in his pocket- book. Dr. Gabriel, of Bath, Mr. Badcock's friend, now has- tened to town, and had an interview with the professor, who received the intelligence with confusion and displeasure. It ■was then agreed that Dr. Gabriel should go down to South Molton, where Mr. BadSook's sister resided, and where his papers had been deposited. The object of this visit seems to have been to negotiate some new arrangement respecting the payment of the note. The visit, however, was paid, and Dr. Gabriel then followed the professor to Oxford. He found him dissatisfied at the result of the journey, and was accused by him of being in league with Miss Badcock to pick his pocket. Incensed at this. Dr. Gabriel threatened to bring the whole -transaction before the University, and gave him till the next morning to cool and apologize. No apology was made, and Dr. Gabriel was as good as his word. Then it was that the news of Badcock's co-operation in the Bampton Lectures first reached Parr. He did not believe it. In an unguarded moment he asserted that he was the only man in Dr. White's confidence on the subject, and, finally, he told it as a secret to Mr. Smyth, of Pembroke College, that it was himself that had given White the assistance. The denouement of this piece, o 8 196. DR. PAER. [Essay V. ■which has all the intrigue of a farce -without any of the fun, ■was now advancing. In Decemher, 1785, Parr writes to Mr. Badcock from Exeter College, ' Professor White driving the j)en,' expressing his earnest ■^vish to hecome personally acquainted ■with him. 'I long to see you, to converse with you, and to enjoy, under the auspices of your presence and the animating influence of your ex- ample, those pure and subHme pleasures which can only be tasted by scholars who are without pedantry, by philosophers who judge without dogmatism, and by Christians who believe without bigotry. White tells me that you never eat, never drink, and what is worse than all, never smoke ; but he does ample justice to the soundness of your judgment, to the copiousness of your knowledge, to the gaiety of your spirits, to the purity, to the candour, and to the be- nevolence of your heart. Let me then entreat you to saddle your horse and hasten to Oxford, where I shall stay till the 14th of January, and where the cup which I am now quaffing will neither be full nor sweet unless you pour out into it the arTixov j^.i7\l which flows in rich and abundant streams from your head and heart,' &c. —Vol. i. p. 936. Professor White, it is to he remembered, was the amanuensis on this occasion, and took charge of sending the letter to the post. It is singular, however, that Mr. Badcock never received it. Letters will miscarry sometimes — yet the mind instinct- ively thinks of an intrigante in a play who has a lover secreted in each closet, neither of them conscious of a rival, and one or hoth to he kept in their ignorance ; and though in general nothing can he more opportune in a crisis of this kind than for one of the parties to he suddenly carried oflf in a fit of apoplexy and thereby rescue the lady from dying of a fit of perplexity (as Sir W. Scott somewhere has it), yet in the pre- sent instance it happened that dead men told more tales than living ones, and that the times were no longer those in which they ceased to speak when their brains ■were out. Parr, whose suspicions hegan to he awakened by the events we have de- scribed, calls upon Dr. White for an explanation. The ' most worthy and learned friend ' sinks into ' Eeverend Sir,' and ' Dr. Essay v.] DR. PARE. 197 White presents his respects/ — and a meeting between the pro- fessor and the doctor, in the presence of witnesses, takes place at Hatton, when the Bampton Lectures are spread out, and each seizes upon his own. The famous congress of Hotspur and Owen Glendower, with their map before them, at the Archdeacon of Bangor's, seems to have been the precedent by which they agreed to act, if we may judge from the spirit of the subsequent correspondence ; but we will not enter further into their mutual criminations, their ' setting up of claims,' ■ and allowing of pretensions,' and protracted teasings of one another ; suffice it to sum up the whole in the words of Dr. Johnstone, that 'Whether the plan of the Bampton Lectures was solely White's may be doubted ; that much of the execution-certainly lay between him and Badcock ; but that the whole was superibtended and revised by Parr, and that, admitting the calculation of one-fifth of the whole to belong to Parr, and that the whole was twice submitted to his revisal, and twice received material alterations from his keen eye and critical pen, we must admit him into a co-partnership of the work.' — Vol. i. p. 275. Thus may these Bampton Lectures, '\vhich invited more public attention than any others which were ever delivered, be added to the number of instances in which men of letters have been triiim Uterarum homines; and whilst the congregation of St. Mary's thought they were listening to one of their own professors alone, of him it might have been said, as it is said of one of Wordsworth's heroes (Harry Gill, if we remember right) — ' His voice it was the voice of three.' * Parr was blamed at the time for the share he took in Dr. ' In this singular performance, in which the interlocutors were all so strikingly different in their ca«t of mind and general character, it is really surprising what a uniformity of style and manner prevails. A priori, we should have thought Parr's deep and mouthing tone might have been distinguished anywhere; but here, whether it be the effect of the callida junctwra, or that similarity of lan- guage which joint labourers insensibly fall into, these sermons read very well as the composition of one man. It is strange, too, that if there be occasionally a more nervous or brilliant paragraph, it would appear, from the authentic appor- tionment of parts, not to belong to Parr, but to Badcock. 1 98 DE. PARR. [Essay V. White's exposure, and it was said that by divulging the assist- ance he had given him, he did much more than cancel the obligation. We cannot see that he was much in fault — Parr did his friend an ill turn unwittingly in his attempt to vindi- cate him; and even had it been otherwise. White's want of confidence justified Parr's want of secresy — there can be no treachery where there is no trust. We now come to the republication of ' The Tracts by War- burton and a Warburtonian,' with a dedication and preface by Dr. Parr. In again producing to the world two early com- positions of the Bishop of Gloucester's, which their great author had set no store by, and which the discreet editor of the Bishop's works had suppressed in his edition, there was no great harm; — they were curious as the first-fruits of such a harvest of genius — and Parr, though not a blind, was a sincere admirer of Warburton, and was well aware that the author of the 'Divine Legation,' of the ' Julian,' and, we will even add (how- ever objectionable in many respects, and in its spirit especially), of the ' Doctrine of Grace,' could amply afi^ord to be known by productions less advantageous to his fame than these. But to be the means of reviving the ' Delicacy of Friendship ' and the ' Letter to Leland,' after the long lapse of time which had ensued since their first publication, and when their author had shown himself desirous to suppress them, this was not the courtesy which was due from one man of letters to another ; it was not the respect which an inferior clergyman owed to his diocesan ; it was not the charity which should lead every Christian, and particularly every Christian minister, to extinguish instead of prolonging the strife. We are no partizans of Bishop Hurd — we scarcely regret the chastisement he received. He had volunteered, like Sir Mungo Malagrowther, to be the whipping- boy to the king whom he had set up for himself, and he there- fore could not justly complain if he was made to smart for it. Surely, if Warburton had thought himself seriously aggrieved, Warburton knew how to complain and how to take vengeance. We compassionate Dr. Hurd the less, because the suppression of his pamphlets against Jortin a,nd Leland appeared, after all, Essay V.l DE. PAER.- 199 to be the effect of caution rather than of contrition. In the Letters between himself and an eminent Prelate, those useful scholars (and especially the former of the two) are still spoken of in language sufficiently offensive and contemptuous. It is true that this shows itself chiefly in Warburton's share of the correspondence ; and, on the other hand, it is true that some allowance is to be made for WarburtoiJj-swho had reason to complain of a want of generosity, at least, in Jortin's dealings towards him; — but by deliberately causing these Letters to be published (a thing on many accounts so objectionable), Dr. Hurd identified himself here as elsewhere with his master — while, by making that publication posthumous, he denies to his character (that which no right-minded man would wilfully violate) the sanctuary of the grave, and puts it out of our power to contemplate him (as we fain would do) in the respectable light of one who had lived to refuse the highest reward to which ecclesiastical ambition can aspire, content • to spend the evening of life in the peaceful retirement of Hartlebury, in oblivion of all that had given him offence, in sorrow for all whereby he had offended, and in humble hope of a better translation than that which he so magnanimously had declined. Still this does not justify Parr. Dr. Hurd was in the wrong, but Dr. Parr was not therefore in the right. Again, had Bishop Lowth, his illustrious patron, at that time suffered under the faint praise of the Bishop of Worcester, something might have been allowed to Parr's gratitude and indignation ; but the ' Life of Warburton,' wherein that commendation is bestowed, was still, under the hands of its author, to be subjected again and again to the critical retort, till all its spirit should have evaporated before exposure to the world. Or further, had the contro- versy been of any recent date. Parr might have found some excuse in the excitement of the moment and the inquietude of conscious talent; but it had been long laid to sleep : both the parties aggrieved were already beyond the reach of censure or of praise, quietly reposing in the grave, and the aggressor, now old and stricken in years, was following them apace. 200 DE. PAKE. [Essay V. What then could impel Parr to an attack so furious, so uncalled- for, so unjustiable ? in which he stings with the venom of a hornet, animamque in vulnere ponit. It needs little observa- tion of mankind to discover how seldom the cause of a quarrel is commensurate with the consequences — 'how great a matter a little fire kindleth.' Parr had taken several opportunities of speaking handsomely of Dr. Hurd in his notes upon Eapin, written some six years before. They were not then published, it is true, but they are now, and stand upon record as his deliberate opinion of the bishop at that time. And this cir- cumstance, we think, is enough to show that it was not War- burton's own treatment of Lowth that drew down upon the head of Warburton's friend the vials of Parr's wrath. But when Parr was presented to Hatton, which was in the diocese of Worcester, ' He necessarily went to Hartlebury — be was treated coldly — not even a repast was offered him. This slight roused his indignation. He probably, during the effervescence of his rage, recollected the " Delicacy of Friendship," which he bad caused to be copied at Norwich, and perhaps he did not forget the sneer concerning the long vernacular sermons at Whitehall ; and his fancy under such influence would naturally conjure up a phantom in the shape of Bishop Hurd, which had marched across the high road of his in- terests, and blighted the prospects of bis preferment' — Vol. i. p. 307. Hinc ill(B lacrym or giving Lord Holland hints as to the topics of his speeches in parUament, and the proper objects of his attack there," would be as little agreeable to us, as we suspect such correspondence was to the parties who were honoured with it. Dr. Bennet, indeed, as usual, avails himself of the privilege of a schoolfellow, and tells him his mind ; and Lord Holland, we observe, after the manner of his illustrious uncle in his correspondence with Wakefield, is more willing to talk upon Cicero's treatise ' De Eepublica,' than upon ' Welles- ley versus the Orangemen, or Canning versus Peel;''' and is apt to throw out, as a tub for the whale, when that leviathan would willingly take his pastime with him in the Catholic question, some such small matter as the meaning of ' Gordyla ' in an epigram of Martial, or the authority there might be for making a dactyl out of ' opinio! ^ Burke, too, in his letter of thanks to Parr, for the honourable post he had assigned him in the preface to ' Bellendenus,' praises the Latin, descants upon the general advantages of classical literature, excuses the public for their neglect of himself; in short, does anything and everything, rather than that which was the most natural thing of all to have done, — compliment Parr upon the political sagacity which that preface displayed.' Nor does the circumstance of his Whig friends leaving their literary champion to a dead loss of df40, on this his first great effort in their favour, argue much (as his friend Homer ventures * He might have remembered what Joseph Scaliger says of Lipsius, who affected the character of a deep political writer. ' Neque est politicus, nee potest quic- quam in politiS, ; nihil possunt pedantes in illis rebus : nee ego nee alius doctus possumus scribere in poUticis.'— (ScaZi^rej-ana. 1695.' 8vo. p. 245. ^ Vol. vii. pp. 92, 102, 103. =Vol. vii. pp. 125, 142, 146. d Vol. vii. p. 160. " Yd. vii. pp. 127, 129, 130. f Vol. i. p. 199. 232 DR. PARE. [EssAT V. to hint") for the value they set upon his pohtical services. The truth was, Parr had too httle discretion to he a useful ally. What Fox said of Burke, might have been said of him with at least equal truth : — ' He was certainly a great man, and had very many good as well as great qualities ; but his motto seemed to be the very reverse of /K,)iJ£» ayav; and when his mind had got hold of an object, his whole judgment, as to prudent or imprudent, becoming or indecent, nay, riglit or wrong, was perverted when that object was in question. "What Quintilian says of Ovid, si ingenio temperare quam indulgere vialuisset, was eminently applicable to him, even with respect to his passions — si animi sui affectibus temperare qwim indulgere maluisset, quid vir iste prastare non potuisset ! ' — Vol. vii. p. 288. But these passions drove Parr astray : his views changed as his feehngs changed : he wanted that consistency in his estimate of men and measures, which is the result only of a judgment exercising itself upon the actual relations of things, and con- tinuing fixed in its awards, so long as those relations do not vary. Early in Ufe he voted at Brentford for John Wilkes. In 1787, he pronounced an elegant panegyric upon Lord North. Then the only fault of that statesman was, that he had prose- cuted the American war* with too little vigour.'' In 1793, he writes to Mr. Coke, ' upon the war (with France), as well as upon the contest with America, artifice prevails for a time over plain deahng, sophistry over argument, declamation over wisdom, and natural pride over natural prudence. I detest the principle ; I dread the event, and to every measure in detail, I anticipate disappointment and disgrace.''* In the notes upon Rapin, written about 1783, we are told, » Vol. i. p. 419. * For an authentic account of the events, both pnhlic and priTate, which led on to the crisis of the American war, see a recently-published ' History of the Pro- vince of Massachusetts' from 1749 to 1774, from a MS. left by Mr. Hutchinson, then governor of the Province. Mr. H. is already known as the Historian of America, to whom Kobertson so often refers as authority. We understand that a journal of the governor's is likely to appear before long, kept with great accuracy from day to day, entering more into the secret details of those times, and continued for some years after his return to England, when he had much intercourse with ministers, and some with the king. -■ \n\. iii. p. 106. >• Vol. vii. p. 235. JissAT y.] DR. PARR. 233 ' In the character of this extraordinary man (Mr. Pitt), we see a rare and magnificent assemblage of excellences, as well natural as acquired ; of attainments not less solid than brilliant ; extensive learning ; refined taste and discernment, both widely comprehensive and minutely accurate. By a kind of intuition he seems to grasp that knowledge of men and things, to which others are compelled to ascend by slow and patient toil. His genius, in the mean time, acquires fresh lustre from integrity hitherto uncorrupted, and I hope incorruptible. The fierceness of ambition he tempers, or is capable of tempering, by the softest and most exquisite feelings of humanity. n ItOLf, yEVOlO TTUTpOg [»37r(WTEpoeJ rd S a.\\' OfioToe. — Soph. Aj. To the generous ardour of youth he has added the extensive views of age, and he may, without flattery, be said to possess at once the captivating eloquence of Callidius, and the yet more fascinating policy of Scipio, " est enim non veris tantum virtutibus mirahilis sed arte qnddam abjuventd ad ostentationem earum compositus." ' — Vol. i. p. 147. In his preface to ' Bellendenus,' written about 1787, Pitt, this very Pitt, is the beardless senator — one of the foolish, the raw, the boyish counsellors who had taken the state by storm — one who thought one thing and said another — who acted from a love of experiment rather than from a prospect of success — ■who consulted the complexion of the body politic, whilst he sucked out its vital blood — whose knowledge of mankind, of mankind metaphysically (■which is an element of an orator), of mankind historically (which is an element of a statesman), was abso- lutely nothing ; his oratory florid and sophistical ; his senti- ments at once turgid and jejune ; his invective insolent, his jokes vapid. ^ In 1790, Lord John Townshend is informed by Dr. Parr, that he has received a canvassing letter from Mr. Pitt (the same Mr. Pitt), and that from a sense of pure obligation to him, as he persuaded himself, on account of his treatment of a criminal recommended by him to Mr. Pitt's consideration, he was disposed to give him his support ; as though Mr. Pitt (which Lord John » Vol. iii. pp. 118-120 et seq. 234 DR. PARR. [Essay V. in bis reply shrewdly observes) ' might not as well have hoped for his suppression of Bellendenus on the same account,'* for that work, it seems, was published after this act of grace had been performed by the minister, and, what is more, was published when the act must have been of much more recent date, and much more fresh in his memory. Finally, in 1807, we read in the ' Philopatris,' that ' no man was ever more applauded than Mr. Pitt in the zenith of his power, and that his talents will be most assuredly conspicuous in the records of history.''' Here again, as in the case of Bishop Hurd, it is probable that Parr, in spite of his mutabihty, was sincere in the opinion he expressed at the moment, but it was dictated under the influence of the feeling of the moment, and took the complexion of that feeling whatever it might happen to be. In his notes upon Kapin's History of Whigs and Tories (to which we have already alluded), there is constantly found a sober practical view of things which even we can cordially praise. In his private correspondence, of a later date, we meet with passages of a heedless and precipitate intemperance which all must as cordially condemn. It is true that the notes on Rapin were written at a time when the Coalition had thrown politicians of extreme parties into a most unnatural fit of mutual politeness, and the letters (many of them at least) when the voice of the nation had declared against the Whigs, and driven them into a more than usual degree of exacerbation ; this, however, is only to account for the inconsistency — not to excuse it. In the ' Notes,' the influence of the crown, arising out of offices and honours which are at its disposal, may be justified to the satisfaction of every impartial friend to the liberties of his country." It is less formidable in reality than appearance : it produces many advantages and prevents many evils which escape superficial observers — it is scarce strong enough to sup- port itself ' against the latent but growing strength, the un- defined and perhaps undefinable privileges of the House of Commons.''^ " Vol. TU. p. 633. ■> Vol. iv. p. 122. •= Vol iii. p. 541. <» Ibid. p. 627. iissAY v.] DR. PARE. 235 In the 'Notes,' no reformation is advised except such as Lord Bacon recommends, such as should be wrought by men of moderation, ' who would follow the example of time itself, which innovateth greatly, but quietly.' There we are told, ' That if the moderate Whigs should have the merit of furnishing such reformers, we are encouraged by the experience of past ages to believe that the moderaie Tories will not have the demerit of opposing them — that in the mean time the strength of both ought to be centred in a vigilant and resolute opposition to every auda- cious empiric, to every crafty impostor, to a herd of men who stun our ears with complaints of evils which, if imaginary, they wish to exist, and if real, they have been instrumental in creating.' — Vol. iii. p. 631. In the notes upon Mr. Fox's History, there are passages written in the same excellent spirit. On the subject of obe- dience, we quote with pleasure the judgment of Barrow, which, says Parr, ' furnishes us with a sure and safe direction for our instruction.' It is this : — ' Are the objections against obedience so clear and cogent as are the commands which enjoin and the reasons which enforce it? Are the inconveniences adhering to it apparently so grievous as are the mischiefs which spring from disobedience? Do they in a just balance counterpoise the disparagement of authority, the violation of order, the disturbance of peace, the obstruction of edification which disobedience produceth?' — Vol. iv. p. 494. Here, then, moderation is the word. Now let us turn to the letters, for a practical commentary on these peaceable maxims. 'I have little inclination' (Parr writes to Dr. Gabell in 1818) ' at this moment for philology, for I breathe fierce indignation against the property-tax, fiercer against the military establishment, and most fierce against the royal confederates, of whom, I tell you plainly, that I would put every one of them to death as enemies of the human race. I don't love Napoleon, but, driven to a choice of evils, I am compelled to be undesignedly a Napoleonite ; and this is plain English language, in that true English spirit, the decay of which will ultimately subject England to the miseries and crimes of a revolution.' — Vol. vii. p. 497. 236 DK. PAER. [Essay Y. Where is the moderation here ? We are equally at a loss to reconcile Parr's love for the Church with his abuse of the clergy. ' No man living feels deeper, or more sincere, or more ardent admiration than I do for the founders of the English Church ; they were wise, good, and great, and my heart often blesses them.' — Vol. viii. p. 490. ' You know again,' says he, in another place, ' my firm and sincere attachment to the Church of England ; an attachment not arising from the honest prejudices of education, or upon any sordid views of interest, but upon a sincere and well-founded conviction of tran- scendent excellence and solid utility.' — ^Vol. i. p. 267. ' I would not part with the Church, which is our bulwark against vulgar fanaticism,' (Vol. vii. p. 217) says he again. His letter to Dr. Milner, the late Roman Catholic Bishop, on his audacious assertion, that Bishop Halifax died a Roman Catholic, is written throughout in the temper of a man who felt unfeigned indignation at an attempt to do the Church of England v/rong. So are his remarks on Mr. Butler's character of Archbishop Cranmer; — and are we not to think him in earnest, when he writes in one of his notes upon Rapin, — ' It will be diEBcult to name a time, compared with the present, when the Church of England was adorned by prelates who were possessed of learning at once so elegant and so profound ; who united such liberality of spirit with such purity of morals, and were distinguished by so much faith vrithout timid credulity, aud so much piety without trifling superstition.' — Vol. iii, p. 685. Yet, within six years of this very period (during which we are not aware that there was any particular murrain among the bishops), he tells Mr. Homer that 'he thinks three bishops out of five are most desperate knaves.* We should have taken no notice of this expression had it been a solitary one ; it might have escaped in the gaiety of his heart; a mere idle word, such as he might have used when at his ease and amongst 'his Vol. i. p. 304. Essay V.] DE. PAEE. 237 familiars;' but in the course of Parr's correspoiidence sneers at the clergy occur so frequently, that we think the Church has some right to do more than mourn in silence at finding herself so often wounded by an arrow feathered from her own wing ; at seeing the kid so unnaturally seethed in the milk of its mother. For instance, his neighbour concurs with him 'in condemning regents, ministers, courtiers, placemen, aspirants, and worldly-minded parsons, whether bishops, dignitaries, priests, or deacons, when they conspire to blindfold and enthral their fellow-creatures.' ' He, like other parsons, has a pre- dilection for mystery.'" 'Here some sleek and bowing court- chaplain would say to me,' &c.'' ' Was Lady amused with the complimentary verses upon bishops ? The subject, I believe, is continued, and I suspect that you would be more than amused if you were to see the just and poignant descrip- tion of prelates who are not much in your favour, or my own.'" ' I hope Lord Grenville now sees what sort of stuff makes bishops &n.i priests.''^ 'I give no quarter to the parsons.'" 'Priests, like kings, never forget or forgive.'* 'You see the articles of my belief, and it happens upon this occasion as it does not always among my clerical brethren, for I do, ex animo, think all that I profess.' s Instances like these abound. Now, if Parr thought that he was tickling the ears of his great Whig friends (for to them, we observe, these sneers are principally confided) when he was thus debasing his own profession, or that he was gaining their esteem whilst he was thus hallooing them on (of themselves nothing loth) to attack its more distinguished members, and even directing them to the place where they might fasten the fang with the greatest effect ;'' if he thought he should gain from them the poor praise of freedom from professional pre- judices, whilst he exulted in the defeat of one churchman by another, when the more appropriate feeling was to lament that » Vol. Tii. p. 264. t Ibid. p. 275. " Iloid. p. 275. ■1 Ibid. p. 128. "^ Ibid. p. 126. f Ibid. p. 136. 8 Ibid. p. 257. " Ibid. p. 146. 238 BR. PARE. [Essay V. there should be any contest among them at all, — ' Sirs, ye are brethren' — we venture to say that he was out in his reckoning. Sir Samuel Eomilly, in one of his letters, hints as much : ' I must not venture to speak as freely of judges as you do of hishoj)s,' is the language of that honourable man, himself surely as little of a time-server as Parr. Parcit Cognatis maculis sirailis fera, is a law of nature, which cannot be broken without disgrace to him who does it violence. That Parr should have been anxious to obtain a seat upon a bench, where, according to his notions, he would have met with such worshipful society, is again strange; yet he makes application to Lord Holland for his interest, on the death of Bishop Horsley ; and we know not what a churchman of lower pretensions to independence could have done more for himself than this. Whether Parr had any right to complain ' of professional neglect on the part of his episcopal brethren,'* after what we have detailed, we do not presume to say; our intercourse with Christian bishops has been very limited, but we imagine that their feehngs in one respect must be very like those of a Hebrew Jew of our acquaintance, and that with him they would find some difiB- culty in bringing themselves to say ' Fair air, you spat on me on Wednesday last ; You spurned me such a day ; another time You called me dog ; — and for these courtesies I '11 lend you thus much monies.' That quickness of feeling, however, and disposition to abandon himself to its guidance, which "made Parr an inconsistent man, made him also a benevolent one. Benevolence he loved as a subject for his contemplation, and the practical extension of it as a. rule for his conduct. He could scarcely bear to regard the Deity under any other aspect. He would have children taught, in the first instance, to regard Him under that aspect • Tol. vii. p. 232. Essay V.] DR. PAEB. 239 alone ; simply as a Being who displayed infinite goodness in the creation, in the government, and in the redemption of the world." Language itself indicates, that the whole system of moral rectitude is comprised in it — etiefiyeTeh, henefacere, bene- ficence — the generic term being, in common parlance, empha- tically restricted to works of charity.^ Nor was this mere theory in Parr. Most men who have been economical, from necessity in their youth, continue to be so, from habit, in their age — but Parr's hand was ever open as day. Poverty had vexed, but had never contracted his spirit ; money he despised, except as it gave him power — power to ride in his state-coach, to throw wide his doors to hospitality, to load his table with plate, and his shelves with learning; power to adorn his church with chandeliers and painted windows; to make glad the cottages of his poor ; to grant a loan to a tottering farmer ; to rescue from want a forlorn patriot or a thriftless scholar. Whether misfortune, or mismanagement, or folly,- or vice, had brought its victim low, his want was a passport to Parr's pity, and the dew of his bounty fell alike upon the evil and the good, upon the just and the unjust. It is told of Boerhaave, that, whenever he saw a criminal led out to execution, he would say, 'May not this man be better than I ? if otherwise, the praise is due, not to me, but to the grace of God.' Parr quotes the saying with applause. ° Such, we doubt not, would have been his own feelings on such an occasion. In him, indeed, the quality of mercy may, in one sense, be thought strained — in its excess it was in danger of confound- ing right and wrong, of withdrawing a safeguard from morals by substituting compassion towards the offender for abhorrence of the offence. He saw in the poor prostitute, for instance, one who did not possess the same virtuous education as him- self, but who did possess the same understanding, the same feelings, the same Creator, the same Redeemer, — one who had been once spotless, though now polluted — one who had been - Yol. ii. p. 163. " Ibid. p. 61. ' Vol. it. p. 171. 240 DK. PAKE: PssAT T. practised upon ty wiles, and then branded by infamy, — one •who had been abandoned by others, till she was taught to despair of herself; unused to kindness till she was dead to a sense of it, or to counsel, till she was too hardened to be re- claimed." In the indulgence of such feelings there may be the risk we have said ; still they must be confessed to argue kind- ness of heart in him who possesses them, and self-knowledge, too, which rather directs him to take heed lest he fall- himself, than be officiously active in casting the first stone at one who is prostrate. When, however. Parr, in his zeal for mitigating the criminal code, talks of women who have murdered their own children as 'unhappy mothers;' and laments the execu- tion of a young man of twenty-two (a hardened villain upon his own showing)'' for robbery, and adds some hundred pages afterwards in a note, with the most amusing naivete, that he is sorry he omitted, in his former mention of this hopeful youth, that he had added rape to robbery, — in these and the like cases, his benevolence is misplaced ; his feelings, however ex- cellent, are running riot; and in his zeal for the interest of his client, he forgets that something is due to his country. But so it ever is with Parr — he never knows when to stop. Liberality in thinking is abstractedly a very good thing ; let it, however, keep within bounds — let it oppose itself to its natural antago- nist, bigotry, and all is well ; but when it employs itself in removing all restrictions instead of prescribing such only as are meet, in confounding all distinctions instead of distinguishing with propriety, then it is a good thing abused. What conclusion can be drawn, for instance, from the lan- guage of one who both praises Bishop Home as ' orthodox,' and calls Mr. Belsham's translation of the Epistles of St. Paul ' an excellent work,' qualifying, indeed (as is usual with Dr. Parr), by ' I do not entirely agree with him on some doctrinal points ' — of one who numbers amongst ' wise and good men,' such utterly incongruous names as Sir T. More, Erasmus, Johnson, - Vol. ii. pp. 269-2('l. i" Vol. iv. Essay v.] DK. PAEE. 241 and Voltaire!'- Of one who has a word of praise for Arch- bishop Laud,'' and a word of praise for John Wesley ; " who would he put down in the number of the latitudinarian divines, whilst perhaps their most leading characteristic was opposition to Popery ;'* who felt very jealous for the honour of the Roman Catholic, and very jealous for the honour of the Unitarian j'' who proclaimed the praises of Dr. Priestley from the pulpit in a manner surely too unquahfied and ambiguous,' and defended Bishop Bull, ' a man whom he most unfeignedly revered," from Collyer's accusation, that the great polemic had not expressed an opinion on the consubstantiality of our Lord ; e who intro- duced the use of the Athanasian Creed into his church at Hatton, and was even an advocate for more than all the pomp and circumstance of the established form of worship,'' yet gave the sanction of his presence to a sermon of Dr. Priestley in a meeting-house at Warwick, and again, in a few days after, to the ordination of a minister in the same congregation.' We do not desire to deliver an opinion as to which of these particulars are worthy of imitation, and which unworthy, though an opinion we may have ; but this we do say, that, taken together, they are utterly useless for the purpose of enabling a man to sketch out any definite and uniform course for himself, with Parr for his pattern. Yet, Catholic as was Parr's spirit, he had one reservation : his horror of fanaticism is such that he even " Bibl. Parr. p. 21. ' Vol. iv. p. 139. " Vol. iii. p. 697. 'I Field's Life, vol. ii. p. 336. ' Vol. viii. p. 516. f Vol. Tii. p. 128. ^ Vol. 1. p. 672. ^ One of the Doctor's peculiarities was his extraordinary fondness for churcli bells, and many and pressing were the calls upon the pockets of his friends and correspondents to contribute to those at the church at Hatton. He says himself, ' I have been importunate, and almost imprudent, in my applications.' Campa- nology was a subject so much at his heart, that, in one of his letters, he intimates an intention of treating upon it at large. In the 'Bibliotheca Parriana,' p. 479, is a long note on Magius de Tintinnabulis, in which he notices PaccichelU de Tintinnabulo Nolano, as the only learned work he had met with on bells. He does not seem to have fallen in with the commentary of Angelus Eoccha, or the poetry of Dellingham, or the Campanologie Rationale of Durandus, or the huge folio of Valentinus, which would have been a great comfort to the Doctor's mind. What would he have said, however, to the incomparable theory of Frater Johannes Drabicius, who, in his book De Ccelesti Statu, printed at Mentz, 1618, employs 425 pages to prove that the principal employment of the blest in heaven will be in the continual ringing of bells ! ' Field's Life, vol. i. p. 289. R 842 DE. PAKE. [EssatV. hints at legislative interference to put it down ; ' if any restric- tions on the extravagance of human opinion, exercised on matters of theology, be called for, it was here. But whilst his eye was engrossed by the evil which he magnified. Parr was not perhaps sufficiently keen-sighted towards another which was in reality no less. It was the cold, phlegmatic theology of one age that caused an explosion of zeal in another, and so it would do again. Wesley succeeded, because the times called him up ; his fire ran over the country, because the trees were all dry. It was the same with Luther, and it is the same in all great revolutions. They make the hero, not the hero them. We do not think that the Church of England has much to fear from the extravagance of sectaries, so long as she is true to herself; but if her sons so far forget the spirit that breathes throughout her beautiful services, as to transform themselves once more into mere essayists on morals, what happened before will happen again, and the sectarian furor (now, we suspect, on the decline) will be found to have only slumbered under the deceitful ashes, to burst out and blast us afresh. One word on the style of Dr. Parr. That it is stately, mea- sured, copious, abundant in fine diction, none can deny, but we confess that we should like it better were it less perfect, less laboured, less rhythmical. In its structure it is weakened by antithesis ; in its terms it is not the mother-tongue in which we were born. The natural language of this country is Saxon, not Latin. Why, then, should scholars, English scholars, be ashamed of their speech bewraying them ? AuflffdEiv d" £|e(rT»5 donu, Tot; AiiiptEtaci, Why should they have recourse to words and idioms of foreign growth, when they have such as will serve them quite as well at home ? It is not a mere afiair of taste, but a serious evil to have two languages in a country ; especially in a country where the institutions, both civil and religious, enjoin much commu- nication between the parties who respectively use them — the educated and uneducated classes. In the trial by jury, such " Vol. It. pp. 545, 549. . EssatV.] dr. parr. 213 difference of speech materially interferes with the degree of information imparted to twelve peasants by the counsel and the court, and therefore interferes with the administration of jus- tice. In addresses from the pulpit, it disables the preacher from saying much to the edification of a rural congregation ; ' he is a barbarian unto them,'" and the more learned the more barbarous. In this latter case, too, the evil is the more serious, owing to a lack of teachers in our church adapted to the lowest of the people. The Eoman Catholic church, with that wisdom of the serpent which marks her construction throughout, pro- vided such teachers in her friars. She took care, that if there were to be any priests of Jeroboam at all, they should still be- long to the sanctuary — they should follow after her. Here was opened a natural and harmless vent for every stirring spirit among the inferior members of her congregation, who, in a church constructed like our own, assumes the shape of a methodist preacher, and joins the ranks against her. The evil is the greater, because that class of poor scholars, which in former times resorted to our universities as servants to their more opulent neighbours, is, in fact, annihilated. The name remains, the species is extinct ; and thus a gap is left in the graduated scale of our clergy, which should have been filled by spokesmen whose birth and connections peculiarly fitted them to speak to the multitude in their own way, as it were ' in the Hebrew tongue, to which they would give the more silence.' Now, the only manner in which the clergy can stand in this gap, is by writing their sermons in the vernacular language (never was a word more misapplied than this when used in reference to Parr's sermons), by systematically preferring Saxon to Latin or French derivatives wherever there is a choice, which will be very generally found : and who shall presume to say that compositions must be mean and vulgar, fabricated out of such a vocabulary, while we see it sustaining so nobly all the simple history of the patriarchs, and all the sublime imagery of the prophets in the 'English undefiled ' of our Bible ? These " 1 Cor. xiy. 11. R 3 244 DR. PAEH. [Essat V. remarks have been more particularly suggested by Dr. Parr's sermons at Hatton. Excellent as many of them are, we have no notion that his people could in general understand a great deal of them; not so much from the depth or intricacy of the argument, as from the exotic diction in which it is often conveyed. We have nearly brought our paper to its close, and how httle have we said of Parr as a scholar ! Yet this, after all, was the character in which he filled space in the public eye. But so it is. What do these eight thick volumes supply in addition to his well-known classical puhUcations, by which we are to measure him ? ' Quibus indiciis, quo teste probatur ? ' We can pursue the quotation to be sure, and allow, ' Verbosa et grandis epistola venit — ' a long and learned letter to Professor Pillans is come on the use of the subjunctive mood — ^which is something; and from his other letters, many other observations, both on syntax and prosody, might be gleaned, enough to show how utterly dis- proportionate his achievements have been to his means, and only enough for this. Por whether hindered by fickleness of taste, or aversion to continuous labour, or the embarrassment of literary affluence, or the fear of putting bis fame in jeo- pardy, or by the mere mechanical difficulty of expressing his thoughts in signs that could be read, certain it is that be has written no one work whereby his place amongst scholars can be fairly determined. He has edited no classic, but has shown his quaUfications for such a task by demolishing those who had edited one ill. He has composed no grammar, yet rushes upon every unwary transgressor against its nicest rules, and transfixes him with his grammatical obelus. He will not engage in lexicogi-aphy ; yet he overwhelms Dr. Maltby with materials for his Morell, and half quarrels with him because he will not adopt them. Epitaphs, however, in Latin, he has written, and such as prove that this unaccommodating language was perfectly due- Essay V.] DE. PAER. 245 tile under his hands ; for he who can suhdue it to such a pur- pose can subdue it to anything — as he who can walk a tight rope can walk anywhere. If Parr ever failed, the fault was in the nature of the work, not in the inability of the artist. For one who dies young, of whom little is known, and therefore little can he said but that his friends mourn over him, there is a befitting pathos in the brief, unadorned Koman inscription, more eloquent than a jeremiad of lamentations. ' Absa- lom ! my son, my son ! ' is the simple language of true grief — and ' Filio unico et charissimo parentes infelicissimi,' tells a tale of domestic distress which individual experience will, in general, fill up with bitter fidelity. In such cases, ' to imitate the noble Eomans in brevity,' awakes a sympathy which the utmost babbling of loquacious sorrow never can. Such is the effect of the epitaph on Smitheman. But when the character of the deceased is to be expressed, the case is altered. Then to adhere strictly to the severe (we had almost said meagre) modes of the ancient inscription, is to sacrifice the dead man to the dead language, and to distort his limbs, in order that his bed may fit him. Such is the epitaph on Johnson. Parr lived to allow himself greater licence, and, by so doing, in all pro- bability satisfied himself less, and all other men better. For, if this species of composition, as practised by the later Greeks and Eomans, succeeded to the sensible symbols of a former age, to the shield which bespake the departed warrior, or the oar which was laid on the sailor's grave, and, therefore, still confined itself to the expression of a few matters of fact, we see no reason why these manacles of its barbarous origin should be binding upon us, on whom the ends of the world are come — or, if the stern republican of Greece or Kome, jealous of all superiority, was not disposed to lavish words upon the dead, however deserving, we see no reason why we, who are not yet at least republicans, should be phlegmatic too — or, if the heathen of eighteen hundred years since was fitly described by certain heathen terms, does it seem reasonable that we, who are not heathens, should be described (in order to save the Latin) in the same, or else not to be described at all, any more than ZiG DE. PAER. [Essay V. that a man who is killed by a cannon should be described (in order to save the Latin) as having been killed by a battering- ram — or, if the ancient epitaph was calculated to be placed on a stone by the highway side, do we see a reason for adopting a slavish adherence to its forms, when our own monuments stand in religious buildings, and should, therefore, have inscriptions breathing a religious spirit? — ' Duo cum idem faciuut, Hoc licet impune facere huic, illi non licet, Non quo dissimilis res sit, sed quo is qui facit' Ter. Adelph. v. 4. These, or some such considerations, weighed eventually with Dr. Parr, and his epitaphs became more circumstantial, more ornate, more Christian. Such are those of Burke, of Sir J. Moore, of Dr. Burney. Parr's Greek reading was as boundless as his Latin. It is bursting its cerements in every letter and in every note that he writes. ' I must say of him, as was said of an old writer," — and then comes the Greek. His friend has the gout, or he has it not (for either case will serve his turn), and then comes chiragra and x^'P^Tf", and a dissertation thereupon. He is opposed to a gigantic host of politicians, but then ' he says, with old Hesiod,' &c. He is in trouble, not, however, as other men are, but h T^txi^ta xaxSv ; he gets out of it, and then To'v xifiBv EufE, He desires to illustrate the sentiments of a sermon or a pamphlet ; and the philosophy, the oratory, the biography of Greece lie at his feet. As Attic Greek critics there were some superior to him, — as universal Greek scholars, perhaps none. Porson could not have produced the notes on the Spital Sermon, nor could Parr have written the Preface to the Hecuba. We mean nothing invidious in the comparison, — Arcades amho. Neither of them has left behind him his fellow. Unhappily for the world and for themselves, they both forgot, the one in his appetites, the other in his passions, that ' prudent, cautious self-control,' which Burns, who knew so well what it was to lack it, pronounced to be ' wisdom's root.' We must end as we bc-gan, with expressing the difficulty we EssAT v.] DR. PAER. 247 find in comprehending and producing Parr's character as it really was. We are lost in a maze of contradictions. Nor ■we only, but those who knew him from his boyhood upwards ; witness that most clever and graphic sketch of him given by Sir W. Jones, in Greek : * he is there ' one great antithesis.' The key to him, however, is this, that he was the creature of feeling almost as absolutely as Rousseau. Hence, his con- clusions, being in obedience to the impulse of the moment, were in general ' too rash, too unadvised, too sudden ; ' both adopted and abandoned without sufficient consideration. His vanity was so extravagant as to make even Parr, with all the dignity of his intellect and acquirements, not unfrequently an object of ridicule to others, and, with all the advantages of a temper naturally cheerful, a tormentor to himself. It set him on the watch to spy out symptoms of disrespect where none was intended, and to exact punctilious attentions, which few pay without reluctance, and none will pay long upon demand. It blinded him to a lesson which the experience of life soon reads to any man, the lesson of his own insignificance — that his society, however agreeable to others, is not essential to their happiness — that they will forego it rather than have it with a tax — that, if he retires from the world, inquiries soon cease to be made about him : and, if he dies, his place is shortly filled up, and himself is forgotten. Parr wanted ballast — ^his judg- ment was not equal to the task of keeping so powerful a machine steady. The disproportion of this faculty to the rest rendered him incapable of sorting his knowledge ; of assigning to his speculations their proper place and relative importance. When he exhibits a great question to our view, he pei'plexes us by the multiplicity of cross lights he throws upon it, all equally s.trong. The prominent consideration which would naturally govern our opinion, is made to lose its eifect by a careful enunciation of the difficulties involved in it. The subordinate consideration, on the other hand, which might have been safely overlooked, is swelled into seem- ing importance by a plausible array of merits which had " Vol. i. p. 478. 248 DK. PAKE. [Essay V. escaped us. Meanwhile our decision is neutralized, for we can only come to that of Sir Eoger de Coverley, ' that much may be said on both sides.' Yet, fond as Parr was of balancing a point speculatively, so that it is not always easy to say which part he takes, in practice he could never hit upon the mean — he could never trace out the line between learning and pedantry, between liberty and licence, between insolence and sei-vility — he was ever running against every post in the race of life, and ever wondering that others passed him by. 'At est bonus' — but, with all his splendid failings, he had splendid virtues too, and many indeed of his faihngs leaned to their side. Though stricken by poverty, he was never tamed into meanness; but emerged from sixty years' comparative want into affluence, with a spirit that would have done justice to the revenues of a sultan. In the worst of times he had crouched to no man, he had been in bondage to no man. Even then he seated himself in cathedra, and dictated a lecture, like one having authority, to prince or prelate, as it might happen.^ He was frank, ingenuous, unguarded; in- capable alike of uttering a falsehood and suppressing a truth — his maxim still was, ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. Contrary to the way of the world ( Parr's way generally was so), the prosperity of his friends tried his attachment to them, much more severely than their distress. He was very likely to pick a quarrel with them, when they were ' promoted unto honour,' either from a feverish suspicion of lukewarmness on their part, or from an ill-concealed pride of independence on his own ; but if they or their children came to be in want, Parr was the last man to turn away from them when they would borrow of him, or to cut their acquaint- ance because they happened to be going to Botany Bay. Of his vast acquirements, he can scarcely be thought to have left behind him such a monument as be was capable of rearing up — no oue great work which he could bequeath unto posterity, with the certahity that they would not let it die.'' » Vol. i. p. 322. b ' What was said of Salmasius' (thus writes a friend) ' may with justice be Essay V.] ' DE. PARE. 249 ' Burn them all/ was one of the many conflicting directions he gave about his papers — so imperfect did he reckon them. His learning went with him to his grave, after having wasted itself for so many years in notes which apparently dripped from his common-place hook into the press, in fugitive con- versations, in desultory correspondence, and, in fairness we must add, in a most liberal communication of it to all who sought it at his hands. We do not mean to undervalue the works which he has committed to us — our opinion of their merits has been expressed in detail. Many of them are, no doubt, such as could have been produced by no other man alive ; but still, as a scholar of the first magnitude, we could have wished that he should have been able to write on some one effort of his own, as his own sepulchral inscription — si monumenium quxris, aspice. This he was capable of doing, and has not done. He has intrusted a large portion of his fame to the memory of those who knew and have survived him ; and when they, in their turn, shall be gathered to their fathers, it will be the classical antiquary alone who will be able to tell of the extraordinary erudition of Samuel Parr. applied to Parr — that Ms learning ran to waste in petty qnarrels and contro- Tersial pamphlets. He, too, like that hero of letters, was one of the promissores librorum^ and, as the ** Cynthia of the minute" flashed across him, was filled by some great prevailing intention, which died ere it came to maturity. " I make my promises," says "Warburton, " like a young courtier, and keep my countenance when I break them, like an old one," — and so his repubUsher might have said likewise. There is enough in his enumeration of the formidable squadron of authors he had set apart for his life of Johnson, to furnish matter both for a smile and a, sigh. He seems to have inherited something from each of those great men of the last age whom we most reverence ; and the surprise is the greater that, with such arrows in his quiver, he should at last have missed the mark. With much of Bentley's bold independence, recondite classical know- ledge, and ready and original application of it ; Johnson's power of mind and precision of language ; Warburton's comprehensiveness of grasp and variety of research ; he has left nothing which can be thought, even by the warmest of his admirers, to have raised him to a parity with any of that illustrious trio. He wanted, indeed, the calx et a/fena — good sense to correct and chasten his specula- tions, sound judgment to discriminate proper objects of inquiry, and a unity of purpose to marshal and combine his resources. With these, how different would have been his fate I Instead of leaving to posterity a character motley, am- biguous, and compounded, in which there is much to blame, much to praise, but everything to laugh at, and compositions in which learning often loses its dignity, and talents their merited respect, he might exultingly have bequeathed to us a name of stable and unequivocal greatness, and works which would have insured him an indestructible fame. ' — MS. VI.-BISHOP BUTLER/ They were sad times that succeeded the civil wars. It was not the court only that was stricken, but the country. ' That was an age not less degenerate in spirit than corrupt in manners ; when all wisdom and virtue and rehgion were almost, in most places, grown ridiculous; when the serious use of reason became, in vulgar opinion, the most impertinent and insig- nificant thing in the world ; when innocence was reputed a mere defect of wit, and weakness of judgment; integrity, a fond pertinacity of humour ; constancy of mind and gravity of demeanour, a kind of sullen morosity or uncouth affectation of singularity ; and all strict practice of Christian duty incurred the imputation of some new-found opprobrious name one or other.' So spake Barrow from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey in the year 1663, when one great coming event had not as yet cast its awful shadow before. But if the physical world be so governed as to he subservient to the moral (which it probably is), and if it be lawful to intrude into the secret counsels of » 1. The Works of Bishop Butler. Oxford, Clarendon Press. 1826. 2. The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature. By Joseph Butler, late Lord Bishop of Durham. With an Introductory Essay, by the Kev. Daniel Wilson, Yicar of Isling- ton. London. 1827. 3. An Essay on the Philosophical Evidence of Chri^ianity ; or, the crediKlity obtained to a Scriptwal Revelation from its coincidence with the Facts of Nature. By the Kev. Kenn Hampden, M.A., late FeUow of Oriel College. London. 1827. Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLEE. 25 J the Most High (which it may not be), it might be thought that to call the people back to a better mind, to sober them once more in the midst of these delirious follies, nothing less could suffice than some national scourge which should make them remember that they were mortal, and that accordingly the plague was commissioned to desolate the land. The moral effect of such a visitation must for a time at least have been great, when every man had to walk with his life in his hand, and when some, foreseeing that the chance of surviving was little, and the chance of decent interment after death less, dug their grave with their own spade, and thus saved themselves from being ' buried with the burial of an ass.' Still the plague does not appear to have whipped the offending spirit out. Like Pharaoh's plagues, it was probably felt, feared, and forgotten ; for, during the century which succeeded it,, both infidel and heterodox abounded; and whilst a Chubb and a Tindal were labouring to destroy the foundations of the Christian creed, a Whiston and a Clarke were maintaining tenets at variance with some of its most essential doctrines. It was an age of reason, and in one respect, at least, rightly so called ; for it was at this period that the faculty acquired fresh force by a more skilful application of its powers ; and the method of induction, which the great Bacon had struck out nearly a century before, was now adapted with signal success to every department of know- ledge. To argue from points established to points undetermined — to advance, from data not to be disputed, to conclusions which would not otherwise be obvious, seems a very simple process, requiring no CEdipus to discover and propound. Yet the want of this rule (simple as it is) had involved mankind in errors innumerable, for it had occasioned a world to be built on mere hypothesis. Now, however, a new order of things arose : ex- periment was substituted for fancy. Sir Isaac Newton, instead of indulging his imagination in freaks about the Iris, let the ray of light through the aperture of his shutter, and divided it into its component colours by his prism of glass, and traced its course through the vessel of water on which it fell ; and upon the substantial observations thus made, constructed his sublime 252 BISnOP BUTLEE. [Essay VI. system of OpticSj and unravelled the mysteries of the rainbow. Locke, pursuing the same course in metaphysics as Newton in physics, emancipated mankind from the doctrines of reminis- cences, innate ideas, and the Uke consecrated lumher; and diverting them from speculative conjectures to the actual exami- nation of their own faculties, founded a fresh era in the philo- sophy of the human mind. By the application of this same principle, medicine was made to supersede magic, and chemistry to take place of alchemy ; and, in a word, science, which hitherto, like the architects of Laputa, had begun to build at the wrong end — in the clouds instead of on the earth, from the chimneys downwards — henceforward laid its foundations on a rock, and only reared such a superstructure as those foundations would warrant. A principle thus wholesome in other investi- gations was no less so in that which concerns us most of all; and as Newton had profited by it in his natural system, and Locke in his intellectual, so did Bishop Butler (in his own province equal to either) avail himself of it in his system of theology. It may well be imagined, from what we have already said, and it will be still more clearly seen from what we shall have occasion to say hy-and-by, that few persons were of a temper in those days to take God's word on trust. On the contrary, so fastidious were the times, that it was not even considered a subject of inquiry, but a mere fiction, agreed so to be by all people of discernment, a good thing for the poor, and a topic upon which a man of parts might very properly make himself merry.'' Butler saw the evil, and projected the remedy. He well knew he had those to feed who were not fit for very strong meat ; and, accordingly, he proposed, in his own characteristic language, to show — what ? that Christianity was true to a demonstration ? — no, hut ' that it icas not so clear a case that there was nothing in it! Here was certainly no great flourish of trumpets. ' Quid feret hie dignum tanto promissor hiatu' was a reproach that no man could cast in his teeth. He " AdTertisement to tie Analogy. EssAT Vr.] BISHOP BUTLEE. 253 gives such a pledge as he feels tlmt he can not only redeem, but redeem an hundredfold ; and the augmented effect of reasoning conducted in this spirit can only be appreciated by those who have felt the dissatisfaction (especially in dissertations upon sacred subjects) occasioned by a contrary process — when a good argument (it may be) is crushed under an unlawful load of conclusions, and a crowd of angels is made to dance upon a needle's point. It is a great secret in the art of reasoning not to go for too much ; and, above all, in dealing with sceptics or unbelievers, is it important to drive the sharp end of the wedge first : seeing this, they may by-and-by ' see greater things than these.' That there is such a thing as a course of nature none can deny. This, therefore, is the ground on which Butler takes his stand, whereon he fixes a lever that shakes the strongholds of unbelief even totheir foundations : for on comparing this scheme of nature with the scheme of revelation, there is found a most singular correspondence between their several parts, — such a correspondence as gives very strong reason for believing that the author of one is the author of both. ' What, if earth Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?' The argument, indeed, does not amount to proof, but to pre- sumption. It is as though the parentage of a foundling were to be made the subject of inquiry : now that it is the child of such or such a parent — of the one or other of the two women, for instance, that strove before Solomon — can indeed only be 7nade out effectually by the production of certain matters of fact in evidence ; but at the same time, if it manifestly resembles an acknowledged son of a parent in question — ' one face, one voice, one habit, and two persons' — this circumstance, though it would not of itself prove the point in dispute, would very greatly corroborate the proofs derived from other and inde- pendent sources, and would overcome many scruples which might otherwise arise in the mind of judge or jury as to any 234 BISHOP BUTLEE. [Essay VI. supposed deficiency in the proofs themselves. Such is the vahie of the argament from analogy. Thus, Revelation declares that we are to live hereafter in a state differing considerably from that in which we live here. Now the constitution of Nature in a manner says so too. For do we not see birds let loose from the prison of the shell, and launched into a new and nobler state of existence ? insects extricated at length from their cumbrous and unsightly tene- ment, and then permitted to unfold their beauties to the sun ? seeds rotting in the earth, with no apparent promise of future vegetation, yet quickened after death, and clothed with luxuriant apparel ? Is not our own solid flesh perpetually thawing and restoring itself, so that the numerical particles of which it once consisted have by degrees dropped away, leaving, meanwhile, the faculties of the soul unimpaired, and its consciousness un- intemipted for a moment ? Is not the eye a telescope, and the hand a vice, .and the arm a lever, and the wrist a hinge, and the leg a crutch, and the stomach a laboratory, and the whole frame but a case of beautiful instruments, which may accordingly be destroyed without the destruction of the agent that wields them ? Nay, cannot that agent, when once master of its craft, work without the tools, and are not its perceptions in a dream as vivid as when every organ of sense is actively employed in ministering to its wants ? What though the silver cord be loosed, and the golden bowl broken, and the pitcher broken at tlie well, and the wheel broken at the cistern, still may not the immortal artist itself have quitted the ruptured machinery, and retired to the country from which it came ? What though the approach of death seem, by degrees, to enfeeble, and at last to suspend the powers of the mind, will not the constitution of nature bid us be of good cheer, seeing that the approach of sleep does the same ? Of sleep, which, instead of paralyzing the functions of the man, is actually their ' second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast.' And if, in some instances, death does lie heavy on the trembling EssAT VI.] " BISHOP BUTLER. 25j spirit, in liow many others does it seem to be only cutting the cords that bound it to earth, exonerating it of a weight that sank it — so that, agreeably to a notion too universal to be altogether groundless, at the eve of its departure it should appear ' to attain To something of prophetio strain ? ' Here, then, the constitution of Nature and the voice of Eeve- lation conspire to teach the same great truth, ' non omnis moriar.' Well, then, such future state asserted, Eevelation next affirms that our happiness or misery in it is in our own keeping; that the Deity, having warned us thereof, leaves us to make our own choice. What says the constitution of Nature to this ? — Even that here again (to use the remarkable words of the author of Ecclesiasticus) ' all things are double one against another ; ' ^ for it is evident that pain is annexed to this object, and pleasure to that, in Xkxi's, present world, with no other view, as far as we can see, than to direct our goings in the way ; that our path is made to lie, even as regards the affairs of this life, amongst burning ploughshares, through which we are left to thread our course, till, by repeated sufferings, we learn to refrain from treading awry ; and that everything above us, and beneath us, and around us, proclaims, in accents not to be misunderstood, that to refuse the evil and choose the good rests with ourselves. Nay, the details of the two systems are singularly alike. Thus, punishment is in this life often foreseen as probable, and dis- regarded — often the full and certain expectation of it is with- held — often it admits of being intercepted up to a certain point, but not beyond that point — often it is risked for present profit — often it is greater than seems commensurate with the gain — often it tarries very long behind, pede claudo, still comes at last, suddenly, with the clamorous violence of an armed man — the cause of it, perhaps, forgotten — poured forth as if from a treasure-house of wrath awaked. Now, all this is clearly not » Chap. xlii. v. 42. 250 BISHOP BUTLEE. [Essay VI. accident, but a system ; not caprice, but design ; pointing out, as with the finger of God itself, that it is the will of the Great - Contriver that thus it should be. Such is the constitution of Nature in this world : yet is it not a literal transcript of the doctrine of Revelation, with regard to the next world, that our warning is given us — our neglect of it to be at our peril — our punishment, sooner or later, to follow our neglect ? When the constitution of our nature tells us beforehand, that, if we are determined to pluck our treasure out of the fire, we must put up with burning our fingers, the case is strictly analogous to that of revelation, when it tells us beforehand, that, if we are determined to seize on present pleasure, we must put up with suffering future pain. Surely these two witnesses agree together, in a manner so remarkable as to leave ample room for apprehension, even on principles the most sceptical, that the latter, like the former, may be bearing God's message. Further — Revelation af&rms this natural government of the world to be a moral one too : a government under which men are not only rewarded and punished (for this is consistent with the most capricious tyranny), but rewarded and punished with a strict reference to the good or evil of their deeds. What does the constitution of Nature say to this ? — Does it again furnish the counterpart? Here, it is true, the heathen poet was for a moment staggered. The passage is well known ; curious, how- ever, as showing how instinctively the argument of analogy suggested itself to a reflecting mind, though showing, at the same time, the difficulty of following it out with success till Eevelation came to hold up the torch : — ' Ssepe mihi dubiam traxit sententia mentem, Curarent superi terras, an nuUus inesset Eector, et incerto fluerent mortalia casu. Nam cum dispositi quaesissem foedera muudi, Prsescriptosque maris fines, amnisque meatus, Et lucis noctisque vices ; tunc omnia rebar Consilio firmata Dei, qui lege moveri Sidera, qui fruges diverse tempore nasci, Qui variam Phoeben alieno jusserit igne Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLEK. 257 Oomplerj, solemque suo ; porrexerit undis Littora, tellurem medio libraverit axe. Sed cum res hominum tanti caligine volvi Aspicerem, latosque'diu florere nocentes, Vexarique pios, rursus labefacta cadebat Religio, causseque viam non sponte sequebar Alterius, vacuo quae currere semina motu Affirmat, magnumque novas per inane figuras Fortuna non arte regi : quae numina, sensu Ambiguo, vel nulla putat, vel nescia nostri.' Claudian : in Rufin. Which, for the henefit of mere English readers, we translate thus : — Oft have I ponder'd, still perplex'd to know, If there be gods who govern here below; If there be gods — or, if all gods denied, Chance must be thought to rule, nor aught beside ; For, when contemplative I traced the plan Of all material things apart from Man — The ocean's bound, the stream's appointed way, The sweet vicissitude of night and day ; — These when I saw, I sooth'd my labouring breast, For God's all-wise dominion stood confest : Stars in their courses seem'd His voice to hear ; His fruits in just succession crown'd the year ; The inconstant moon, His sovereign pleasure known, Dispensed her borrow'd light — the sun his own ; His shores the billows of the deep controll'd. And earth, self-balanced, on His axle roll'd. — Then looked I upon Man ; but now beset With darkness and with gloom was all I met : The base triumphant, and the righteous spurn'd. This shook my faith again, and doubt return'd — Eeturn'd to cast me on the thankless creed, That darkling floats along each random seed ; That through the void immense new forms combine. And Chance, sole arbiter, supplants Design — That still to this our choice must be confined, No gods — or gods that care not for mankind. 258 BISHOP BTTTLEE. ' [Essay TI. The Psalmist himself was for a while troubled with these thoughts that would arise in his heart, seeing as he did, that 'the ungodly came into no misfortune like other folk, neither were they plagued like other men.' but both the poet and the prophet, on further deliberation, came to a just conclusion, and ' absolved the gods.' For, indeed, whatever speculative diffi- culties there might be in the way of such a notion, still a prac- tical belief there is, and ever has been, amongst all nations and languages, that man lives under a moral government after all. ' Who is he,' exclaim the ancients of Thebes, ' who is he whom the Delphic rock of prophecy hath denounced as the doer of deeds unutterable ; the man of the bloody hand ? Time it is that he should flee, with a foot swifter than the horses of the winds : already hath the son of Jove taken arms against him, even hot thunderbolts, and the fearful Fates follow after, and who shall escape them?'" Daring was reckoned the spirit of that man who would sojourn under the same roof, or sail in the same boat, with the profaner of the mysteries of Ceres. ' And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on the hands of Paul, they said among themselves, no doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live.' Why, but that this behef is so strong in man, would such a trifle have been left upon record, as that the pen and ink, with which Charles signed the death- warrant of Lord Strafford, was the very same with which he signed his own, in the bill for the Long Parliament ? Or why, but for this, would the remark have been so general, that the families who despoiled the monasteries rarely continued to prosper ; ' the brand, which the eagle stole from the altar' (as the good old Izaak Walton says), ' and with which she thought to make her nest, serving only to set it on fire.' ' About the year, I suppose, 1615 or 1616,' writes Sir Henry Spelman, in his curious treatise on the ' History and Fate of Sacrilege,' ' I described, with a pair of compasses, in the map of Norfolk, a circle of twelve miles, the semi-diameter according to the scale ' (Ed. Tyr. 463. BssatVI.] bishop BUTLEll. 25a thereof, placing the centre about the chief seat of the Yelver- tons ; within this circle and the borders of it, I enclosed the mansion-houses of about twenty-four families of gentleme?i, and the site of as many monasteries, all standing together at the time of the dissolution ; and I then noted that the gentle- men's seats continued at that day in their own families and names, but the monasteries had flung out their owners, with their names and families (all of them save two), thrice at least, and some of them four, or five, or six times, not only by fail of issue or ordinary sale, but very often by grievous accidents and misfortunes.' — A very singular fact, to say the least of it : but the bare disposition to note it is enough for our purpose — as, indeed, is the disposition in general to construe calamities into judgments ; for it can only arise out of a confirmed belief that we are living under a moral government, whatever may be said or seen to the contrary. Cases might occur to stagger this opinion, as we have said, and must have occurred, so long as a future state of adjustment was only partially taken into the estimate. Still, the opinion itself has universally prevailed; nor can any other account of it be given than that the tendency of the constitution of nature was felt to be such as established and supported it. And this who can deny ? Who can deny, as a matter of fact, that of whatever kind the invisible sovereignty may be to which we are subject, prudence does, upon the whole, bring its appropriate reward in this world, folly its appropriate'penalty ? — That crimes are punished as injurious to society, virtues recompensed as beneficial to it ; the punish- ment or the recompence, no doubt, conveyed through the instrumentality of human means, but not on that account the less faithful expositors of the will of God — society itself being evidently of His appointment, and the arguments, both moral and physical, being amply sufBcient to show that He did not intend 'man to be alone'? Who can deny that vice carries along with it strong symptoms of being a violation of the principles according to which the world is governed ? — that a lie, for instance, entails embarrassments without end upon its author, and makes him feel that he has entangled himself in s 2 260 BISHOP BTJTLEE. [Essay TI. the machinery of the system in which he lives? Who can deny that there is a principle within him which leads him to befriend the good, to thwart the evil-doer ; a principle acting thus, without any selfish object, but as instinctively approving what is right, and condemning what is wrong ? Can anything be conceived more monstrous than a scheme where the reverse of all this should take effect ? Is not the existence of such a principle the keystone of social order itself? — so that, as Milton argues, ' If this fail, The pillar'd firmament is rottenness. And earth's base built on stubble.' Without it, we know not how Christians could have become such, or to what a Gospel could have appealed within the breast for a right of admission into the world. 'If ye believe not Me, believe the works ' — not merely as exhibitions of power, for an evil spirit might be supposed capable of doing works of power, if that were all, but oi goodness also. Still less can we understand how heathen society could have held together for a single week ; how, in its discordant elements, it could have escaped self-destruction, dashing itself in pieces like an ungovemed and ungovernable engine, and expiring at length in the midst of a universal anarchy. But such a moral nature having been given us is in itself a proof that the Deity intends we should be subject to a moral rule ; and His having placed us in such a situation at present as affords scope for the exercise of this nature — nay, as actually demands its ex- ercise in a considerable degree — is a present earnest that He will hejinally true to this rule, and act upon it strictly. Dark as the ways of God may be, there is enough to satisfy a reasonable man that He is on virtue's side : the tendency of things proves it. For instance, who can set bounds to the prosperity of a nation of perfectly righteous individuals — a nation in which every man would literally do his duty ? The wisest of the land would be sent to her ParUament, — the national Senate would be a conclave of sages, — no unworthy motives would influence the electors — no political gratitude. Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLER. 261 arising out of a strong sense of good things to come, no fear or favour, would warp a vote — detur digniori would be the uncompromising motto, in the choice of a man to whom thp property, the liberty, the honour, the morals, the religion of the empire were to be consigned, and whose solemn charge it would henceforth become, to see that in none of these great interests the commonwealth should take damage at his hands. ' Politicians who would circumvent God,' would subside into plain men, who would fear Him. Faction would be at an end. The public weal would never be put in jeopardy for the purpose of embarrassing a minister, nor would principles reel under party struggles for place and power. New laws would be made, for circumstances might call for them, but perhaps they would be few — (Rome foundered beneath the multitude of her laws, legibus laboravit), — for patience to investigate, practical experience to understand, and wisdom to redress an evil, would not fall to the lot of all ; and they who failed in these qualities would feel it, hold their peace, and honestly confess, that ' they had nothing to draw with, and that the well was deep.' Old laws would be abrogated or ad- justed — for this, too, circumstances might require: but perhaps it would be done with fear and trembling, with a nolumus ; for it would be considered that it is more easy to discover the mischief which an existing law does, than the mischief which it prevents — that in the application of a theory (especially on so complicated a subject as political economy), the most sa- gacious calculator may overlook some item in the reckoning, which may be fatal to the success of his measure, however well meant — that, in the actual business of life, it is scarcely possible to make too much allowance for friction^and that it was a grave authority (for Lord Strafford's was said to be the wisest head that stood on any pair of shoulders in England), which declared ' how advised we ought to be of any innovation, considering that inconveniences are rather found by experience than foreseen by judgment.' Debates, it is indeed to be feared, would, in such an assembly, be tame; for pleasant sneers at the stupid prejudices, antiquated notions, ecclesiastical bigotry 262 BISHOP BUTLEE. [Essay VI. of former generations (those dead lions at which it is natural that many should kick), would prohahly be suppressed by one thankful recollection — ' sic fortis Etruria creyit.' Above all, such a body would have the cordial confidence and support of the country, because, however they might err (as still err they would), they would be known to act from public spirit and in singleness of heart, as senators sitting under the eye of the great Task-master. Then with what promptness would their laws he executed, appealing, as they would, to a people united in their favour as one man : with what spirit, too, should it be needful, would arms be taken up in their defence, conscious, as the nation would be, of the righteousness of their cause, nothing doubting but that God would go forth with their host, covering their heads in the day of battle, or taking them to Himself if they fell. Then again, how would the fame of so peeuhar a people spread into all lands ; how would they he chosen by strangers far and near as the arbiters of their differences, the peace-makers in their quarrels, the counsellors to whom they might repair without a suspicion of treachery. Thus would the necessity of all subtle and crooked policy be spared, and the balance of the world fall naturally and innocently into their hands. This, alas ! is but a Utopian picture ; but such is the tendency of the essential constitution of things, to give virtue the pre- eminence, of righteousness to exalt a nation; a tendency which must be very strong indeed, to preserve the world even as it is, when we call to mind how vastly more easy it is to do evil than to do good, how the hand which cannot rear a hut may demolish a palace. Nor will the value of this concurrence between nature and revelation be thought a trifle, if it be re- membered how perplexed we should he, had we found that vice, instead of virtue, possessed essentially the advantage in this world ; and whilst revelation declared that God would eventually give the triumph to the good, nature asserted that present appearances were all the other way. Thus, therefore, a future state — a future state of rewards and punishments — a future state of rewards and punishments Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLER. 263 dispensed according to a moral rule, or, in other words, ac- cording to the virtue or vice of the parties concerned, — is written in the volume of the hook of nature itself, in characters legihle enough when they have been brought to the light, though it may be that revelation was wanted to bold up the candle. But our parallel does not end here; for if these rewards and punishments are to be measured out hereafter according to merit here, then must this world be a state of probation, in which such merit is expected to develope itself. Accordingly, revelation so represents it. And again, the con- stitution of things, when unfolded, tallies with the represen- tation. For man is an unformed, unfinished creature, when he begins his being, though we refer him only to the character he has by-and-by to support upon earth. His early years are but a season, wherein he has to shape himself for the position of his riper age — he is not born, qualified for the part in this life he has to play ; he must fit himself for it by much patient previous discipline — multa tulit fecitque piier. If we look upon an infant in its cradle, how much, must we think, is to be done, before it can become the judge, or the statesman, or the great captain of the next generation ! What a drilling must Barrow have gone through, when, from a child who delighted in fighting and setting his playfellows to fight, regardless of his book — of such uncomfortable promise, as to make his father devoutly wish that if it should please God to take any of his children, it might be Isaac — he grew up in temper fit to win all hearts ; in science, fit to fill with honour the mathematical chair in which Newton succeeded him ; in learning, fit to stand in the very foremost rank amongst the most profound and universal scholars of his country ! Such are the subsequent effects of early discipline in this life — of that scheme of probation, which requires opportunities to be seized as they occur ; gratifications to be foregone in the hope of approaching recompence ; miscarriages to be risked as well through the fault of others as of ourselves. Thus nature represents the years of the boy ministering to the condition of his manhood, just as revelation represents his whole threescore 264 BISHOP BUTLER. [Essay VI. and ten years as ministering to his condition in eternity. The former scheme is in miniature just what the latter is in large ; and if the one be certain, surely the other may he probable. Nor is this all : one feature there is in the plan of revelation more prominent than the rest, — that mankind are to be saved not directly, but through a mediator. Now, nothing can be more strictly analogous to the constitution of nature than such a provision as this. For is it not through the mediation of others, that we live, and move, and enjoy our being ? Are we not thus brought into the world, and for many years sustained in it? Is there a blessing imparted to us, which others have not, in some measure, contributed to procure ? Nay, more (for even the details of this dispensation are singularly coincideiit ■with our actual experience), when punishment follows vice as a natural consequence, is not a way opened for escape very commonly by the instrumentality of others ? Is not a shield thus mercifully interposed, more or less, between the trans- gression and the extreme curse which would have otherwise alighted upon it ? For instance, a drunkard is on the point of falling down a precipice and breaking his bones ; — had he done so, it would have been a very natural consequence of his wilful folly in ' putting an enemy into his mouth to steal away his brains.' But a sober man steps in and rescues him from his peril. Here, then, is a case of a mediator mitigating the just severity of the ordinary wages of intemperance. Or, nobody happens to be at hand to interpose for the protection of the delinquent, and, accordingly, down he goes and frac- tures a limb. But now, in his turn, comes the surgeon, and once more snatches him from the ulterior ill effects of the righteous accident. Here, again, is the case of a mediator again hghtening the curse. But the man is lame and inca- pable of earning his daily bread, and, if abandoned, must, after all, perish of hunger. And now in comes his parish, or his benefactor, with present food and promise of more, and once again is a part of his heavy sentence remitted. The mediator is still upon the alert. Nor, indeed, can the universal practice of vicarious sacrifice be easily explained, unless it be Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLEE. 265 allowed, that (howsoever originating) there- was something in the constitution of nature, which unohtrusively perhaps, and in secret, cherished its continuance, — so that nations who retained little else of God in their thoughts, retained this. Such are some of the holder features of the two schemes of Nature and Revelation, which answer as face to face; and the argument once opened, it is easy to pursue it (as Mr. Hampden has actually done, and often with great success) ' into a thousand similes ; ' — for wisdom will be crying out in the streets. It is easy, for instance, to see physical and moral events playing into one another's hands, as it were, in a mar- vellous manner, in the administration of this world ; — rain or drought working out famine, and famine working out national demoralization ; — and thus the virtue or vice of mankind greatly determined by vapours, precipitated or held in solu- tion. Why then should it be thought a thing incredible that the fall of man should be connected with the tasting of an apple ; or that physical causes, of various kinds, operating the dispeision or temporary migration of the Israelites through almost every part of the known world — Egypt, Arabia, Assyria, Persia, Greece, Eome, — should have been the appointed means whereby a nation of priests, a host of reluctant missionaries, were sent forth to spread far and wide a knowledge of the true God, and to promote the religious welfare of mankind ? Again, it is easy to see, in the administration of this world, a beautiful uniformity throughout — a thousand things, great and small, influenced by one common cause, and tending to one common centre; — the meanest individuals thus linked to the universe itself, — 'the chicken roosting upon its perch to the spheres revolving in the firmament.' And in the scheme of revelation, it is obvious to remark, that the construction is the same. There it would be found (so we persuade ourselves, and were we at liberty to pursue the subject, we think we could persuade others), that the great principle of the redemption pervades Scripture no less thoroughly, in all its parts, than the principle of gravity pervades our system ; — that, either in prospect or retrospect, it is hinted, shadowed out, prophesied. 266 BISHOP BUTLER. [Essat VI. typified, commemorated, in the entire scheme of Old Testament and New. So that, withdraw it, and we can discover little hut a series of incidents, some nugatory, some offensive, all dis- jointed; — trifles, light as air, detailed with a circumstantial pomp altogether foreign from them; — historical transactions of the last importance (according to man's judgment) over- looked in a most unaccountahle and contemptuous disregard ; — in a word, a rude and indigested mass of heterogeneous materials. Bear this principle in sight, and all these jarring elements suhside into their proper places, so as to compose one harmonious whole ; and the domestic detail, however trivial, the mere household word, has still its weighty and appropriate meaning ; and the light-hearted mockery of an aged woman, for instance,^ hecomes as real an instrument for telling forth the Almighty's plan, and hears upon it as effec- tually, as the tongue of the seer itself, which was touched with living coal from the altar. It is easy to see again, in the administration of this world, causes and effects, running up into one another with a most evasive intricacy, — nobody venturing to say where the regular confusion ends. The building of a church at Eome, for ex- ample, is coupled with the sale of indulgences — the sale of indulgences with the exasperation of a Luther — the exaspe- ration of a Luther with the immediate downfall of much, and, perhaps, the ultimate downfall of all spiritual tyranny throughout the world. A soldier has his leg broken at the siege of Pampeluna, and, till the limb is healed, he occupies himself with estabUshing a religious order, and this eventually governs the destinies of a great part of mankind ; — these cases may suf&ce of a million. Still is the mechanism of precisely the same character in the scheme which revelation exhibits : — the daughter of Pharaoh goes to the Nile to bathe; on this hangs the preservation of the infant lawgiver; on this again the release of Israel, the overthrow of the Egyptians, the pro- ° Gen. xxi. 6. Vide Allix's Eeflections upon Genesis and the four last Books of Moses, where this subject is pursued in a manner not more ingenious than satisfactory. Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLER. 267 mulgation of the Levitical law, tlie preparation of the gospel of peace. Or, to take a more mysterious case, which ■we will do in the words of a much better philosopher than ourselves, who is speculating, however, upon quite another subject: — ' It is not difficult to show that the miraculous conception of our Lord evidently implies some higher purpose in His coming than the mere business of a teacher. The business of a teacher might have been performed by a mere man, enlightened by a prophetic spirit ; for, whatever instruction men have the capacity to receive, a man might have been made the instrument to convey. Had teaching, therefore, been the sole purpose of our Saviour's coming, a mere man might have done the whole business, and the super- natural conception had been an unnecessary miracle. He, there- fore, who came in this miraculous way, came upon some higher business, to which a mere man was unequal. He came to be made a sin-offering for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.' So remarkably do the doctrines of Scripture (even where they are apparently least practical) lock into one another, — recipro- cally giving and receiving support. There would be no difficulty, as we have observed, in pur- suing this parallel to almost any extent; and though we doubt not that persons who have been unused to this peculiar method of argument, will look upon much that we have said, or may have to say, as fanciful, yet we have no fear of the result, if they will make the subject of analogy a vade-mecum in their ordinary walks through life, and note the wide compass within which it is capable of application. If we know ourselves, we are not apt to be betrayed into visionary views of religion ; but this question is one that has lain in soak in our minds (so to speak) these many years, and has acquired fresh authority in every one that has passed over our heads. At the same time, it must be remarked, that we have not been contending for the analogy of the constitution and course of nature, as a proof of the truth of revelation; the proof must be supplied by those many and various matters of fact to which Scripture 2G8 BISHOP BUTLEE. [Essay VI. appeals for a testimony, and which retire from the most inqui- sitorial scrutiny (as we took occasion to remark in a late article on the Works of Paley) without a reproach or a suspicion. To these, revelation fearlessly refers us. But of the argument of the analogy, this, at least, may be said, that it is a very singular and strange circumstance, how a few Galilean peasants (unlearned men, as their own writings demonstrate) should have struck out a scheme professing to come from God, which, when tried by the test of ' the course and constitution of nature' (a scheme indisputably from God), should be found to harmonize with it so remarkably. It is the more singular, when it is remembered, that these rustic contrivers evidently contemplated no such principle of investigation, so that they might square their work accordingly. On the contrary, that they do not even propound their instructions as a system at all, but rather throw out certain loose facts and doctrines, fragments rather than forms, which have to be actually arrayed, disposed, reduced into order, before they fall into what divines call a system of theology. Surely this is a problem worthy of a solution ; and such as ought to make an unbeliever pause at least, and lead him to examine the positive evidence for that, of which the presumptive evidence is not at any rate despicable. It may be said, indeed, that the evidence, furnished by analogy, would have been little, had not revelation told us where to look for it. And this is true ; but it is a truth not at all affecting the value of that evidence when we once have it. A Harvey was wanted to apply the anatomical fact of the different direc- tions in which the valves of the arteries and veins open to the development of the theory of the circulation of the blood ; yet the circulation of the blood would have been just as real, if no Harvey had lived to make it known. The Newtonian System,, as it is called, might have been hidden to this day, if Newton had never been bom; but it would not have been, on that account, the less certain that the system existed. The ' Consti- tution and Course of Nature ' has been dug up, — revelation telling us where to dig, in order to find it ; but, on coming to the light, its testimony to the truth of revelation is not, on that Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLER. 209 account, the less worthy of all acceptation. In the Acts of the Apostles, we read, ' A certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us' (ch. xvi. 14). Now, suppose this passage had in- duced a search to be made into the ruins of Thyatira, and that, in consequence, a stone had been brought up, hearing a muti- lated inscription to a worthy of that city, from a company of dyers {oi iSaipe?;*), the discovery of the stone would help to corroborate the assertion of the writer of the Acts, — not at all the less effectually, because it happened to be some hundred years after the Acts were written that the discovery was made, and that it was only made then, because the mention of the place had stimulated curiosity, and suggested the search. On the whole, if we pass the several particulars of this argu- ment rapidly in review, and reckon their cumulative value, that which answers to what in architecture is called the effect, can- not be inconsiderable in the judgment of any sober and dispas- sionate inquirer after truth. But whatever may be the importance of the argument from analogy, when regarded under this aspect, it is not that under which Bishop Butler contemplated it with the most satisfac- tion. Whether he was first put upon his inquiry by the remark of Origen, which he quotes as though it had struck his mind with the force of a new thought, that 'he who believes the Scripture to have proceeded from Him who is the author of nature, may well expect to find the same sort of difficulties in it as are found in the constitution of nature;' whether, we say, this was the text from which he set out, and which gave a com- plexion to his subsequent thoughts throughout, the obvious tendency of it being to lead him to consider the argument chiefly as an answer to oljections against revelation; or whether he thought that to silence objections was in itself to add to the positive evidence in the most efiectual of all ways, by making it carry (to use a profane phrase) less weight; or whether, in wielding his two-edged weapon, he was naturally disposed to strike on the side that cut keenest, — for, as a ' Vide Wheeler's Journey into Greece, iii. p. 233. 270 BISHOP BUTLEE. [Essat YI. smiter down of the high imaginations of the infidel touching the scheme of Christianity, it is not only powerful, hut alto- gether resistless ; or whether, in an age like his own, so ' very reasonable' in its religious notions, he felt a righteous zeal to foil the wise with their own weapons, and to suggest to them, with all hecoming humility, that there might he, after aU, — and even on admission of their difBculties, — more things hetween heaven and earth than their philosophy dreamed of: however this might he, certain it is, that it is as an answer to objections against revelation, that Butler regards the 'Analogy,' rather than as a witness of its truth ; — that he does not so often speak in the spirit of St. Paul, when that apostle urggs ' The invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made,' as when he retorts upon the deistical antagonist, ' Thou fool ! that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die ; ' — that he some- times employs it in conjunction with revelation, but much more often in opposition to unbelief. Here, indeed, the argument of analogy is the golden branch, before which obstacles fall and phantoms vanish. Thus : there is a presumption against miracles. So there may be, but is there not also, prior to the event, a presumption against such a combination of circumstances as go to make up the history of Csesar, meeting in any one individual ? Yet the presumption (however great) yields before a very small matter of evidence. We have an impression on our mind, that it was the avowed intention, a few years ago, of a great hving poet to -write a Life of Napoleon, not on the plan he adopted, hut on one in which not a single incident should be probable, yet all strictly true ; and no doubt the thing might have been achieved. The pre- sumption must have been great against the phenomena of elec- tricity, galvanism, or many other arcana of nature, yet they were soon established on evidence not to be gainsayed. We suppose, that had Palinurus been told, when he was beating about in the Mediterranean three days and three nights, neither sun nor star appearing, that the time would come when a little needle's point would ' prate of his whereabout ' with most mi- EssatVI.] bishop BUTLEH. 2T1 raculous organs, and to the merest nicety, he would have been hard to be persuaded. Yet so it was. And though we think the presumption at present strong against the existence of future flying philosophers, yet only a certain degree of testi- mony would he wanted to work our conviction that, having been long volatile, they were become volant. The course of nature, therefore, very easily disposes of the question pf pre- sumption. But it does more. To those who believe in a -par- ticular Providence ever actively superintending the affairs of this world, great and small, miracles can present no cause of offence; for then, perpetual interposition being the order of things, it is credible enough that it should sometimes manifest itself in striking and unusual effects. But the administration of this world, it may be said, is carried on according to general laws. Still there is much on foot to which those laws do not seem to apply — faults, as it were (to use a miner's phrase), in the constitution of things. What are the laws, for instance, by which a hurricane, or a pestilence, or a famine, pounces upon mankind {a-HTn-^ai \>.aLvzC), scourging one place and sparing another : so hard to be reduced to any principle, as to be called (what is another name for our utter ignorance of their nature) — accidents ? May it not be that times and seasons proceed by rules prescribed, till some accumulation of inconvenience requires the interposition of a hurricane, or a pestilence, or a famine, and still that the inter- position itself occurs according to a general law too, not to be considered as an item in a system of expedients implying defect or effort unworthy of the contriver, since to change implies no more of this than to create,- — for if there was a defect before the change, so must there have been before the creation, creation itself being a change; and if an effort is required to alter, so it must have been to produce, — but rather as the natural effect of causes set at work from the beginning ? And in like manner the moral world may proceed, according to general laws, till an accumulation of inconvenience demands the interference of a miracle ; this, too, according to a general law, a law by which it was appointed, when the foundations of 272 BISHOP BUTLEE. [Essay VI. the world were laid, that, under such and such circumstances, miracles there should he, — a law which we might, very pro- hahly, trace out and determine, if we had but other moral systems wherewith to make a comparison. And if it be objected that this is to deprive miracles of their value as tokens of a commission from God, as credentials of His ambassadors, we answer that no such consequence would ensue, for that as a mere man could never calculate upon such an interposition occurring in his favour, unless he had been in communication with the Deity, so its actual occurrence would be thought enough to prove such communication, or, in other words, to certify the authority by which he spake. Moses, for instancej could not be supposed to have lifted up his rod by a happy coincidence at the very moment when the 'universal plan' required that the waters of the Red Sea should be divided before the IsraeUtes; but the phenomenon happening as he waved his wand, it would he at once concluded that the Deity had been with him, and let him into the secret. And, after all, what is a miracle hut an apparent deviation from the estab- lished course of nature, with a view to a moral effect ? But (as we have had frequent occasion to remark, in the progress of this argument) nothing is more usual than to see events in the natural world made subservient to moral ends; indeed, so usual, that it may be doubted whether every individual event is not intended to produce finally some moral purpose. There may be difficulties in either case, both in the peculiarities of nature and of revelation — that we dispute not; hut our argu- ment is this — that whilst we see in God's natural government apparent interruptions of general laws, or phenomena which, if assignable to general laws, are not assignable to such as we can discover, and are, therefore, classed under the head acci- dents (which, like sundries, mean just what we can give no account of), we have no need to be staggered at the same or similar mechanism in God's moral government; the presump- tion being rather the other way, that iiTegularities were to he expected in the scheme of revelation, there being actually such in the physical scheme. Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLEE. 273 But is it not strange that manldnd should have been suffered to live so long in the dark — that the world should have been left to drag on four thousand years, before Christianity was revealed ? Here again analogy steps in, exclaiming, Not at all strange : on the contrary, it is the most common case in nature. How is it, for example, that herbs have been allowed to run to waste for centuries upon centuries, of which the virtues, when they were once discovered, * * ' sae fortify 'd the part, That when death looked to his dart, It was sae blunt, Fient haet o't wad bae piero'd the heart Of a kail -runt.' Indeed it is not till within these very few years that a whole class of medicines, and a class now, we believe, considered the most efBcient — minerals — have been in use, to the great ad- vantage of human life. How is it, to revert to what we have already touched upon, that mankind were left to blunder about upon the ocean, in perils of waters, for so long a period, without the knowledge of the compass? — or to live in gross ignorance of many most essential truths, during a number of generations, for want of the simple art of printing ? There is no end to this — the world, like Prosporo's island, is full of strange sounds. But revelation has been communicated partially ; if it was really from God, and of the importance alleged, would it not have Tjeen universal? Yet which of God's gifts is not im- parted thus ? Health, and strength, and intellect, and pro- perty, are all distributed in unequal proportions — one man has his lot cast among the snows, and seals, and tripe de la roche of a polar sky; another on the vice-clad banks of the Loire. It is not for us to reconcile these things ; but it is idle to raise an objection against revelation upon a ground which would equally deprive the Almighty of any hand in the government of the universe. But the evidence for the truth of revelation is not demon- T 274 BISHOP BUTLER. [Essay VI. strative ; — was it not to be expected, that principles -which were not for speculation, but use, and for such use too, should have been set forth with a perspicuity which could not be mis- interpreted, and supported by testimony which could not be refused ? Yet what reason was there for expecting this ? None, certainly, from the condition of man in this world. He has been left to shape his course through things temporal, not with demonstration for his guide, but with prohahility only. For can he do more, even in the most critical step that he takes, than sit down first, endeavour to count the cost, and then plant his foot where there seems most cause to think he can plant it safely ? — musing, like the suitors of Portia, on which of the caskets contains his treasure, and often, like them, greatly perplexed. Practically speaking, it is prohaMUty , in a degree very much lower than that which pleads for the truth of revelation, that supplies the rule of human actions, even where life itself is involved. What else launched the boat of Columbus ? He sought a new heaven and a new earth, under much doubt, and discouragement, and danger — the very exist- ence of his object never clearly revealed to him, till it actually rose upon him from the deep, his wea?-y voyage done. Up to that hour, he could only read it in the direction of a current, in the casual floating past of a spar, in the sea-weed, in the land-bird, in the breeze ; yet these signs he laid up in his heart, and, following them in faith, found the world he longed for : which things are an allegory. Why, then, should a rule, which thus obtains for the present, be abandoned for the future ? more especially as the very uncertainty (whatever may be the amount of it) may constitute an essential part of the trial of all, and the most essential part of the trial of many. But, in truth, that uncertainty is veiy much less than many persons suppose. People are apt to see the force of evidence or of argument only as it makes for their own prejudices — ' The wish is father to the thought.' The wolf, when he was learning to read, could make nothing out of the letters, whatever they might be, that were set before him, but 'lamb.' Cudworth suggests that even geometrical theorems (that the three angles Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLER. 275 of a triangle,, for instance, are equal to two right angles), if connected with offensive moral truths, might possibly become the subject of doubt and controversy. And Mr. Le Bas, who adopts this sentiment in his valuable ' Essay on Miracles,' adds in a note, somewhat after the manner of Warburton's illustrations, ' If the Pythagorean proposition (Eucl. i. 47) were to impose on mathematicians the Pythagorean maxim of a strict vegetable diet, what carnivorous student of geometry would ever get to the end of the First Book in Euclid ? Or if we could conceive the doctrine of 'Fluxions had, somehow or other, been combined with an obligation to abstain from the use of wine, docs any one believe that it would have gained its present undisputed establishment throughout the scientific world ? Should we not at this very day have many a thirsty analyst protesting that he was under an absolute inability to comprehend or to credit the system ? ' Bat what if miracles, the foundation of the Christian scheme, should not always be found agreeable to the com- mands of God ? — What if the power of working them should have sometimes fallen into bad hands, and have been used for evil purposes ? — What if a wonder could be worked in confir- mation of the duty of idolatry ? " — or in defiance of a mes- sage of the Most High?* — or in establishing the preten- sions of a false Christ ? ° — What if those who were outcasts themselves, should have prophesied and ejected evil spirits ?** Would not this render the worth of miracles themselves in evidence of revelation equivocal ? Many of our divines would here deny the premises; would not allow that any confusion of this kind was permitted, and explain, accordingly, the texts which may seem to imply the contrary. If, however, we admit this objection of the Deists to be well founded— if we admit that such abuse of supernatural gifts was sometimes allowed, and that, being allowed, it caused many to doubt, still are not great ahilities very often suffered in these days to do the same ? Such a prophet, or worker of miracles, as we speak ^ Deut. xiii. 1, 2, 3. i' Exod. m. 11. " Matt. xxiv. 24. <" Matt.vii. 22, 23. T 2 276 BISHOP BUTLER. [Essay VI. of, would but have been playing a part similar to that which a Tindal, or a Bolingbroke, or a Paine, has played since, and lived. They would but have been applying high talents to base ends. The truth is, the possessor of rare endowments, of whatever kind, if he prostitutes them to the object of making ' one of the little ones' to offend, will have to answer for it ; but then the little ones themselves, upon this as upon other occasions, are expected to exercise their own under- standing ( 'that candle of the Lord within them,'*) upon the tendency of the conflicting evidence, which, no doubt. Pro- vidence will always take care ^fiS\. pre;ponderate on the side of the truth ; and the pei-plexity may constitute a part of their trial, — it may be the Master's pleasure that ' the wise servant' shall have his discretion subjected to this very test. But the severity with which the Deity is made to act in Scripture is said to be another lion in the way ; a nation is to be cut off, not in its guilty members only, but in all that belongs to it, — ox and sheep, infant and suckling, camel and ass. Is not this a hard saying ? Yet, hard as it is, it is just what the course of nature confirms. A flood, for instance, now acts under precisely the same orders as a Joshua or a Saul did heretofore, — making no greater distinction of persons or things. When Catania, or Lima, or Lisbon was destroyed, no resei-va- tion was obseiTed in favour of women, or children, or cattle. The earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up, whatever was their innocence. Yet ' Plagues and earthquakes shake not heaven's design.' Or, again, — must not vast numbers miscarry under a dispensa- tion like that of Christianity, where so much is exacted of beings so frail ? Can that be a faithful representation of the Author of the universe, which portrays Him under the cha- racter of an austere man ? — or, can that scheme belong to the merciful God which describes the gate of His kingdom as strait, the way narrow, and the incomers few ? Are there so » ProT. XX. 27. Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLER. 277 many iDeings to be born only to perish ? Here we feel that we are entering on ' thoughts abstruse,' which warn us, with Eve-, to withdraw. But still, appalling as the consideration may be, it is nevertheless very true, that, in the actual constitution of things, there does seem to be a prodigious waste both of ainimal and vegetable life — that of the seeds sown, few grow into plants — tliat of the animals which see the light, few are born to enjoy it — that we give a corporal pang to many a poor beetle as we walk across the field — that we boil water for our food, and destroy myriads of animated atoms. The objection thus viewed ought, indeed, to stimulate our exertion, but cer- tainly ought not to shake our faith. Or, further still, that eternal punishment should be assigned to sins committed during the brief span of threescore years and ten, seems to be hard measure, difficult for flesh and blood to believe. Yet the constitution of nature appears to uphold the dismal doctrine ; for how often does a single act of folly or guilt entail upon the offender a whole life of suffering, sorrow, or shame !■ — the chastisement out of all proportion (as might be supposed) to the sin. It was the unwise or unjust exaction (call it which you will) of a sum, not exceeding thirty shillings, from one of his subjects, that inflicted upon a king of England the down- fall of his throne, the loss of his head, and the exile of his children. It was a single act of carelessness (if we are to believe Shakspeare) in putting into another king's hand, by mistake, a schedule of effects, that excited the monarch's cu- pidity, and wrought the plunder, the disgrace, and, eventually, the death of a Wolsey. But the method by which revelation represents the Deity to effect the recovery and salvation of man is very roundabout. From a Being whom nothing can let or hinder, a more direct and expeditious course was to be expected. Yet why so ? Certainly the system on which this world proceeds argues no such precipitation of plan — quite the contrary. You may say, God- might command the stones to be made bread, or the clouds to rain it ; but this He does not. He chooses rather to leave mankind to till, to sow, to reap, to gather into barns, to 278 BISHOP BUTLEE. [Essay VI. grind, to bake, and then to eat — a process not only very long, but in some respects, d priori, very unpromising, very unlikely to answer its end. But, as one of our old divines quaintly remarks, the Almighty ' not unusually looks the contrary way to that He moves ; and while men love to go the nearest way, and often fail, God commonly goes about, and in His own time comes safe home.' But the whole apparatus of Christianity, it may he alleged, is mean, unworthy its magnificent pretensions; — its seat, the bosom of God — its voice, the harmony of the world. Be it so : join, if you will, in the querulous cry of that mighty man, the captain of the host of the King of Syria, — still the argu- ment of analogy demolishes the objection, whatever may be its force; for what is more common in the constitution of nature than for prodigious consequences to flow from appa- rently mean beginnings ? Lady Mary Wortley Montagu rambles into a Turkish village, and what comes of it ? She sends to England the secret of inoculation ; thereby, perhaps, contributing more to the welfare of her countrymen than all the conquerors of the East. Dr. Jenner observes, that the milkmaids of Gloucestershire escape the small-pox altogether ; and what is the result ? — that vaccination is discovered, and the uncleanly flux of a cow mitigates still further that noisome disease, and economizes life more successfully than a whole college of physicians. But the scheme of the atonement, as developed in revelation, seems to exhibit the Deity as regardless whether the innocent or the guilty sufier, provided suffering there be : is this cre- dible ? It may be a difficulty (for all the objections we have touched are real difficulties), but it is a difficulty of precisely the same kind as that which the scheme of nature presents, and neither greater nor less. ' / have done wickedly, but these sheep, what have_ they done ? ' is not an exclamation fitted for David only. Napoleon determines upon an invasion of Eussia, — the unjust act is not immediately visited upon himself; he coolly puts on his fur-cloak, gets into his traineau, and flies to his faithful city; but his innocent followers (innocent of plan- Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLEE. 279 ning the enterprise, we mean) are called to pay tlie price of his iniquity, by being frozen to death round the ashes of their own watch-fires. Delirant rcges, i^lectuntiir Achivi, is an adage of very old standing. As a matter of fact, therefore, the arrangement is not at all incredible. But why an atonement at all ? — Why should not repentance alone suffice to reconcile us to the Deity ? We are not bound to tell why ; but this we can tell, that in the world in which we live, sorrow for offences does not in general remove the evil they entail upon the offender— it does not 'trammel up the consequence;' it does not, for instance, acquit the deceiver of his contempt, or the libertine of his disease, or the rogue of his halter. Grief there maybe, but there must be penalty too; and the natural feelings of mankind bear witness to this, for (as we have already hinted), if sorrow had been thought enough by the heathens, why should they have added sacri- fice ? There is one consideration^ however, suggested by analogy, which is an answer to this, and to almost all objec- tions both against natural religion and revealed — our very imperfect knowledge of either. We erect ourselves into judges whilst we are not in possession of nearly the whole case ; — we decide upon a piece of very intricate mechanism, whilst we are acquainted with very few of its parts ; — we pro- nounce dogmatically upon a move at chess, whilst we do not see all the positions of the men. The constitution of nature is evidently a scheme. Thus the relation of the different parts of a watch to one another is not more certain than that of the several parts of the animal frame. The spring, the barrel, the chain, the wheels, are all proportionate, and adapted each to each ; but with no greater care than the bones are articulated, the hinges of the joints made double or single ; the vitals pro- tected, the brain by a strong box, the heart by a basket of ribs; no one member being able to say to another, ' I have no need of thee.' Here then is relation of parts in the individAial — indicating that the constitution of nature is a scheme. Let us extend our circle, and we may observe that the lungs of animals are made with a reference to the air they have to 280 BISHOP BUTLER. [Essay VI. breatbe, their eyes to the h'ght whereby they are to see ; for the former could not play in such an element as water, nor the latter be useful for vision, if the rays of light impinged with the momentum of a hail-storm. Indeed, nothing can be more obvious than the sijmmetry with which all things are con- structed ; quadrupeds and birds bearing some proportion to man and to one another in size, vegetables only suffered to attain a height suitable to those who have to live among them or upon them. With what alarm should we contemplate the growth of grass, if there was no assignable limit to its eleva- tion — if it threatened to bury us alive, like Gulliver in the corn of the Brobdignags ; or how should we be dismayed on observing the advance of a blight, when the insects composing it might severally assume (no law forbidding) the size of a behemoth ? Here, then, we have the relation of the individual to the place he lives in — still a scheme. Once more let us extend our circle, and we find the air standing in due relation, not only to the lungs of animals on the earth, but to the sun in the heavens, receiving his rays, not as upon a bed of wool, but upon a transparent, subtle, elastic substance, through which they may be readily drawn by ' a team of little atomies ' to the place of their destination. Here we have the relation of nearer to more remote parts— still a scheme. Yet more: the sun to which we have thus traced up, standi in his turn related to other planets besides ours ; the law by which he attracts them, and the quantity of matter he contains, being no less nicely adjusted than the minutest of the subordinate elements which we have been examining; and if we could explore the abyss beyond, we should probably perceive that this system itself, of which the sun is thus the centre, holds a relationship no less complete to other systems as great and glorious as our own ; and thus, that the mutual dependencies of things are unbroken throughout the entire universe, and that all conspire to one vast and incomprehensible scheme. Then again, the several parts of such a system are not to be regarded under one relation only (as we have been hitherto chiefly considering them), but under many relations, involved Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLER. 281 and interwoven in a innnner the most complicated— one prin- ciple answering many ends. Thus, the construction of the body is, in its essential features, the same, whether the animal is to be adapted to the earth, the ocean, or the sky. So, again, the air which supplies the lungs is equally fitted for the pro- pagation of sounds, the conveyance of scents, the mitigation of heat, the aliment of vegetables, or the impulse of vessels — the constitution of natui'e hereby exhibiting itself, not merely as a scheme, but as a scheme of extreme complexity, full of wheels within wheels, — if touched in one place, trembling under the touch in a thousand other places. Now, this being the natural constitution of things, would it not be idle in any professor in the world to get up and say, " such a particular iu this mechanism is defective ; it would have been better thus : the air, for instance, would have been far less objection- able if it had not been of a density sufficient to blow down my castles.' It might be an advantage to you that your castles should have stood (would be the obvious answer) ; but sup- posing the change, how would the system at large be affected by it, — the lungs of animals, the passage of light, the aliment of plants, and numberless other matters, of which we know nothing ? It is possible that this alteration for which you plead would have involved the derangement of the universe. Your suggestion (saving your Professorship) might be, after all (as Horsley would have said), only ' a rude jog from the clumsy fist of a clown, who knew nothing of the component parts of the machine.' The natural government of God, then, being evidently a scheme, and a very elaborate one, it is probable from analogy that His moral government is a scheme too ; indeed, there is further cause for believing this, in the circumstance that the physical world seems to be itself in relation to the moral, just as the vegetable is subordinate to the animal and the animal to the intellectual kingdom ; but if a scheme at all, then one having a multitude of bearings, very few of which come within our cognizance. To raise objections, therefore, against what 2ft2 BISHOP BUTLER, [Essay VI. We may fancy irregularities in it, -whether we look to the general plan of Providence, or to Christianity as a particular scheme under that plan, is to charge God foolishly, because it is to charge Him ignorantly. ' Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth ?'— it may still be justly replied, ns it heretofore was, to such puny assailants, — 'Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea ? hast thou walked in the search of the depth ? Have the gates of death been opened to thee, or knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?' It may not, therefore, be more unphilosophical to find fault with the physical order of things, on the score that where there is such air as ours there may be hurricanes, than to reproach the moral order of things with the existence of evil, the partial diffusion of good, the imperfect evidence for the truth of reve- lation, or the extraordinary nature of it: the true answer in both cases being one and the same — that we are quarrelling,- not with independent matters, standing alone or on their own merits, but with parts of a very intricate scheme, subservient to it in how many ways, and with what propriety, He only who can survey the whole can tell. This is a portion of his great theme on which Bishop Butler dehghts to dwell; his Sermons, as well as his Essay, are full of it. Nor can we picture to ourselves a more instructive lesson than that which is afforded by the grave example of such a man ; that he, so acute, so patient, so profound, so fruitful in anticipating objec- tions, so candid in estimating, so triumphant in repelling them, so gifted with powere of combining and developing the hints of God's secret counsels, which lie scattered over the face of things, — that he, a man thus endowed, a giant even in days when giants there were, should ever be reminded, and should ever be reminding us, of his ignoi'ance; that the Incompre- hensiblCj the Eternal, the Infinite, sets aU the pride of our understandings at nought, and by intricacies which He gives us to unravel, and contrarieties which He gives us to reconcile, and depths which He gives us to fathom, and shades which He gives us to illumine, forces from us a confession unfeigned, Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLER. 283 that the wisest are but as fools when measuring themselves against Him, whose ways are past finding out, and. who oft, amidst ' Thick clouds and dark Chooses to dwell, His glory unobsoured, And with the majesty of darkness round Circles His throne.' Such an example cannot be lost upon an age in which any modesty is left — rebuking the superficial scoffer, as it does, after the manner of Newton to Halley, 'Mund, Mund, talk not of this question ; you have not considered it — I have.' Such is the argument from analogy ; the most effectual, perhaps, that can be urged against the unbeliever ; for many of his objections, being indisputable difiBculties, do not always admit of a ready answer, and an abortive attempt at one would only strengthen his prejudice and harden his heart. But, to retort his own objections upon himself, to drive him (if he would be true to his principles) from unbelief to atheism — from a philosophy which stumbles, to be sure, at the foolishness of a confession of the faith, to a philosophy that reposes in the wisdom of a confession that there may be contrivance without a contriver, and governance without a guide, — this is to take him in his own toils, and to goad him into the necessity of reconsidering a verdict which saddles him with conclusions so monstrous. We cannot close our paper without adverting to a dissertation by the Eev. Daniel Wilson," prefixed to his cheap edition of the 'Analogy.' We do it with the most entire goodwill to its author (however we may differ from him), whose desire to give increased circulation to such a work, at such a period, can be viewed with no other feelings than those of unmingled respect. And here we may observe, in passing, that this revival of a taste for the writings of Bishop Butler, indicated by the several publications of which the titles stand at the head of this article, is one of the best signs of the times ; for, whether the demand " [The late Bishop of Calcutta.— Ed.] 284 ' BISHOP BUTLER. Pssay VI. for those writings originated with the laity themselves, who would satisfy their own scruples, or with the clergy, who would supply them with the best means of doing so, no better choice could have been made — none more candid, more discreet, more according to knowledge. It is only justice to Mr. Wilson to say, that he shows every disposition to pay suitable homage to one of the greatest men of our Church ; and that his epitome of the ' Analogy ' is faithful and luminous. Still he has some fault to find with the Bishop of Durham. The learned prelate is not sufficiently scriptural in his language, nor elevated in his views of Christianity : — ' It is impossible ' (says Mr. Wilson) ' to calculate the additional good which the " Analogy " would have efifected, if its unnumbered readers had been instructed more adequately by it in the spiritual death and ruin of man in all his powers by the fall ; in the inesti- mable constitution of special grace established by the Gospel ; in the gratuitous justification of the sincere believer in the sacrifice of Christ ; in the divine nature and properties of true faith ; in the mighty operations of the Holy Ghost in illuminating and sanctifying man ; and in the consolation and universal obedience which are the fruits of faith.'— P. 143. Now, to the opinion here expressed we cannot altogether subscribe ; for to whom was the ' Analogy ' chiefly addressed ? Not to believers, though to them it does indirectly minister, confirming them in their acceptance of that religion which the constitution of nature bespeaks to he a twin-sister of its own ; but it was for sceptics, or unbelievers, that it was principally meant; and it is probable that, had not such abounded in the days of Bishop Butler, the ' Analogy ' would never have been heard of. For he lived at a time, as we learn from himself, when ' the licentiousness of the upper classes, combined with the irreligion industriously propagated amongst the lower," was tending to produce 'total profligacy;' when a 'levelling spirit, upon atheistical principles,' was to be apprehended, as it had before been actually experienced on principles of enthusiasm;" " Sermons, vol, i. p. 3i7. Oxford. Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLER. 285 when ' religion was become so very reasonable as to have nothing to do with the heart and affections, if such words signify anything but the faculty by which we discern speculative truth ; ' " when it was thought needful to propitiate the hearers of a sermon on the ' Love of God,' by protesting at the outset that the ' subject was a real one, nothing in it enthusiastic or unreasonable;'*' when, 'in every view of things, and upon all accounts, irreligion was the chief danger ; ' " when to preach the love of our enemies was called ' rant ;'^ when ' there was a general decay of religion in the nation, observed by every one, for some time the complaint of all serious persons — the influence of it more and more wearing out of the minds of men, even of those who did not pretend to enter into speculations on the subject, whilst the numbers of those who did, and who professed themselves unbelievers, increased — and with their numbers their zeal, zeal foe nothing, hut against everything that was good and sacred amongst men ,• '" when ' the signs of God's coming' were believed to be 'but too apparent;' for that, ' as different ages had been distinguished by different sorts of particular eiTors and vices, so the deplorable distinction of that was, an avowed scorn of religion in some, and a growing disregard of it in the generality.'* These were the times for which Butler had to provide ; and we cannot but think that he acted like a wise master-builder, when he laid the foundation, and left others to build thereon. Besides, it was not Butler's object to expound the doctrines of Scripture, but to prove its credibility : he was not its interpreter, but its advocate. With the doctrines,- in their full extent, the constitution of nature (which was his concern) had compara- tively little to do. It was applicable indeed to the gross features of Christianity, and to these he applied it, but to the nicer details it was not. The element was of a quality fit for injection into the main trunks and arteries, but was not subtle enough to insinuate itself into all the minuter parts of the vascular system. It was applicable, for instance, to the great » P. 227. " P, 228, <= P. SCO. d P. 146. "= P. 426. f P. *22, 286 BISHOP BUTLEK. [Essay VI. dispensation of a Mediator, but not to His metaphysical nature, or to the degree of ruin (whether total or partial) from which He restored mankind ; and, indeed, nothing can be more remarkable than the pains Butler takes to avoid all questions which might immediately or remotely minister to strife — all questions which might narrow the sphere within which his book would be suffered to walk with effect. He does not wish to speak to Calvinist or Arminian, to philosophers of this school or of that, but he wishes to speak to men in general — to plead the credibility of Scripture in general ; and, for that purpose, to use (as the algebraists would say) general expressions. Hence such terms as 'faculties of perception and action,' ' living powers,' ' living agents,' ' the living being each man calls himself,' which, to be justly estimated (as Mr. Hampden properly observes), must be regarded as exclusions of any particular theory concerning the soul. In like manner, he speaks of ' the unknown event, death ; ' and, what is perhaps even more remarkable still, he will not shackle himself (logical as he is) with a definition of the sense in which he uses the word ' miracle,' contenting himself with saying, that ' the notion of it, considered as a proof of a divine mission, has been stated with great exactness by divines, and is,' he thinks, ' sufficiently understood by every one." Moreover, the ohscurity of Bishop Butler, which has been sometimes complained of, arises, as far as it exists, chiefly out of this very mode of treating his subject ; for he was hereby sometimes ' obliged to express himself in a manner which might seem strange to such as did not observe the reason for it;' and the secret operation of the same principle probably caused him to be so very sparing of his examples— his mind still delighting to read Nature with a broad eye, and ' scarce bringing itself to set down instances.' Persons not familiar with the analytical nomenclature are often puzzled with a proposition, where the numbers are expressed in letters, who would readily understand it if a particular case were taken, and figures substituted for them. Nor is this all : so determined is Butler to cast his net as EssatVI.] bishop butler. 287 wide as possible, ' to gather of every kind,' that he frequently argues upon the principles of others and not his own ; proving his point, to be sure, nolfrom those principles, but notwith- standing them, ' omitting what he thinks true' (and we beg attention to this, as bearing very closely on the question ia debate) ' and of the utmost importance, merely because by others thought unintelligible or not true.'" Now, Mr. Wilson will not deny, that some of the propositions which he would willingly have seen adopted into the work of Bishop Butler, were, at least, matters of much debate in Bishop Butler's time. Mr. Wilson believes them to their full extent : he finds them (so he expressly says)* perfectly compatible with the plan of the ' Analogy ;' then can he still profit by the ' Analogy,' and add to it that which he thinks lacking. Another man may believe them only to a more limited extent : he also finds his opinions compatible with the * Analogy ' — he therefore can profit by it too. A third may not as yet believe them at all (and amongst the motley multitude for which Butler had to cater, this was a very common character) : he therefore is to be won, not by overwhelming him at once with the whole mystery of the gospel, but by submitting to him that the gospel is not a thing incredible, and leaving him to draw his own conclusions. ' A narrow-necked bottle,' says Quintilian somewhere, ' must be humoured : pour gently, or you spill instead of fill.' ' Eeculer pour mieux sauter' is not the worst of French proverbs. But, indeed, ' the entire corruption,' or ' the total moral ruin' of man, or the 'alienation of his whole moral nature from God,'" which Mr. Wilson would have had introduced by Butler, is .a doctrine which that profound inquirer did not hold ; and, moreover, is a doctrine which, if established, . would, in our opinion, shake his argument to its foundations. In his Sermons, which abound in elements of his greater work, and in some cases may serve as a commentary upon it, he is chiefly occupied in determining the inward frame of man : and » p. 408. •> Dissert, p. 145. " Dissert, pp. 131, 144. 288 BISHOP BUTLER. [Essay VI. his own search and experience lead him to think that his form had not yet lost all its original brightness ; that in addition to those passions \yhich he shares in common with brutes, there is another principle peculiar to him, even a conscience, a moral sense, a something (call it by what name we please) whereby we respectively assign to right and wrong, approbation or blame ; that this principle is felt to speai hke one having authority, — authority as distinguished from mere j)ou'er, for this any baser principle may possess, — that it seats itself above the other con- stituent parts of our nature, — inspects them, pronounces on them, nothing within us meanwhile denouncing this as an act of unbecoming usurpation ; that however the rabble-rout of disorderly passions may attempt to set it at nought, it is still acknowledged as a sovereign (in this instance at least) by divine right ; that the Author of Nature, by planting such a monitor within us, answering to virtue or vice by a correspond- ing pleasure or pang, after the manner of a gratified or violated sense, now recognizing, as with the feelings of the enchanter, ' the pace Of some chaste footing near about this ground,' and now again perceiving, as with those of the witch, ' By the pricking of the thumbs, Something wicked this way comes ' — that the Author of Nature, by endowing us with such a faculty, declares Himself for virtue and against vice; declares, there- fore, His present government not to be arbitrary, but moral, and thereby declares (as Butler argues) that a future state of rewards and punishments, dispensed according to a moral rule, shall be the final consummation of all things. It is therefore, ultimately, upon this basis of a sense of right and wrong im- planted to a certain degree in the heart of man, that Butler builds his high argument: deny it, that is, assert the total corruption of man's nature, and his foundations sink under him. Nor does Mr. Wilson himself, in some places, fail of being aware of this. It seems to us, indeed, to be a source of Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLER. 289 embarrassnient to him ; for lie elsewhere expressly asserts, that ' all the evidences of revealed religion appeal to our moral nature, and meet precisely the faculty of judging which we still possess ; and would have no medium of proof, and there- fore no authority to convince, if this moral sense should he denied.' ^ Now this is just what Butler would contend for ; hut how is it consistent with that doctrine of a ' total moral ruin,' which it is made a matter of charge against him that he did not sufficiently inculcate ? To allow a ' moral sensed and yet to insist on a ' total moral ruin,' appears to us as incon- gruous as to allow some sense of hearing, and yet to insist on a total deafness. Let us not he misunderstood. We are not undertaking to draw human nature into lime, hut only to draw it out of coal-dust — to shelter it under those principles which a Plooker or a Barrow has delivered to us, who, whilst they maintained the existence of a law of reason ( ' a law compre- hending all those things which men, by the light of their natural understanding, evidently know, or at least may know, to he beseeming or unbeseeming, virtuous or vicious, good or evil for them to do'),* were at the same- time ready to confess that it would be in vain ' to search all the generations of men, sithence the fall of our father Adam, to find one man that hath done one action which hath passed from him pure, without one stayne or blemish at all.''= No man can be further than Bishop Butler from advocating, with the Schoolmen of old, the in- tegrity of our nature. The supposition that the ' world is in a state of ruin' seems to him 'the very ground of the Christian dispensation, and, if not provable by reason, at least not contrary to it.'*' No man can vindicate more nobly or more thankfully the merciful scheme of the atonement (if there be any one part of his book more satisfactory than another, it is where he handles this vital question) ; but that does not entail upon him the necessity of effacing " the image of its Creator " p. 110. i> Eccles. Pol., B. 1, § 8. ' Hooker's 'Discourse of Justification.' See, also, Barrow, vol. i., fol., Ser. xxvi. ; vol. ii., Ser. vii. ; as compared "with vol. ii., Ser. 1. '' Analogy, p. 287. = Dissert, p. 107. U 290 ' BISHOP BUTLEE. [Essay VI. altogether from the soul of the unregenevate man, as a preli- minary step — thereby confounding the nature of virtue and vice, the charity of a Titus with the cruelty of a Nero, and making such appeals as these, of which Scripture contains many, unintelligible: 'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork : there is neither speech nor language, but their voice is heard among them.' The creation, therefore, was qualified to preach, and man (the natural man) had a certain corresponding capacity to receive what was taught. ' The Gentiles which have not the law do by nature the things written in the law." The Gentiles, therefore, were not wholly lawless : 'nature' was in some sense a guide to them in morals. God, even in the times of the Gentiles, 'left not Himself without witness in that He did good." Man, therefore, must have been in some measure fitted to approve the good, to apply it to its Author, or where was the witness ? ' If ye love them which love you, what thank have ye ? for sinners {i. e. heathens) love those that love them' — a very low degree of benevolence this assuredly, but some- thing nevertheless. ' If a man provide not for his own, he is worse than an infidel.' Infidels, therefore, were capable of this act which is enjoined on Christians as commendable. 'Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right ?' asks our Lord. In themselves, therefore, was lodged some capacity of doing this, or why the question ? And the instinctive aversion which is felt to accept, in the literal meaning, such a text as ' he who hateth not father and mother cannot be my disciple,' does not surely arise from its being directly in contra- diction to other texts (for if there were no others to qualify it, there would still be no doubt about the matter), but simply from that sense of right and wrong in a man's heart, which tells him at once that the Almighty cannot intend what the words in their strict acceptation imply. Possibly some ambiguity may have arisen in the notions entertained by religious persons of the nature of man, from the different senses in which that term is used in Scripture ; for •when the apostle says that the Gentiles ' wei-e by nature the Essay VI.] BISHOP BUTLER. 291 children of wrath/ it is plain that he could not employ the word in the same sense as when he says that the ' Gentiles do hy nature the things contained in the law.' In the one case, man is spoken of as the creature of his natural appetites ; in th'e other, as the disciple of his natural conscience. And perhaps this distinction would be found the key to other seeming discrepancies in the language of holy writ. Sufl&ce it however to say, that St. Paul leaves the question of the degree of human corruption undetermined ; and that we, therefore, may safely do the same. That it is very great, no man who knows his own heart can doubt. But it is the practice of that apostle, when he would humble his disciples, to make his appeal rather to their sense of the evil they have done, than to their sense of the evil they have inherited — the former they feel to be their fault, the latter their misfortune. It never can be well to exalt one part of a system, at the expense of another ; to magnify the mercies of redemption, in themselves too great and glorious to need exaggeration, by sinking the subject of that redemption below the brutes, and holding up to him as a reflection of himself a monster from which he instinctively recoils as a hideous caricature. ' Let God have His own/ says Bishop Hall (whose authority is often abused on this point), 'in the worst creature ; yea, let the worst creature have that praise which God would put upon it.' * The covenant of mercy Bishop Butler founds in this, even in the incarnation, sacrifice, and intercession of Christ, together with promised assistance of the Holy Ghost, not to supersede our own endeavours, but to render them effectual.'' But having thus assigned to the two latter persons of the blessed Trinity their respective shares in the salvation of man, he is unwilling to rob the Father Himself of the honour due in turn to Him also ; and accordingly he cautions us ' not to charge God foolishly, by ascribing that to Him or the nature He has given us, which is owing wholly to our own abuse of it:' adding; 'Men may speak of the degeneracy and corruption • » Contempl. B. ix. 5. " V. ii. p. 444. Oxf. U 2 292 BISHOP BUTLER. [Essay VI. of the world, according to the experience they have "had of it, but human nature, considered as the divine workmanship, should, methinks, be treated as sacred, for in the image of God made He man.'* And this image, he might have con- tinued, must in some degree have survived the fall, for the murder of a man, of a fallen man, is forbidden, expressly on the ground of its being an outrage against that image — Gen. ix. 6. This is the creed of Bishop Butler ; and before we condemn it, we shall do well to bear in mind that the Socinians of the present day are in many cases the hneal descendants of the Puritans of the days of Cromwell ; that not ' high imagina- tions' only, but 'voluntary humihty' also, may put true religion in jeopardy; its history in this country, from the Eeformation downwards, bearing ample testimony to both positions ; and that whilst it has alternately suffered under a dead calm or an euroclydon, according as extravagant notions of human perfection or human depravity have prevailed for the season, the Church of England, holding that middle way which, in most cases, is the safest, content to leave some ground still debatable, and laying herself out, in her Articles and Liturgy,* over a broad and comprehensive basis, as it becomes a National Church to do, has exercised the most wholesome influence over the rationalist and fanatic in their turns, bringing both back to a better mind, by ' making her own moderation known unto all men.' » Y. ii. p. 134. Oxf. I" We refer our readers, on this subject, to Archbishop Lawrence's Bampton Lectures, jjarticxJarly Ser. iii. and Notes 10, 18 j and to Bishop Sumner, * Apo- stolic Preaching Considered,' p. 108 etsej. VII.-TOWNSON'S DISCOURSES/ Febeuaet, 1831. The merits of Dr. Townson are not so well known as they deserve to be, and we think the admirable and venerable Bishop of Limerick (who is the editor of this volume) has done a good work in bringing them again before the public through these posthumous sermons, even were the merits of the sermons themselves, of which we shall presently speak at large, more equivocal. At the period when Dr. Townson appeared as an author, the theological arena was pretty fully occupied: Warburton had not passed off the stage, neither the host of assailants which the 'Divine Legation' provoked, of whom Lowth was worthy to contend with that Dares of his day — Horsley, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver's beam, was wielding it against Priestley, proving, as Bishop Bull had done before him, the want of scholarship on the side of the Unitarians for the conducting of such a controversy, and the unfairness with which they laid claim to the votes of the early fathers of the Church — Paley was in the ascendant, as a writer of evidences destined to eclipse every other — Powell, Balguy, and Ogden were champions of another school of theology ; natural religion, in their hands, being made still further tributary to revealed — whilst Wesley and Whitfield were troubling Israel by motions altogether eccentric and beyond calculation; provoking collision, and taking their pastime in the strife. Such were the days upon which Dr. Townson fell, ^ Practical Discourses : A Selection from the UnpulltsJied Manuscripts of the late Veil. Thomas Townson, D.D. London, 1829. 294 TOWNSON'S DISCOUESES. [Essay VII. who enlisted himself under the banner of none of these leaders ; whose even tenor appears to have heen affected by do fightings from without, and whose works, as they were puffed into no ephemeral distinction, so are they likely to suffer no injury by the lapse of years. Yet the most considerable of these was not without its reward even at the time: 'The Discourses on the Gospels,' Bishop Lowth, the friend and feUow- student of Dr. Townson, pronounced to be 'a capital performance, which set every part of the subject it treated of in a more clear and convincing light than it ever appeared in before;' and the University of Oxford bore a public testimony to its worth, alike honourable to themselves and to the subject of their commendation, by conferring on the author a degree of D.D. by diploma. The value of the compliment was pro- bably enhanced to Dr. Townson by the channel through which it was accidentally conveyed — it was by Dr. Home, afterwards Bishop- of Norwich, a man of kindred spirit to his own; who, reading the Scriptures with a lively but not an extravagant imagination, imparted his contemplations to others in a style of singular grace and beauty, and won golden opinions to him- self personally by the spectacle which his writings present of a mind perfectly at peace — Quid pure tranquillet, the ques- ■ tion of the schools, might be answered by a reference to the author of the ' Commentary on the Psalms,' if to anything : — ' And now,' says he, on sending his book into the world, — ' and now, could the author flatter himself that any one would take half the pleasure in reading the following exposition which he hath taken in writing it, he would not fear the loss of his labour. The employment detached him from the bustle and hurry of life, the din of politics, and the noise of folly — vanity and vexation flew away for a season — care and disquietude came not near his dwelling — he arose fresh as the morniug to his task; the silence of the night invited him to pursue it ; and he can truly say, that food and rest were not preferred before it. Every psalm improved infinitely on his acquaintance with it, and no one gave him uneasiness but the last, for then he grieved that his work was done. Happier hours than those which have been spent on these meditations of the Songs of Sion he never expects to see in this world; very Essay VII.] TOWNSON'S DISCOURSES. 295 pleasantly did they pass, and moved smoothly and swiftly along ; for when thus engaged he counted no time. They are gone, but have left a relish and fragrance upon the mind, and the remem- brance of them is sweet.' Such was the Bishop of Norwich, and such, it may be also said, was Townson, whose beautiful sermon on the Nineteenth Psalm, though written in his youth, and (what was more) at Naples, might have been the very manna that dropped from the tongue of Home. The sketch of his modest and unobtrusive life prefixed to Lis works by Archdeacon Churton, who discharged this duty (always a difficult one) to the memory of his departed friend with admirable simplicity and good taste, has been abridged by the Bishop of Limerick, and may serve to rescue one indivi- dual, at all events, from the contempt with which certain of our own time affect to regard the capacity and acquirements of country parsons, presenting to them one portrait at least of a man of this class who was both learned and wise, but not less modest than either; and who, when a most honourable and lucrative post in his church was offered him by the Crown, offered him exclusively on the score of his own merits, and for no services political or polemical, had the magnanimity to decline it. It is not our intention to go through tbe details of an eventful life, concluded near forty years ago. Yet an incident or two in it may not be wholly without interest. Dr. Townson was educated at a school which, though in itself obscure (Felsted, in Essex), numbered amongst its sons Wallis and Barrow; and, it may be mentioned, as one of the things which contributed to the future purity of Townson's character, that his father expunged from the copies of his school classics which were put into his hands such passages as could only contaminate, at the same time enjoining him solemnly not to frustrate a father's care by indulging, on his own part, a curi- osity that was culpable; a precaution this, which he ever remembered with gratitude, and recommended to the adoption of his friends. Having obtained a Fellowship at Magdalen 290 TOWNSON'S DISCOURSES. [Essay VII. College, Oxford, lie travelled: Mr. Holdsworth, one of his companions, composed on this occasion (we are told) a journal of what he saw, with some care : he afterwards made the same tour again, when he abridged it; he went a third time, and then he burnt it — a word to the wise. On quitting college, ■where he lingered a few years after his return, he retired to the livings of Blithfield, in Staffordshire, and Malpas, in Cheshire, the former presented to him through Lord Bagofc, his pupil, the latter hy Mr. Drake^ his fellow-traveller. At Malpas, he had for his co-rector (the parish consisting of two medieties) the father of Bishop Heher ; and the future bishop, then a child, was a frequent visitor of his library, under the inspection, however, of the good doctor— the boy (as it proved afterwards in the man) being somewhat ungentle in his treatment of books, and apt, when he had squeezed his orange, to neglect it. Happy would this truly Christian Gamaliel have been, if he could have foreseen how fair a character he was then, in some little degree, contributing to form ! how beautiful were the feet of that boy one day to be, bringing good tidings, and publish- ing peace to the East! But thus it is — let us ever act so as to promote the welfare of those amongst whom we may chance to be thrown ; and we may sometimes have the satisfaction to find, that we 'have entertained angels unawares.' In his church, which was one of singular beauty (we speak of Malpas), he was scrupulous that all things should be done decently and in order, and a handsome pair of silver chalices were one day found in it, of which it afterwards was discovered that he was the donor, inscribed with the text, 'All things come of Thee, Lord, and of Thine own have we given Thee.' (1 Chron. xxix. 14.) ' His manner of preaching was such, that you would pledge your soul ' (says his biographer) ' on his sincerity. You were sure he longed for nothing so fervently as your salvation ; ■ your heart glowed within you, and you went home resolved to love God above all, and your neighbour as yourself.' In distributing Bibles and other books of piety, he would Essay VII.] TOWNSON'S DISCOURSES. 297 often add to their value, in tlie eyes of those to wliom he gave them, by an autograph to some such effect as the following : — ' A present to , from one of those who promised for him, at his baptism, that he should renounce the devil and the sinful lusts of the flesh ; that he should believe all the articles of the Christian faith; and that he should walk in the commandments of God all the days of his life. God grant that these promises may be faithfullyand religiously kept, for the comfort of him who made them, and the happiness of him for whom they were made.' Amongst his various literary labours. Dr. Townson had com- posed with great diligence an exposition of the Apocalypse; he had some misgivings respecting the soundness of his foun- dations ; he made it his special prayer, that if his system was wrong, his work might by some means or other be prevented from seeing the light; obstacle after obstacle held his hand whenever he was about to revise it for the press, and at a later period he said, in allusion to this work, ' I once thought I had it all very clearly before me, but I now suspect we know very little of the matter.' The French revolution, it seems, had fractured his theory. It was after a second tour upon the Con- tinent, made six-and-twenty years later than the iirst, and with the son of his former companion, that he settled down to the works on which his character as a theologian is founded, and which recommended him for the Eegius Professorship to Lord North. But his leaf was now in the sere — ambition had spared him its noble infirmity ; the rural duties of the pastor were those in which he delighted, and he declined the chair. His years were now numbered, symptoms of dropsy having begun to show themselves ; nevertheless, on New Year's day, 1792, he was able to preach to his people on Prov. xxvii. 1 : 'Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth' — a text with which he opened his ministi-y in that congregation, and with which,- as it happened, he now closed it, for this was the last sermon he ever delivered. In his illness, which was of some continuance, he read Her- bert's ' Country Parson,' and Izaak Walton's ' Lives ; ' and, as a proof of the calmness with which he contemplated his 298 TOWNSON'S DISCOUKSJSS. [Essay VII. approaching dissolution, he desired his friend and curate, Mr. Bridge, in the following distich, to pray that his passage might not he long nor painful : — ' Funde preces Domino, ne transitus huncce per angi- portum sit longus, neu mihi difficilis.' He had his prayer, — his death, like his life, proved a happy one; his eye had indeed long become dim, but, in other respects, the natural force either of his senses or faculties had not abated, and, * without a struggle or a sigh, his heart fixed on heaven, and his look directed thither,' he breathed his last on the 1 5th of April, 1792. The clergy of his neighbourhood carried him to his burial ; the people thronged about his grave weeping ; and to this day the memory of Dr. Townson is fresh and unfading in the parish of Malpas. Such honour is due unto those who are saints indeed. Before we introduce our readers to the sermons of which the title stands at the head of our article, we are anxious to recall their attention to the principal work of our author, ' The Discourses on the Gospels,' because the subject of which it treats is one that has excited of late much learned investi- gation in the critical world, in the course of which the name of Dr. Townson has been almost overlooked ; and because we think that it may furnish a popular answer to a popular objection against the authority of the Gospels which has been recently revived, grounded not on the differences, but on the resemblances to be found in them, ' both in their language and in the order and collocation of their narratives.' * ' The Discourses on the Gospels ' may be regarded as at once oflfering a body of internal evidence for the truth of the Gospels, and a probable explanation of the agreements and differences which they severally present. Now, a principle which at one ajid the same time yields testimony to the authenticity of Scripture, and a solution of the difficulties » Edinburgh Review, No. cii. p. 529. — We cannot advert to this rash passage without expressing our sense of the greatly- improved general tone of that journal, on religious topics, for some time past. Essay VII.] TOWNSON'S DISCOURSES. 899 ■which encumber it, has a double claim upon our confidence : just as we may be supposed to have a right key when it both fastens and opens the lock. Dr. Townson's theory is this — that ' The progress in planting the Christian faith was from a Church purely of the circumcision, Samaritans included, to a mixed com- munity, and from thence to distinct churches of the Gentiles. And there is a strong presumption (he thinks) that the Gospels were published successively, as they were wanted by the churches to whose use they were immediately adapted : that St. Matthew wrote for the first; St. Mark for the second ; and St. Luke for the third settlement of the faith ; and that this view of things presents us with the order in which the Gospels have all along been disposed.' Here, then, Dr. Townson takes up his position : the four Evangelists have been almost invariably placed, from the earliest times, in the order in which they now stand; the pre- sumption, therefore, is, that such was the order in which they were originally published. Again, the progress of Christianity was this (the history of it, as given in the Acts of the Apostles, were there no other, testifies as much) : it began with the Jews, who were the first Christian congregation; it proceeded to a mixed society, consisting both of Jews and Gentiles, who were the next ; and it ended with a body com- posed of Gentiles chiefly or altogether. Let us, then, observe whether the historical order of the Gospels does not tally with the historical progress of the cause which the Gospels advocate, deducing our argument from internal evidence only. Now, St. Matthew, as compared with St. Mark, writes as though he was living in Judea — amongst people who knew all the Jewish customs just as well as himself; who had the Temple before their eyes, and the offerings made in it ; to whom the phraseo- logy, the geography, the local peculiarities of the holy land, were perfectly familiar : above all, who partook of the Jewish expectations of a Messiah, and understood the numerous pro- phecies which were thought to relate to Him ; for to these St. Matthew points far more frequently than the other Evangelists, and indeed makes it a very primary object to develope the 300 TOWNSON'S DISCOURSES. [Essay VII. prophetical Christ ia Jesus of Nazareth. St. Mark makes much more limited demands upon his readers for knowledge of this kind; he explains where St. Matthew is silent; and accommodates (as it would seem) the narrative of the latter, in very many instances, to a different audience. Examples are eveiything: thus, in St. Matthew iii. 6, we read, 'And were baptized of him in Jordan;' whereas, St. Mark, i. 5, has it, 'And were baptized of him in the river of Jordan.' The general identity of phrase here, and in the context of the two passages, argues the one Evangelist to have consulted the other, whilst the insertion of the word river by the one, argues that his congregation had members in it to whom the geography of Judea was less perfectly known than to those of his col- league. In St. Matthew, ix. 14, we find, ' Then came the disciples of John, saying. Why do we and the pharisees fast oft, but Thy disciples fast not ? ' The thing was notorious ; but St. Mark, ii. 18, speaks to the uninitiated : he, therefore, supplies a preface, ' And the disciples of John and of the pharisees used to fast, — and they came and say unto Him, Why do the disciples of John, and of the pharisees, fast, but Thy disciples fast not?' The introduction added, the rest is the same. In the fifteenth chapter of Matthew, as compared with the seventh of Mark, tliere is a very remarkable instance to the same effect — ' Then came to Jesus scribes and pharisees which were of Jerusalem, saying. Why do Thy disciples transgress the tra- dition of the elders, for they wash not their hands when they eat bread?' Now, look at the commentary with which St. Mark, who adopts the narrative in the main, interpolates it, — ' Then came together unto Him the pharisees and certain of the scribes which came from Jerusalem. And when they saw some of His disciples eat bread with defiled (that is to say, tcith unwashen) hands, they found fault. For the pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables. Essay VII.] TOWNSON'S DISCOUESES. 301 Then the pharisees and scribes asked Him, Why walk not Thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders ? ' Here we see St. Matthew's text transferred, with little alteration, into St. Mark's, and a note of explanation let into it. In St. Matthew, xxi. 19,^8 are told, ' Jesus saw a fig-tree in the way, and He came to it, and found nothing thereon but leaves only.' St. Mark, xi. 13, adds, for the purpose of completing an expression which he thought elliptical and obscure, more especially to persons who might not know that at the pass- over (which was the date of this transaction) the figs in Judea were not ripe for gathering, 'for the time of Jigs was not yet.' St. Matthew, xviii. 8, 9, uses the word Gehenna, a word purely Jewish. St. Mark, ix. 43, 48, uses the same in the cor- responding passage of his Gospel, but he annexes a para- phrastical explanation of it. St. Matthew, xv. 22, speaks of a ' Canaanitish woman.' St. Mark, vii. 26, calls the same person a 8yro^hoenician-^—ih& former a term perfectly in- telligible to the readers of the ancient Scriptures, though a term now nearly obsolete, for it occurs in only two other places in the New Testament (Acts vii. 11, and xiii. 19) ; and, accordingly, one who wrote at a distance from Canaan, and addressed himself to persons who might or might not be acquainted with the language of the Old Testament, substitutes for it the more popular word Syrophoenician. Nay, sometimes even a slight grammatical emendation maybe thought to betray the order in which the two Evangelists wrote, and the nys^S-n aTTo tav vw^av of St. Matthew, xiv. 2, is written by St. Mark £«. vsnfi)v uyffSn, vi. 14 ; the preposition in the latter case being less ambiguous in its meaning. And again, St. Matthew's sentence, ' but are as the angels of God in heaven,' xxii. 30, is expressed with a similar regard to precision by St. Mark, xii. 25, ' but are as the angels which are in heaven.' By these, and other instances of the same kind, we seem, justified in the conclusion that St. Mark wrote after St. Matthew, seeing that he often completes, explains, and de- velopes the narrative of St. Matthew ; but, if after him, then is it probable that the congregation which required this new 302 TOWNSON'S DISCOURSES. [Essat VII. Gospel would not be made up of Jews only, for the Christian faith soon extended to Gentiles too; and, accordingly, with the internal evidence of its being posterior in time to the Gospel of St. Matthew, comes also the internal evidence that it was addressed to Gentiles as well as Jews. The parallel which has been already run between certain passages in St. Matthew and St. Mark, whilst it estabhshes one of these points, establishes the other also ; for the changes to which texts in St. Matthew are subjected, when they re-appear in St. Mark, are of a kind to show no less that he made them in accommodation to the Gentiles than that he wrote after St. Matthew. But if more proof of the mixed character of the converts, for whom St. Mark wrote, were demanded, more might be supplied. For instance, that a portion of those whom he addressed were Jews, may be argued from his recording at so much length the reproofs which our Lord directed against the characteristic vices of the pharisees,- — vii. 3—13 ; the nature of the marriage union, and the manner in which the Mosaical law of divorce had been abused, — x. 2, 12 ; the decision of the question touching the comparative importance of the com- mandments, which was the greatest, the doubt being altogether judaical — some Jews holding sacrifice, others circumcision, a third party the observance of the Sabbath, to be the greatest — xii. 28 34 ; the caution against false Christs, a caution of which the Jews stood chiefly in need, they being in expectation of a temporal Messiah, and of which events proved that they stood in need, — xiii. 6, 21-23 — not so, perhaps, the Gentiles. On the other hand, that amongst those for whom St. Mark wrote there were heathens, nay more, heathens who did not live in Judea, and to whom the Jewish customs and language were imperfectly known (heathens of Rome, as it should seem, and as ecclesiastical authority asserts), is no less plain from other passages, — ' Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not ; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,' is a part of the charge which our Lord gives to his disciples, as reported by St. Matthew, x. 5, 6. St. Mark, vi. 7, 11, who relates many of Essay VII.] TOWNSON'S DISCOURSES. 303 the particulars of this address, omits this one ; and so does St. Luke, ix. 3, 5 ; both probably for the same reason, a desire not to give needless offence to the Gentiles, by recording a clause in the instructions affecting them which had been since withdrawn. Interpretations annexed by St. Mark to words of common occurrence amongst Jews, are evidently intended for strangers, — ' Boanerges, which is. The sons of thunder,' — iii. 17;' Corban, that is to say, a gift,' — vii. 1 1 ; 'Ephphatha, that w, Be opened,' — vii. -34 ; ' Two lepta (mites), ivhich make a quadrans (farthing),' — xii. 42 : here it is further remarkable that a Greek coin is explained by a Latin equiva- lent ; ' The soldiers led him away into the hall, that is (o ta-n), the prsetorium,' — xv. 16 — where again the Greek word is turned by the Latin; 'The centurion' (o HiVTu^mv), — xv. 39 — again a Latin word ; in the parallel passage of St Matthew, xxvii. 54, and of St. Luke, xxiii. 47, the same officer is expressed by a Greek term {iH.aTQvia^x°^) ; ' The preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath,' xv. 42 ; though the preparation was a common name amongst the Jews for Friday. Moreover, St. Mark speaks of Simon as the father of Alexander and Rufws, XV. 21, as though this hint was sufficient to designate the individual to those for whom he wrote. Now, Eufus was a distinguished Iloman convert, of whom St. Paul speaks (Rom. xvi. 13) ; and if this be the same Eufus, the circum- stance still points to Eomans as members of St. Mark's congregation. Thus there is reason to think from internal evidence that St. Mark wrote at a period later than St. Matthew, and from the same evidence there is again reason to think that he wrote for a mixed assembly, consisting both of Jews and Gentiles. Now, these two inductions are remarkably consistent, the later date of the Gospel agreeing with the greater diffusion of Christianity ; either conclusion corroborates the other, and both minister to the credibility of the Scriptures. A similar comparison of St. Mark with St. Luke affords similar ground for arguing the priority in point of time of the former Evangelist. Thus St. Mark tells us that, ' as Jesus sat 304 TOWNSON'-S DISCOUESES. [Essay VII. at meat in his house, many publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus, and His disciples,' — ii. ] 5. As this occurs immediately after the call of Levi, it is reasonahle to suppose that the house- of Levi was here meant ; the passage, however, is not so worded as to determine this with certainty ; accord- ingly St. Luke comes after St. Mark, and puts the matter out of all doubt, ' and Levi made Him a great feast in his own house,' V. 29. Sometimes, whea the sentence is on the whole all hut identical in these two writers, there is an improved collocation of some member in it, which indicates St. Luke's hand to have been the later of the two. Thus, St. Mark, ii. 25, 26, ' And He said unto them. Have ye never read what David did when he had need, and was an hungered, he and they that were with him ? How he went into the house of God, in the days, of Abiathar the high-priest, and did eat the shew-bread (which is not lawful to eat but for the priest), and gave also to them that were with him.' St. Luke, vi. 3, 4, inverts the last two clauses, and avoids the parenthesis, reading, ' how he went into the house of God, and did take and eat, and gave also to them that were with him, the shew-bread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests alone.' In the two accounts of the miracle performed on the daughter of Jairus, that of St. Luke, though agreeing in great part to the letter with that of St. Mark, is still the more complete : ' As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, He saith unto the ruler of the synagogue. Be not afraid, only believe. And He suffered no man to follow Him save Peter, James, and John the brother of James. And He cometh to the house of the ruler of the synagogue.' So speaks St. Mark, v. 30-38. But the multitude had ' thronged' Jesus just before : did He disengage Himself from them in the high road, and gather to Him His three attendants without an effort ? ' But when Jesus heard it. He answered him, saying, Fear not : believe only, and she shall be made whole. And when He came into the house He suffered no man to go in, save Peter, and James, and John, and the father and the mother of the maiden.' So speaks St. Luke, viii. 50, 51, who clears the case up by informing us that Essay VII.] TOWNSON'S DISCOURSES. 305 the throng was escaped at the house-door, which was closed against the ingress of all but those whom Jesus selected. In the scene of the widow at the treasury, St. Mark writes, ' For all they did cast in of their abundance ; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living,' — xii. 41. St. Luke, nearly in the same words, but with one small supplement, ' For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God, but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had,' — xxi. 4 ; the addition is not an idle one, especially when Gentiles were to be readers ; and as St. Mark had such amongst those for whom he wrote, such an addition would not have been ill bestowed even by him. Whilst, there- fore, the general similarity of the two passages indicates that the one Evangelist must have seen the other, the addition of a word of explanation by St. Luke, which would have been equally in its place in the text of either party, argues St. Luke to have been the later writer of the two. St. Luke might have added the clause, but St. Mark would scarcely have expunged it. The details of the mockery of our Lord, immediately before His crucifixion, present another argument for the priority of St. Mark's Gospel. St. Matthew had represented the scoffers as saying, ' Prophesy unto us. Thou Christ, Who is he that smote Thee,' — xxvi. 68 ; but he makes no mention of the blindfolding. St. Mark says, that ' they covered His face and bnde Him prophesy,' — xiv. 65 ; but he fails to tell what was to be the subject of His prophecy. Accordingly St. Luke profits by the examples of both, and with St. Mark tells of the blind- folding, and with St. Matthew of the prophecy and its objects: 'And the men that held Jesus mocked Him and smote Him. And when they had blindfolded Him, they struck Him on the face, and asked Him, saying. Prophesy, who is he that smote Thee,' — xxii. 63, 64. The other arguments we shall mention for the priority of St. Mark's Gospel, are such as turn upon points of grammar and construction. The force of these (which is considerable) can only be perceived in the original, and we are sorry for it, it being our object to treat this question in a manner rather popular than scholastic. X 306 TOWXSON'S DISCOUESES. [Essat VII. Mark xii. 38—40. Luke xx. 46, 47. BAeweT? airo Twy XlfoaEvne Wno tut y^afj.ficniwt, tut ^iKanu, y^cciifidTeut, iwi/ SeAovToiy tv o-ToMie TTE^i^raTHf, Tr'fiira.riit £» crroXaig, If raig ayo^ats, it ratg ayo^oiiQ, y.ai w^uT0Ka.6iS^}as it xai 'ir^uTcxaSiS^iae it Taij a-biayuyaig, xai ratg avta.yaiya.iq, zai WfmToxXio-iaf it roij 6uict!,\Q' ir^uroxhKriae it rotg Jsiinot;" 0* KaTEffototrig rctg oty.tag oi xaTia-Qiovai rctg otxtag rut x^?"') "«' ir^o^a,ai\ y-axga rut X"?"') "*' «■§.i6oaT^aroi.) there was ; that it gave its name to that spot is not proved, yet nothing can he more probable than that it did ; and consequently, nothing more probable than that St. John is speaking with truth and 316 TO\V^"SOK'S DISCOUESES. [Essay VII. accuracy when he makes Pilate bring Jesus forth and sit down in his judgment-seat in a place called the Pavement. Thus does the narrative of St. John, in this particular, stand the trial we proposed. It would be most easy to multiply instances of this kind, the last of which is taken from Professor Hug's 'Introduction to the Writings of the New Testament,' a work which has sup- plied us with several other hints already embodied in this article ; and which, though not free from very serious objec- tion, must be allowed to contain a vast deal of curious and interesting matter. Enough, however, has been advanced to show the nature of Dr. Townson's argument, and the value of it; and that if we admit certain appearances in the Gospels to be inexplicable, perhaps, without some communication amongst their several authors, there are other appearances no less inex- plicable without an independent knowledge of their subject on the part of each. Now, whilst this theory accounts in a great degree both for the resemblances and differences of the Evangelists, it seems to leave the question of inspiration untouched. In the pro- phetical parts of Scripture, it is clear to demonstration, that the Spirit of God supplied to successive individuals an inti- mate knowledge of His will with respect to future events — yet those individuals availed themselves of the writings of their predecessors notwithstanding; and we see no greater reason for doubting the inspiration of the Evangelists because they did so, than for doubting the inspiration of Isaiah because he sometimes adopts the language of David ; or that of Jere- miah, because he does the same by Isaiah. Nor in the prin- ciple of accommodation (where there is no compromise) do we find any stumbling-block in our way. The gift of tongues was doubtless a spiritual gift; but once imparted, it was as much subject to the discretion of the parties in the application of it, as if it had been learned by grammar and dictionary; and, accordingly, by some it was used, and by some (as we read) it was abused : it was used when the speaker accommo- dated his language to the audience he addressed ; when he Essay VII.] TOWJTSON'S DISCOURSES. 317 spoke Greek to the Grecian, and Arabic to the Arabian ; — and it was abused when he addressed the latter in the language of Greece, and the former in that of Arabia, not caring, through vainglory, though he should be a barbarian to them, and they barbarians to him. In like manner the Spirit influenced the matter which the Apostle delivered, as He influenced his lan- guage; but He did not in this case, any more than in the otherj suspend the exercise of his own common sense, which would naturally dictate an accommodation (not a compromise) of that matter to the character and wants of those to whom he submitted it ; nor in a Gospel, for instance, meant exclusively for Gentile converts, insist upon his dwelling emphatically upon Jewish privilege (however strong expressions to that efl'ect might have been recorded with perfect truth, as having fallen from the hps of our Lord) ; nor in a Gospel meant for Jews, require him to omit the correctives specially administered to Jewish corruption. In all these instances, 'the spirits of the prophets,' as St. Paul expressly tells us, ' were subject to the prophets." — 1 Cor. xiv. 33. Meanwhile this cannot fail to strike us, that in the case of the Apostles, both in their hearts and in their understandings (the two provinces for the operation of the Spirit of God), we observe them presenting a very singular contrast to themselves, when contemplated before the crucifixion, and shortly after it; ■ — such a contrast as requires to be accounted for, and does coincide in a very remarkable manner with the supposition that an extraordinary illapse of the Holy Spirit had occurred to them in the interval, which enabled them to brave dangers from which they had before shrunk, and to understand scrip- tures to which their eyes had been before blinded. This same Spirit, therefore, it is reasonable to believe, did not desert them in the composition of those writings which they have left us, but guided them into all truth. The precise mode, indeed, in which the Spirit influenced the holy men of old, we do not pretend to determine ; in this, as in almost any other investigation, it is an extremely easy matter to puzzle ourselves, or for others to puzzle us, if we will go 318 TOWNSON'S DISCOURSES. [Essay VII. far enough — if we will not 'know to know no 0101*6.' A special pleader may confound a perfectly veracious witness, but the jury sees the man all the while to be a true man, and, with- out troubling themselves to unite the hairs which the other has split, accepts the testimony and forgets the logic. The precise mode in which inspiration directed the Apostles may be unin- telligible ; so is the precise mode in which instinct directs the swallow. The poor bird, however, does not meanwhile set himself down on the house-top and argue himself into a dis- trust of the principle, whatever it is, till winter cuts off his speculations and his life together, but prunes his wing, and commits himself to its guidance, nothing doubting, and finds it land him at last, tempest-tost perhaps, on a soil where his foot can rest, and in a clime where he can bathe himself in the genial breeze. We have tarried so long upon the threshold of the more immediate subject of our review, that we shall be constrained to speak of it somewhat briefly. We must premise, as an act of justice to the modesty of Dr. Townson, and not assuredly because any propitiation is wanted for the reader, that these sermons were not written or prepared by their author for pub- lication; and that when Archdeacon Churton pressed him, a few days before his death, for permission to give them to the world, he did not consent. The prohibition was not peremp- tory; it sufficed, however, to suppress them for nearly forty years ; and to the zeal and sound discretion of the Bishop cf Limerick, who had long cherished a wish that Dr. Townson's posthumous papers might be brought to the light, and who, by an accidental acquaintance and subsequent intimacy with their custodee. Archdeacon Churton, had the opportunity of expressing and urging his desire in the proper quarter, we are now indebted for the possession of them. They will be found to place Dr. Townson, if not in the very foremost rank of ser- mon writers of his own generation, or of that which imme- diately preceded him, still in a very honourable position amongst them. It is no disparagement to him to say that he had not perhaps the acuteuess or the depth of Sherlock— a Essay VII.] TOWNSON'S DISCOURSES. 319 reasoner, indeed, of the very first order, too severe to be very often imaginative, but occasionally kindling into uncommon eloquence, and always wielding his own language with the hand of a master; — that in ecclesiastical learning he must yield to Waterland— few indeed having had the command of such magazines of controversial knowledge as were possessed by that champion of orthodoxy ; — that he could not shake the capitol with the fulminations of a Warburton, nor leave his hearers in doubt whether the intrepidity with which he pro- posed a paradox, or the ingenuity with which he supported it, were the more extraordinary ;— that he had not that force of genius which drove Horsley forth in search of ' hard sayings,' determined to find a way, if there was one ; or to make one, if there was not; — that he had not the pith and point of a Paley, nor that practical knowledge of mankind, or of the laws of popular ratiocination which are so remarkable in all the ser- mons of that home-spun philosopher and divine. But, in truth, the powers of Dr. Townson are scaj'cely perceived in the meekness with which he wears them. His happy expositions of Scripture, both of the text and of the scheme, may be very readily overlooked through the unostentatious form in which they are presented to us. It often requires a considerable familiarity with topics of divinity to estinjate him at his real worth, to give him the honour which is his due, to be pi'operly aware of the dexterity with which he steers through an intri- cacy, or the aptness with which he applies an explanatory text, or the sagacity with which he illustrates a doctrine : 'AH men may try and think to write as well, And not without much pains be undeceived.' Then, his style contributes to this want of striking effect — especially in these days when style is so often meretricious; or, as Sir Hugh Evans would say, ' is affectations.' There is no ambition in it — no attempt to shine ; it is such pure unde- filed English as would have passed from the pen of Addison ; terse it is, no doubt, but the labour of the file does not appear. It is ever under the influence of a taste the most chastened 320 TOWKSON'S DISCOURSES. [Essay YII. and sober, such as checks all extravagance, whether of fancy or expression, forbids all clashing of discordant metaphors, tolerates no antithesis, discards every idle word, and, in short, racks off so much of that which goes by the name of fine writing, as would leave to authors of a different order from Dr. Townson, a miserable caput mortuum indeed. What does remain, we will express in the language and under the authority of the Right Eev. Editor : — ' for himself, he can truly say, that more just thought, more sound theology, and more genuine piety, embodied in so short a space, and so un- encumbered with needless words, it has not been his fortune to meet with in any production of modern times.' Before we close our paper, we will extract a few passages for the satisfaction of our readers ; not, however, such as are to be accounted purpurei panni, for it is quite characteristic of these sermons to be exempt from all splendid paragraphs. The following is, we think, a picture very finely conceived and expressed. It is in the 25th Sermon, on the raising of Lazarus : — ' But when He advanced to the grave, and was now upon the point of commanding the dead man to come forth, St. John tells us. He groaned again in Himself. We may here imagine, that His thoughtful mind was struck with the impression of a deeper con- cern, than what arose from the sorrow of those around Him: looking forward from the resurrection of Lazarus to that hour, when all that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth, they that have done good to the resur- rection of life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection of damanation. — The mind of our Lord, looking forward to that hour, would naturally forecast in thought, how many should then come forth unto the resurrection of damnation ; among whom, it is to be feared, some of that very company, for their hard and impenitent hearts, would be numbered. And He, who had such tender com- passion for us that He died to save us from this second death, mu^t then have felt a deeper sorrow working within Him, when, after having groaned in spirit and wept, on coming to the grave, He again groaned in Himself. ' Having thus seen our Lord affected according to the principles Essay VII.] TOWNSON'S DISCOURSES. 321 of His human nature, we next behold Him acting according to the power of tlie divine : when, after a short prayer addressed to His Heavenly Father, He cried, with a loud voice, " Lazarus, come forth ! " and he that was dead came forth. He, whose hands were bound to his sides, whose feet were closed together, in the grave- clothes wrapped round them, arose in the cave where he lay, and at His call came forth. He who, after a course of sickness, had been dead four days, in which time his body, in that hot climate, must naturally have seen corruption ; he lived and came forth, with an immediate and full return of vigour in his limbs ; and, as appeared to the wondering beholders, so soon as the napkin that bound his face could be removed, with health in his countenance.' — p. 330. There is occasionally great poetical beauty in Dr. Town- son's illustrations. In Sermon XX. he has occasion to speak of that foretaste of greater joy which it is permitted the good man to experience as he approaches the end of his earthly pilgrimage, and a better country begins to open upon him. He may here have contemplated a well-known passage in the 'Paradise Lost,' though another, in Bishop Ken (which the Bishop of Limerick gives, as he also does the former, in a note), is a still more striking coincidence : — ' The merchant, who towards spicy regions sails. Smells their perfume far off in adverse gales ; With blasts which thus against the faithful blow, Fresh odorous breathings of God's goodness flow.' The same thought is thus expressed by Dr. Townson : — ' We read that in certain climates of the world the gales that spring from the laud carry a refreshing smell out to sea, and assure the watchful pilot that he is approaching to a desirable and fruitful coast, when as yet he cannot discern it with his eyes. And, to take up, once more, the comparison of life to a voyage, in like manner it fares with those who have steadily and religiously pur- sued the course which heaven pointed out to them. We shall sometimes find, by their conversation, towards the end of their days, that they are filled with hope, and peace, and joy ; which, like those refreshing gales and reviving odours to the seaman, are breathed forth from Paradise upon their souls, and give them to Y 322 TOWNSON'S DISCOURSES. [Essay VII. understand, with certainty, that God is bringing them unto their desired haven.' — P. 256. We can only find room for one quotation more ; it is a piece of noble declamation, which occurs in a Sermon for Christmas Day (XXVII.) :— ' In the first and second chapters of St. Lufte, we read how His coining in the flesh was received by Zacharias and Simeon, two venerable persons, who themselves had tasted of divine inspiration, and were diligent to search the Scriptures. The holy deliglit which they felt and testified, naturally resulted from the divine pro- phecies and promises concerning Him. For, what manner of per^on must He be, might such pious inquirers ask, who shall answer all the expectations raised, from age to age, of His appearance? How powerful shall this seed of the woman be, who shall bruise the serpent, the ancient deceiver of mankind ? How happy this seed of Abraham, in whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed ? How wonderful the prophet who shall perfect and complete the law, given at Mount Sinai, and ordained by angels ? How mighty the Prince, who shall sit on the throne of David for ever, and of whose kingdom there shall b^ no end ? How majestic the Angel of the Covenant ; of whose coming to our temple such things are spoken ? We see not our tokens any more, might they say, when the Temple, built and adorned by Solomon, was still richer in heavenly gifts ; when the precious stones of Aaron's breast-plate shone with an oracular brightness ; and a cloud, a symbol of the divine presence, overshadowed the mercy-seat : and yet we are assured that the glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former. Who, then, is He whose presence shall thus en- noble our temple ? Who is this King of glory who shall enter our gates with all the honours upon Him, which Heaven before divided among its favoured sons ? Whom Adam represented as a father of mankind ; Melchizedec, as a priest of the most high God ; Moses, as a mediator between God and man ; Joseph, as a Saviour; David, as a shepherd of His people, a ruler, and king? — Who, indeed, can this King of glory be : promised to all ages, proclaimed by all inspired prophets, prefigured by all great examples, — who but the Lord; even the Lord of Hosts Himself, Immanuel, or God with us ?— P. 354. On the vrhole, it will appear from these sermons of Dr. Townson, that he was a man such as the Church of England Essay VII.] TOWNSON'S DISCOURSES. 323 delights to see, and contributes to nurture ; who, in an age of much lukewarmness on the one hand, and much fanaticism on the other, was led by the spirit of his own articles and liturgy, and fell into neither extreme, being at once the pious and evan- gelical preacher, and the sound and sober moralist ; who was too ripe a scholar as well as too earnest a servant of God, to play the pedant before a rural audience, or, on the contrary, to refresh his flock with ' lean and flashy songs' only, but rather gave himself to solve the difficult problem of communicating deep things in a manner that should be intelligible to a simple hearer, and of using plain speech, without an approach to vulgarity ; who, at a time when many preachers were striving to be profound, was himself content to be scriptural ; and with- out violence or effort, or popular appeal, or observation, made his way into the heads and hearts of his people, remembering ' That the words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools.' * " Eccles. ix. 17. Y 2 VIII.— CMNMER. (JuiT, 1832.) ' Give me my liar,' was the phrase in which Charles V. was used to call for a volume of history ; and certainly no man can attentively examine any important period of our annals without remarkiag, that almost every incident admits of two handles, almost every character of two interpretations; and that, by a judicious packing of facts, the historian may make Lis picture assume nearly what form he pleases, without any direct violation of truth. To tlie characters which distinguish the period of the Kefor- mation, this remark is particularly applicable. It is with almost all of them as with Wolsey in the play. A Catharine's version of him is, that he was a man who ranked himself with princes ; who held simony fair ; whose own opinion was his law ; double in his words and meaning ; never pitiful, but when he meant to ruin ; mighty in Lis promises, in his performance mean ; unchaste in his morals — pernicious in his example. A Griffith's version of the same Wolsey is, that though certainly of an humble stock, he was stamped for honour ; that if he was lofty, it was only to those who loved him not ; that if he was unsatisfied in getting, he was most princely in bestowing ; that he was a scholar, and the friend and patron of scholars • great in prosperity, greater in misfortune; and that he crowned » Tli£ Life of ArchJmhop Cranmer. By the Rev. Henry John Todd, M.A. 2 vols. 8vo. Loudon. 1831. EssAT VIII.] CEANMEE. 825 tlie glories of his life by dying in the faith and fear of God. Sir Thomas More is another leader of those times presented to us in strangely-conflicting aspects: the tender husband and parent ; pleasant in his household ; sportive with his friends ; simple in his pursuits ; fond of animals (a taste rarely con- nected with a harsh nature) ; tolerant in his principles ; en- lightened in his creed. And again, the inveterate bigot ; the cruel inquisitor ; the calm spectator of the conscientious martyr's pains, as he struggled under the scourge in his garden at Chel- sea, or writhed upon the rack which he had prepared for him in the Tower. Cromwell, Earl of Essex, is a worthy, according to some chroniclers, almost without a fault ; wise in counsel ; re- solute in execution ; or, like Csesar, if doing wrong, ' never doing it but in just cause.' According to others again, he conducts his intrepid attempts at ecclesiastical reformation, with one eye to the interests of religion, with another to his own interest : and orders, without scruple, abbots to be ' tried and executed,' castigatque aicditque, or the torture to be applied by way of experiment. Pole is exhibited in as many cross lights as there are authors who have described him. His historical character ranges from the sanguinary persecutor to the lenient counsellor of mercy, and the chivalrous friend, leaving Burnet to recant in his third volume what he had said of him in his second. Gardiner is the man of blood — he is the man who abstained from blood, suffering Bonner to shed it, who loved it; — he is the betrayer of the great interests of the nation in his embassy at Paris — he is the assertor of its rights and liberties, in his negotiations with Philip before his marriage. But all this is natural. The epoch which saw these distin- guished persons acting their momentous parts on the stage of life was one of extreme exasperation, and friends and foes did not leave, in those times, cause for the wistful sigh, that they would be either cold or hot. Cranmer was not likely to fare better than his less-conspicuous contemporaries. With respect to him, above all, there has been, from his own day to ours. 826 CEANMEU. [Essay VIIL the forward voice to speak him well, and the backward voice to utter foul speeches and to detract, till it is hard to believe the subject of so much praise and vituperation to be one and the same. Mr. Todd, in his recent life of him, has produced some new documents, and investigated some old accusations, in a manner which will tend to establish the truth concerning him ; more than this, Cranmer would not ask — ' Speak of me as I am.' We shall take for granted, that our readers are acquainted with the leading circumstances of the archbishop's history, and shall merely touch upon such passages in it as may seem to require a remark. Cranmer received his early education from a parish-clerk. This may seem singular, for he was of gentle blood, and was entered at Cambridge amongst ' the better sort of students.' But probably such shifts were not unusual before the Reforma- tion. The monasteries, indeed, had schools attached to them in many instances. In Elizabeth's time a complaint is made by the Speaker of the Commons, that the number of such places of education had been reduced by a hundred, in consequence of the suppression of the religious houses. Still, it must often have happened (thickly scattered as the monasteries were) that the child lived at an inconvenient distance from any one of them ; mothers, too, might not have liked to trust less robust children to the clumsy care of a fraternity ; and probably little was learned in these academies after all. Erasmus makes him- self merry with the studies pursued in them ; and it is remark- able that no sooner did the love of learning revive than the popularity of the monasteries declined. For thirty years before the Reformation, there were few or no new religious founda- tions, whilst schools, on the other hand, began to multiply in their stead ; a fact which suflBciently marks the state of public opinion with regard to the monasteries as places of education — for education began now to be the desire of the day. Schools, therefore, in the present acceptation of the term, in Cranmer's boyhood there were scarcely any; and it was the crying want of them in London that induced Dean Colet to establish that EasAY VIII.] CKANMEE. 327 of St. Paul's, which, under the fostering care of Lily, the first master, not only became so distinguished in itself, but set the example, and prepared the way, by its rules and its grammar, for so many others which followed in its wake. Edward VI., with the natural feeling of a boy fond of knowledge, and him- self a proficient for his years, was aware of the evil, and pro- jected the remedy. Colet might be his model — but he was embarrassed in his means by courtiers, who were for ever uttering the cry of the horse-leech's daughters ; and, besides his days were soon numbered. Cranmer, who perhaps remem- bered the obstacles in his own way, and who certainly foresaw the great calamity of an ignorant clergy, pressed for the estab- lishment of a school in connection with every cathedral — a school, as it were, of the prophets — where boys intended for holy orders might be brought up suitably to the profession they were about to adopt, and where the bishops might ever find persons duly qualified to serve God in the church. But Cranmer was overruled, and a measure, which might have helped to catch up the church before it fell into that abyss of ignorance which seems to have immediately succeeded the Ee- formation (the natural consequence of a season of convulsion and violence), was unhappily lost. It was not till the reign of Elizabeth that the evil was at all adequately met, nor fully indeed then, as the deficiency of well-endowed schools at this day testifies. Still much was at that time done. The digni- taries and more wealthy ecclesiastics of the Reformed Church bestirred themselves and founded some schools. Many trades- men, who had accumulated fortunes in London (then the almost exclusive province of commercial enterprise), retired in their later years to the country-town which had given them birth, and gratefully provided for the better education of their neighbours, by furnishing it with a grammar-school. And even the honest yeoman, a person who then appears to have appreciated learning, and often to have brought up his boy to the ministry, united in the same praiseworthy object. In such cases application was usually made to the Queen for a charter, which was granted with or without pecuniary assistance on her 328 CRANMER. [Essat VIII. own part ; and whoever will examine the dates of our founda- tion schools, will find a great proportion of them erected in that glorious reign. Thus it came to pass (to revert to our text), that Cranmer was sent to college in his fourteenth year, Oxford and Cam- bridge being at that time the substitutes for the schools which have succeeded them, and being considered the two great national receptacles for all the boys in the country. There they were subjected to corporal punishment. The statutes were framed with a reference to the habits of mere boys, — it is forbidden, for instance, in one of the Cambridge statutes, to play marbles on the senate-house steps ; and the number of the students was so enormous (still for the same reason), that Latimer, in one of his sermons, speaks of a decrease in those of his own time, to the amount of no less than ten thousand. Every passage in Cranmer's life tells a tale of other days. At the age of twenty-three he married, thereby vacating his fellowship at Jesus College, to which, however, upon the death of his wife, he was re-elected. This wife, says a modem Eomish writer (Dr. Milner), was a woman of low condition. ' One Joan, sumamed Black or Brown, dAvelling at the sign of the Dolphin in Cambridge,' aie the words of Thomas Martin, a contemporary of Cranmer, unfriendly to the marriage of priests. ' She was the daughter of a gentleman,' writes Fox, who does not conceal, however, that Cranmer ' placed her at an inn called the Dolphin, the wife of the house being of affinity to her.' This is a curious feature of the day. There is probably nothing inconsistent in these two facts of Fox. The innkeeper of those times seems to have been a person of less humble station than now — he shared his calling with the monastery and with the village-pastor. Travellers had to choose (as they still have in Eoman Catholic countries) between the refectory of the monk, the parsonage of the minister, and the tavern of mine host— payment for the night's lodging, where he was in a condition to pay, being expected of him, in one shape or other, at oil. The keeper of the Tabard in the ' Can- Essay VIII.] CRANMER. 32iJ terbury Tales ' appears to lie upon a level with his guests, "both in rank and information, and to play the part of one who felt that he was receiving his equals, and no more, under his roof : yet his company was not of the lowest ; and in those times it seems to have been usual for the landlord to preside at the common board, and act in every respect as the hospitable master of the house, save orily in exacting the shot ; as indeed is the custom in many parts of Germany at the present day. When the system of lay impropriations had begun to take effect, it was by no means an uncommon thing for the minister himself to be also the tavern-keeper ; a circumstance, however, ■which, it must be confessed, may be thought to argue the extreme impoverishment of the church, which drove the clergy to such expedients for a living, rather than the respectability of the calling to which they thus betook themselves. At Cambridge, Oranmer continued to pursue his studies with great severity and success, so that, in 1524, he was invited by Wolsey to his new college of Christ Church, which was to be filled with the choice spirits of the time. He, however, like Parker, his eventual successor in the metropolitan see, declined the offer, baited as it was with so much to recommend it to an ambitious churchman. Cranmer, however, was not such, though he has been charged with being so. This one fact is enough to disprove it ; — for here was a man in the opening of life, with his fortune to make, a simple student, without a patron in the world, met more than halfway by the great favourite of the great king ; yet his advances he declines,, content with what he has, and by so doing risks, and, it is said, actually incurs his displeasure. This surely is not like ambition ; and the circumstance deserves the consideration of those who insinuate that Cranmer, eager for the mitre, was willing to expedite the king's divorce, as the unworthy prico at which it was to be won ; though nothing can be more certain than that he was against the lawfulness of the marriage with Catharine from the beginning; against the Pope's dis- pensing power, as exercised in that case, at the very first, when he was yet a private individual, known only as a learned 330 CRANMER. [Essay VIII. member of his own university ; that herein, too, he did but follow in the steps of Warham, then archbishop; and what is more, that Gardiner himself held the same opinion, and avowed it. Such indifference to the favour of the favourite, we submit, perfectly coincides with his own protest before the commis- sioners at Oxford, ' that never man came more unwillingly to a bishopric than he did — insomuch, that when King Henry did send for him, in post, that he should come over, he pro- longed his journey by seven weeks at least, thinking that he would be forgetful of him in the mean time.' Here, however, his sincerity is called in question. Yet facts are stubborn things, and it is a fact that the see was not filled up for six months, Warham dying in August, 1532, and Cranmer's consecration not taking place till the March of the year following. But, rejoins an objector, there are few instances of the see of Canterbury being filled up so soon ; yet the cases of Islip, and Chichel6, and Stafford, and Kemp, and Bourchier, and Dean, from 1349 to 1601, are all within that time, and some considerably within it. Besides, no one can review Cranmer's character without being persuaded that he was much too cautious, much too diffident, not to say much too timid a man, to rush upon such an office as that of Primate, in such times, hand over head. The mitre was likely to prove to the brow that wore it but a ' crown of thorns.' Of that there were ample signs around him : he had seen enough of Henry to discover that he would have in him a master of ' a right royal stomach ;' and he could have wanted no seer to tell him that, independently of this embarrassment, a storm was at hand which was likely to smite the high places. He was a man, hke Sir Thomas More, to see a hon in the way at some distance ; and, hke him, rather of a temper to lay down what honours he might already enjoy, than cumber himself with more. Moreover, he had scruples. Who can read the two oaths — the one taken by the bishop-elect to the Pope, the other to the king — and doubt that scruples must have been entertained by any man who was required to swear EssatVIII.] CEANMEE. 831 allegiance so devoted to two masters whose interests were so entirely at variance ? The wonder is, that so tyrannous a demand upon the consciences of men was tolerated so long. Cranmer might he the first who expressed his misgivings ; hut he could not he the first, by many, who had felt them ; and though at last he did take the oath to the Pope, it was not till he had previously made a jpullic protestation of the sense in which he understood it — thereby reconciling it with the other to the king. But this has been pronounced a mere equivoca- tion ; yet the Bishops of Lincoln, Exeter, and St. Asaph, who acted on this occasion for the Pope — the last of them, too. Dr. Standish, a very zealous Eoman Catholic — must have heard the protestation ; and still they expressed no dissatis- faction at the manner in which he thus qualified, but completed his consecration, nothing wavering. We say these prelates must have heard his protestation : the minute account of it given by Watkins, the Prothonotary, of which the record is still preserved amongst the Lambeth manuscripts, and from which an extract is published by Mr. Todd, puts this question beyond all doubt. It there appears that he first protested in the Chapter House of Westminster, in the presence of Watkins himself, of John Tregonwell, of Thomas Bedyll, of Kiohard Gwent, and of John Cocks, all official persons; that he then went out of the Chapter House, advanced to the high altar, there to receive the pontifical dress and consecration ; that then the oath of obedience to. the Pope he took, qualified, however, as before, in the Chapter House ; that he took it a third time before the acceptance of the pall, but still after the same manner — a proceeding utterly incompatible with any reserve towards the three bishops actively engaged in adminis- tering the rite. It was their business, therefore, as represen- tatives of the Pope, if they were not satisfied, to object; and the publicity of the transaction is of importance, as estab- lishing the conclusion that an opportunity of objecting was afforded them ; otherwise, we should agree with Mr. Hallam, that it was a matter of no consequence, with regard to the morality of the act, whether it was public or not. These 332 CRAKilER. PssAT-VIir. commissioners, however, waived all objection, if they felt any ; and the Pope, by taking no steps afterwards to suspend the archbishop, must be understood to have sanctioned their con- nivance. Doubtless, all the parties felt that the papal power in England hung by a thread, and so were prepared to concede, with as good a grace as they knew how, that which perhaps it was an agreeable surprise to find was even asked. But if Cranmer was blameless in this part of the affair, which was, after all, the most material part, it is diflBcult to acquit him of all daphcity in previously allowing a proxy to take the oath at Rome, subject, as it should seem, to no such limitations as were afterwards annexed to it in England. It was an expedient invented by the canonists, and forced upon him by the king ; and if Cranmer had not yet emancipated himself from the influence of those casuistical refinements, amongst which he had been born and bred, who can be sur- prised ? This must be his apology, and no compromise must be attempted, even for his sake, between right and wrong. To the same cause must be ascribed the cases of persecution to which Cranmer was a party; few, indeed — but how humiliating is it that there should be even one ! Early prejudices here, too, still cleaved to him. Things, however, which he knew not, have in this instance also been laid to his charge. Of the blood of Lambert, who was con- demned for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation, he appears to have been guiltless. He neither sought him out as his inquisitor, nor arraigned him as his accuser, nor con- demned him as his judge. He disputed against him in the 2)resence of the king, it is true ; such was the hard tax of his ofiBce ; but it was meekly, and, as it should seem, mercifully. It was Gardiner who baited him ; it was the king who judged him ; it was Cromwell who read his sentence. Neither does the sin of Ann Askew 's death lie at Cranmer's door, though it has been laid there : Gardiner and Bonner were her judges, not Cranmer; and accordingly a vindication of her at the time was diligently circulated at Winchester, that being the seat of Gardiner's see. Besides, if she was condemned under the act Essay Vllt.] CRANMER. 833 of the Six Articles (as we presume she was), it should he rememhered that this was an act hateful to Oranmer ; an act which he had opposed, day after day, at the hazard of the king's displeasure ; and which he was therefore more likely to wash his hands of altogether, than to acknowledge, hy hathing them in the hlood which it was shedding ; nay, it was actually made one of the charges against him hy the pre- hendaries of Canterbury, at the instigation, as it was thought, of Gardiner, that under him the law of the Six Articles was unexecuted. The strong case against Cranmer is that of Joan of Kent ; for with regard to Van Paris, whose fate is usually coupled with hers, no contemporary evidence inculpates Cranmer; he miglit not perhaps intercede for his pardon, but this is a different thing from soliciting his death. To the capital punishment of Joan Boclier, however, he is said to have been more than consenting : yet, if the importunity which he is reported to have exercised in order to persuade the tender-hearted monarch to sign her death-warrant had been such as Fox describes, it seems strange that Edward should have been content to enter the tragical incident in his journal with so frigid an adherence to bare matter of fact. 'On the 2nd of May' (so the young king writes) 'she was burned for holding that Christ was not incarnate of the Virgin Mary ; being condemned the year before, but kept in hope of conversion ; and on the 30th of April, the Bishop of London and Ihe Bishop of Ely were to persuade her, but she withstood them, and reviled the preacher at her death.' This is scarcely the language of a youth who was speaking of a transaction wherein his conscience had been violated by the too earnest solicitations of another, and which now, it might have been expected, in his privacy, would have risen in arms, and dictated terms at once of self-reproach, and disgust at an evil adviser. Alas ! that Cranmer, so wise and so humane a man, should be even suspected of having thus acted towards a poor fanatic, and a woman too ! It is vain, how- ever, to deny, that toleration of religious opinion was a prin- ciple little understood even by the wisest and most humane in 534 CRANMER. [Essay VIII, those days — ^for it was not a principle which had obtained in the Church of Rome. Cranmer, if he sinned, as Fox asserts, sinned ignorantly: he was guilty of one of those secret sins of which the Psalmist speaks, — his own nature full of tenderness soured by a perse- cuting creed. And it is remarkable, that, in his penitent prayers and confessions before his death, no allusion is found to this sad misdeed. Doubtless he maintained, in common with all the world at the time, that death might as righteously be inflicted in some cases of heterodoxy as in all cases of murder ; he has the merit, however, of limiting the number of such cases by drawing a distLnction, more explicitly than had been hitherto done, between the essential and non-essential doctrines of the Gospel ; and whilst, in his ' Reformation of the Ecclesiastical Laws,' a code of discipline intended for the reformed church, he proposed that capital punishment should be inflicted on atheists and such as opposed Christianity in general, he confined this extreme severity of the law to them. This was a step in the path of mercy. The day of small things must not be altogether despised. Let us scan this code by notions now prevalent, and no doubt it wiU seem harsh and sanguinary ; but it may be very well questioned whether Cranmer' s own age was prepared to quarrel with it on the same score. StiU the distinction is not admitted by all. Dr. Lingard would have it, that the heretic is condemned to death in the third chapter of the code, as the atheist and unbeliever certainly are in the first ; and, what is more singular, Mr. HaJ- 1am doubts about it. Yet surely doubt there can be none, — ' Consumptis omnibus aliis remediis, ad extremum ad civiles magistratus ablegetur puniendus ,' are the words of the clause, — 'when all other remedies shall have been tried without efiect, last of all, let him be sent to the civil magistrate to he punished' — but not to be punished with death. Such a punishment would not Lave been left to inference, especially when it had been denounced in express terms with regard to other delinquents. Besides, how could such a punishment of the heretic be consistent with those civil disabilities which are EssAT VIII.] CRANMER. 335 afterwards imposed upon him, — that he should he incapable, for instance, of being a witness or of making a will ? ' I rather wonder,' says Sir J. Mackintosh, ' at my friend Mr. Hallam's hesitation, in a case which seems to me to allow none.' But if more light upon this subject were needed, Mr. Todd would supply more. Cranmer's own copy of this code is in the British Museum. It appears to contain his last revisions. Now in this copy, after 'puniendus,' is added, ' exilio vel seterno carcere ; ' but the pen is drawn through these words, and the following substituted for them : — ' vel ut in perpetuum pellatur exilium, vel ad seternas carceris depri- matur tenebras, aut alioquin magistratus pmdenti considera- tione pleotendus, ut maxima illius conversioni expedire vide- bitur.' — So that the question of capital punishment, at least, is surely set at rest. In truth, moderation was the key of Cranmer's character and conduct. It shows itself in great things and in small. He was not for pushing matters to extremities with More and Fisher ; he would be satisfied with their oath to the succession, and waive the rest, having respect to their scruples, and wisely considering the weight of their example ; to that effect he writes to Cromwell. He was for winking at the use of the mass by the Pi-incess Mary. He has occasion to write to Latimer, whom he had recommended as a preacher to the court, and who was evidently considered a humourist even in his own day, hardly to be trusted to go alone by reason of his singularity : it is still in the same vein that he writes — He would not have him personal in his ser- mons. ' What might sound suspiciously against any special man's facts, acts, or sayings,' he would have him avoid. Of the mysteries and moralities, respecting the lawfulness of which there was soon much controversy, he seems to have pronounced no opinion. Gardiner and his party denounced them as hateful. Fox, a puritan, ranks players with printers and preachers, being, altogether, the ' three things set up of God, as a triple bulwark against the triple crown of the Pope, to bring him down.' Cranmer seems to evade the question, neither blessing them at all, nor cursing them at all; and a 330 CEANIIER. [Essay VIII. passage in the Latin Catechism, where they are reflected upon as ' ridiculous, licentious, and unworthy fahles, having reli- gion for their pretence,' is studiously omitted in the translation done under his inspection. Indeed, in general, Cranmer took his stand on ground between the two parties — the Roman Catholics and the Puiitans ; for the attempts which have been made to identify him with the latter are abortive ; and a matter of wonder it is that he could avoid rushing into that extreme, driven as he was by the gross corruptions of the established church. Puritan, however, he was not. It was said, indeed, amongst the exiles at Frankfort, that he would have gone further in the Prayer-book had he not been hampered by a wicked convocation and clergy; but there is no sufficient evidence of this being his disposition. On the contrary, in adapting the prayers of foreign churches to our own (as in the two confessions of the liturgy and communion service), strong expressions, and those coincident with some of the tenets of the Puritans, are designedly moderated or withheld ; and, in general, Cranmer's own opinion of his Prayer-book is best conveyed in his own words, of which we know not what cause there is to question the sincerity, that 'no one conid object to that godly book' (we quote from memory, but the passage occurs somewhere in Strype's Life of him,) ' who had any god- liness in him, coupled with knowledge.' The sermon on the Keys, annexed to the catechism published under his sanction, is not written in a spirit to please the Puritans, but the re- verse. It must have offended them, being much too emphatic an assertion of the privileges and authority of the church to meet with their concurrence. His controversy with Hooper on the episcopal habits argues the same moderation in his views. Surely, had Cranmer been so inchned, he might have here conceded to the precisians with a very good grace ; for he had the king's warrant, nay, his recommendation, to come to a compromise with Hooper — yet he reftised. In framing tlie articles of his church, moderation was still his principle : he consulted no party exclusively ; they are, as they ought to be, comprehensive; allowing some debateable EsaAT VIII.] CEANMEE. 337 ground, some latitude of opinion in matters unessential. It was his original intention to draw up, with the help of a con- vocation of learned men, a set of articles which should embrace all the reformed part of Christendom. Melancthou suggested and promoted this plan; nevertheless, Calvin was consulted too : the leading reformers, in short, whether of one party or another, were made acquainted with it. But it failed as to Christendom in general — which was not to be wondered at ; and then Cranmer contracted his views, and limited him- self to England. The mere announcement of this their origin is enough to show the animus with which our articles were compiled — that it was not narrow or sectarian. There was, indeed, a party amongst the reformers who were more exclu- sive in their notions, and who, like the divines of Westminster and of the Savoy at a later period, advocated the adoption of the Predestinarian doctrines, Bradford was of this sect ; and accordingly he drew up a treatise on the subject, which was supposed by Dr. Winchester and Mr. Hey, and, indeed, by most modern divines, to be no longer extant ; Archbishop Laurence, however, was happy enough to discover it some y-ears ago, amongst the Bodleian manuscripts, and published it with a valuable introduction. It was addressed in Brad- ford's own name and in that of his fellow-prisoners to Cranmer, Latimer, and Eidley, as the 'chief captains of Christ's church.' It manifests some misgiving on the part of the writer as to how far it would be acceptable to those distin- guished leaders. They were to approve ' as they might think good.' — His companions in bonds were ready and willing to signify their concurrence in the positions he had advanced, ' as they should see them (Cranmer, Latimer, and Eidley) give the example.' And what was its object ? It was to procure some specific declaration from authority against the Free-willers, whom he chooses to call plain ' Papists, yea. Pelagians.' 'I must complain of you unto God in the last day,' says he, 'if ye will not, as ye can, help something, ut Veritas doc- trinsB maneat apud posteros, in this behalf, as ye have done in behalf of matters expunged by the Papists.' Now, be it z 338 CRANMER. [Essay VIII. remembered that the articles of our Church had been settled some two years before this letter was written, which was in Tebruary, 1555,— articles, in which the extinction of Papal errors had indeed been effected, but which, it should seem, according to Bradford's notions, were defective, in that the question of Predestination had not been determined too. What answer then does he get to this communication ? From Cranmer and Latimer none at all, as far as we. know, — but, from Eidley, that ' he will think of the matter, as he can and may for his tardity and dulness,' — that he will do that he might do ' convoiieutly in the matter.' Eidley's first im- pressions, therefore, are clearly not favourable to Bradford's application, and so it was understood by Bradford; for, in a second letter, which Eidley addresses to him, in answer, it should seem, to one of Bradford's which is lost, we learn that the latter had resented the neglect or rejection of- his propo- sition, and we learn, at the same time, the wise and liberal principles by which this great reformer was governed — ' AYbere you say,' writes Eidley, ' that if your request hnd been heard, things, you think, bad been in better case than they be ; know you, that concerning the matters you. mean, 1 have, in Latin, drawn out the places of the Scriptures, and upon the same have noted what I can for the time — Sir, in these matters I am so fearful, that I dare not speak further, yea, almost none otheru-ise than the text doth, as it were, lead me by the hand.' We think, therefore, that nothing can he clearer than that our articles were framed upon a principle of comprehension 3'ather than of exclusion ; and that if the pugnacious contro- versialists, whether Calvinist or Arminian, who, from time to time, have asserted their own special right to the articles, could have appealed to the spirit of Cranmer or of Eidley, the answer, had there been one, would have run in no form of words so likely as in that voice from the tomb, of which Lord Byron speaks with so much emotion, ' Imploro pace! But it has been thought, that the moderation which governed Cranmer in all other things, forsook him in the composition of our littirgy. Gibbon, more enamoured of Mahometanism EssAT VIII.] CEANMEE. 339 than was seemly in a philosopher, fails not to remark, amongst its other merits, the brevity of its prayers — ' the measure of zeal was not exhausted by a tedious liturgy.' We should be curious to know what might be the limits of a liturgy which should not exhaust the measure of zeal that fell to the lot of the historian of the ' Decline and Fall.' The same objection, however, is urged by many in a far more honest heart than his. — Alas ! for the fastidiousness of the times ! But the fault, it is said, is not in Cranmer ; it is in ourselves. We have com- bined three services into one, and then complain of its length. We have taken other opportunities of exposing this mistake, for such we believe it to be, and shall not here recapitulate all our reasons for thinking it so : suffice it to say, that whilst it appears, by a passage in the ' Life of Grindal,' that the morn- ing service — strictly so called — succeeded to the matins of the Roman Catholic church — five o'clock in the forenoon being the time at which it was appointed in the first instance to begin — so does it appear no less clearly, by a comparison of the In- junctions of Edward and of Elizabeth, that the litany and communion service, taken together, succeeded to the high mass; and accordingly that, as there had been an interval between matins and mass, so did there continue to be an interval between morning service and the litany and com- munion service, but none whatever between these two last, and the other only for a very few years, — morning service, litany, and communion service being apparently united as now, so early as in Hooker's time, who, in combating the objections made, to the length of the liturgy, incidentally admits it to occupy an hour and a half. If the original practice could be again restored, doubtless it would be well, and some trifling objections on the score of the repetitions incident to the service as at present conducted would be removed ; but the difficulty of collecting an early congregation, which at first caused the evil, such as it is, would still prevent the remedy such as we propose. And, after all, the frequent repetition of the Lord's Prayer — and, indeed, the same may be said of other repetitions — has this advantage, that as the attention is apt to z 2 340 CEANMEE. [Essay VIII. wander and return, it may be arrested in one instance, where it had been suffered to escape in another; and it has this defence, that real importunity manifests itself in iteration of language, and that our Lord Himself, in the hour of His most urgent supplication, thrice ' said the same words.' With regard to the absolute length of our service; is it greater than suffices to impress the minds of a congregation with a sense of the share which religion ought to have of their time and thoughts? We think not. High mass was perhaps as long; and when we consider that it was in contemplation of our reformers that baptism should be administered after the second lesson, — moreover, that marriages should be solemnized in the face of the congregation too, — it should seem that they did not look upon these supplements to the regular morning prayer as adding extravagantly to its length, which, nevertheless, in such cases, would be nearly or quite as great as now, when, in deference to the wishes of the people, these occasional semces are postponed. Neither do those who advocate an abridgment of the service upon the ground that the reformers never intended one so long as our own, take into consideration the curtailment which sermons have undergone since the days of Cranmer, which, from an hour or an hour and a half, are now ' dwindled to the shortest span.' Our services have been con- structed advisedly; their several component parts are in strict relation to one another ; and we confess that we should witness any attempt at fusing them into another liturgy with unfeigned regret, both because we think that the harmony of the several portions would be impaired, and because we feel that we should thereby weaken the loyalty of many to the church, aud give up at once for " some new thing,' the reverential associations of nearly three hundred years. But we must on. Mr. Todd copies the several recantations of Cranmer, as they were published by Bonner, six in number, each rising above the other in its demands upon the spirit- broken victim. These he submits to a jealous examination, having no faith in the honesty of the original publisher ; and, finally, he bestows a few words on the notion of the modern Essay VIII.] CEANMER. 341 Eoman Catholic historian, that there was yet a seventh. Whether, however, they were printed in perfect good faith, and whether they were more or fewer in numher, is not a matter of any great importance: that the recantation was ample there can he no question, and there needs no evidence beyond the affecting penance of Cranmer himself. Of him it must he confessed, that his physical courage was not equal to his moral ; and it must have been the torment of his life to find himself constantly drifted into positions by force of cir- cumstances which put him to the proof precisely in a point where only he could be found wanting. In such situations he sometimes behaved with the spirit and constancy of the martyr, who could thrust the hand by which he had offended into the flames, and, at other times, with the weakness of the man who could set that hand to ' the little leaf.' Henry was as dangerous to approach as a sleeping lion, and Cranmer was forbidden the court ; yet he ventured to write to him in behalf of Anne, imploring the king's mercy towards her (to adopt the happy quotation of Sir James Mackintosh), ' his life so late and dear delight.' The stand 'which he made against passing the Act of the Six Articles was that of a bold as well as a benevolent man ; insomuch that Cromwell observed, ' Do or say what you will, the king doth always take it well at your hands ;' for at that time Henry was not in love with the re- formers. When the same Cromwell lay under the displeasure of his capricious master, and was deserted 'in his utmost need' by all his false and fleeting friends, Cranmer had the spirit to write to the tyrant in favour of a fallen man, generously assert- ing that ' he had always loved the king above all things, and served him with great fidelity and success.' His answer to the Devonshire rebels, a formidable body at the time, was valiant as well as wise. His intercession to the council in behalf of the Protector Somerset, his fast friend, when the lords were now pursuing him to the death, though fruitless, was honest and manly. His conduct on the accession of Mary, when he was advised to fly, and had the opportunity to do so, was worthy of a Christian hero ; whilst he recommended others to 312 CKAIirMEIl. [Essay VIII. take care of themselves, urging the example of our Lord, who retired into Samaria to avoid the malice of the Jews, and com- manded His Apostles, if persecnted in one place, to flee unto another ; and whilst he further exhorted them not to detract from the numher of Christ's little flock by an unnecessary sur- render of their lives, he added, on his own part, that 'it would be no way fitting for him to go away, considering the post in which he was, but rather to show that he was not afraid to own all the changes that were by his means made in religion in the last reign.' But then, through that frailty in our nature, by reason of which we cannot always stand Upright, the same Cranmer pronounces the divorce of Queen Anne, for whom he had just before so eloquently and so honourably pleaded; lends himself a second time to the same humiliating ofiice in the case of Anne of Cleves, afraid, as it should seem, that this hasty and hapless match should involve himself, as well as Cromwell, in ruin ; sufi'ers himself to be overruled in his sounder judgment by the persuasions of a boy, aided, perhaps, by secret misgivings of his own, and thus to be made a party to the unjust exclusion of Mary from the throne ; and finally sacrifices his conscience to the ignoble love of a life of which he had once prepared himself to be prodigal, and which he did at last lay down (rebuking, as it were, the ' foul fiend ' that had possessed his better self for a moment), with the dignity of a dauntless soldier and servant of Christ. The touching particulars of the last sad scene are given in that equally authentic and picturesque narration from the hand of a gene- rous enemy, ' which,' says Sir James Mackintosh, ' is perhaps the most beautiful specimen of ancient English' we possess. With this document, which Mr. Todd very properly extracts from Strype, he would have done well to close the mournful histoiy ; but the taste of the antiquary, — a taste which, it is fair to say, occasionally lends great interest to these pages, — gets the better of the biographer, and he adds the bill for the archbishop's burning. The reflections which the martyr's end, his fear, and his firmness, might raise in the mind of a candid man, shall be Essay VIII.] OEANMER. 343 given in the eloquent words of the distinguished writer to whom we have already alluded more than once; whose sketch of the Reformation, contained in the second volume of his ' History of England,' if it does not dwell on Cranmer's talents with the emphasis we could have desired, bears abundant testi- mony to his virtues, and, on the whole, will serve, if we mis- take not, to befriend his memory in quarters where it may have suffered, and to suggest a kindly feeling towards the church itself. ' The language of Cranmer,' says he, in a spirit which knows how to make allowance for the occasional backslidings of the great and good, and has no pleasure in pointing out a dead fly in a sweet ointment, — ' The language of Cranmer speaks his sincerity, and demonstrates that the love of truth still prevailed in his inmost heart. It gushed forth at the sight of death, full of healing power, which engendered a purifying and ennohling penitence, and restored the mind to its own esteem, after a departure from the onward path of sincerity ; courage survived a public avowal of dishonour — the hardest test to which that virtue can be exposed ; and if he once fatally failed in fortitude, he, in his last moments, atoned for his failure by a mag- nanimity equal to his transgression. — Let those,' it is added, ' who require unbending virtue in the most tempestuous times, condemn the amiable and faulty primate ; others, who are not so certain of their own steadiness, will consider his fate as, perhaps, the most memorable example in history of a soul which, though debased, is not depraved by an act of weakness, and preserved an heroic courage after the forfeiture of honour, its natural spur, and, in general, its inseparable companion.' Such was the principal founder of our Church, — a church for which we will crave leave to say a few words at parting, under the shelter of the name of this illustrious martyr. There was a custom in Abyssinia, when factions were violent and ready to tear each other in pieces for mutual wrongs, to compromise the quarrel by means of a camel. It was agreed that nobody in all Abyssinia had been to blame on either side, but the whole mischief, be it what it might, was the work of 344 CRANMEE. [Essay VIII. the camel. The camel had set the town on fire; the camel had threatened to burn the aga's house and the castle ; the camel had cursed the gi-and signior and the sheriff of Mecca; — in short, whatever evil had befallen the State was all the doing of this luckless camel. Accordingly the poor animal, though actually the most useful thing in the whole country, was despatched, each man transfixing him with his javelin, and so going his way in peace. The Church seems to be just now the camel of England; — Infidels, Eoman Catholics, Dissen- ters, Whigs, Radicals, however much they may have heretofore quarrelled amongst themselves, seem to have agreed to forgive and forget, and lay all. the fault upon the camel. The Church of England is not an Apostolical Church, cries one, with the Puritans of old time. Square it by the model of the Acts and of the Epistles, and it will be found out of all compass. St. Paul and St. Peter had neither livings nor tithes; for here lies the gravamen of the charge, as it did in the days of Cromwell — when the Presbyterians urged it till they had dispossessed the Episcopalians, and then found it convenient to be silent, having entered into their possessions. But what if the apostles did not receive tithes ? Does not a change of circumstances warrant a change of practice in things indifferent? Greet one another with an holy kiss, says St. Paul. Such was the custom of the country in which that apostle lived, and the age in which he wrote ; — but may not we shake hands? The first apostles, perhaps, had no districts assigned them, and no funds appropriated to their use; but even by the time of St. Paul some alteration appears to have been effected in both these particulars, for we find him unwil- ling ' to build upon another's foundation ' (Rom. xv. 20), refusing ' to stretch himself beyond his measure,' or 'to boast in another man's line of things made ready to his hand' (2 Cor. X. 14, 16) ; as though, even at that early period, the small portion of the world then Christian was gradually assuming the shape of parishes, assigned to their several teachers, and as though the arrangement was considered con- venient by the apostle himself. In like manner, though the Essay VIFI.] .CRAXMER. 345 twelve disciples are sent forth into the world without purse or payment, by the time of St. Paul's ministry a change had been -wrought here also ; for however he himself worked with his own hands, in order that he might not be burdensome to a community then consisting almost exclusively of the poorest of the people, he did not waive the right of a maintenance as an apostle of Christ (1 Thess. ii. 6), but, on the contrary, expressly challenged it for himself, in case he chose ' to for- bear working,' as well as for a sister, a wife, if he thought fit to have one, — a right which other apostles not only challenged but exacted. (1 Cor. ix. 5.) In both these instances, there- fore, the mere mechanism of the church was allowed to adapt itself to the actual circumstances of the church, the principle being still the same as that which had' before obtained under the law, for the ambulatory church in the wilderness differed in many respects, and in some important respects, from the stationary church afterwards established at Jerusalem. Besides, those who would tie down our own church to the rigid obser- vance of primitive usage in things indifferent, would do well to remember that, if the rule is good for the clergy, it is equally good for the laity, and that it was the primitive usag^ of these latter, a usage approved by the apostles, too, to sell their lands and houses, as many as possessed them, in order that distribution might be made to every man according as he had need, all things being held in common; so that if the representatives of the apostles are to be unbeneficed, it is only fair that the representatives of the hearers of the apostles should be un-squired. It is no doubt a very pleasant thing to talk about St. Paul as a rector of Rome or of Thessalonica, or a prebendary of Philippi, or a dean of Corinth ; but it would be equally pleasant to represent him as wearing a black coat, a pair of quarter-boots, and walking with an umbrella through his parish; yet there would certainly be no reason why he should not do these things were he now sojourning amongst us, or why he should still confine himself to the use of sandals and to the cloak which he left at Troas. The discordance of the ideas brought into near relation in either case, proves 8^6 CEANMEE. [Essay VIII. nothing as to the lawfulness or unlawfulness of the propo- sitions they involve; nor, indeed, proves anything at all, but that ridicule is a poor test of truth. That parishes, therefore, should be set apart for the clergy, or that stipends, consisting of tithes, should be paid them, is not contrary to apostolic intentions, but rather in accordance with them ; such parochial divisions securing to every part of a country a pastor of its own, whereas, in a system of itinerancy, many parts might be unserved : such a method of payment, besides having the sanction of the Mosaical law, providing that pastor with an income which rises and falls with the prices of the times, and is for a perpetual generation. But I do not quarrel with the principle of a parochial, or a paid ministry, says another, but with the amount of the pay- ment. And if livings of Succoth, worth £8000 a year, and episcopal savings to the amount of £1,200.000 in the three per cent, consols, were fair samples of ecclesiastical portions, there might be some cause for quarrel; but this being a case of fhcts and figures, we are compelled to have recourse to less facetious authority. We have lying upon our table the last charge of the Bishop of Peterborough, in which his lordship enters into the statistics of his diocese in complete detail, and with his wonted perspicuity. Having remarked that the revenues of the bishoprics have been most grossly exaggerated, and that, with respect to his own (which, we may observe, equals or exceeds in value twelve out of the twenty-four), it is so far from enriching its possessor, that it falls considerably short of the expenses which it unavoidably occasions, his lord- ship proceeds to a particular description of the diocese of Peterborough according to the data which he has been able to collect, and which have occupied some of his attention during twelve years. 'The benefices in this diocese are in number not quite 300, though the churches and chapels, with a consequent increase of dutv, exceed that number. Of these benefices there are 120, that is more than two-fifths of the whole, which do not exceed £200 a year. This is the maximum, \Yhich few of them attain, and not Essay VIII.] CRAKMEE. 347 less than twenty-six of t?iem are under ^100. We cannot, there- fore, reckon the average value of those 120 livings so high as £150. Of livings exceeding £200, hut not exceeding £300, the number is seventy-four. But as few of them amount to the latter sum, and most of them are much below it, we cannot take the average value so high as £250. Since, then, 120 livings average only £150, and seventy-four other livings average less than £250, the two sets taken together cannot average more than £200, because the number in the former set exceeds the number in the latter set in the pro- portion of 120 to 74, or more than three to two. Here, then, we have 194 livings out of less than 300, that is, nearly two-thirds of the whole, of which the annual average value does not exceed £200. ' But if such is the case with two-thirds of the livings in this diocese, it may be urged, that they find an equipoise in the remain- ing third. Let us see, therefore, whether the average of the remaining third exhibits such enormous wealth as to afford just matter of reproach to those who, in general, are so educated as to qualify them for the society of the highest orders in the State. Seventy-three livings out of the remaining third vary, as far as I have been able to obtain information, from £300 to £500 a year; but as the greater part of them are under £400, we cannot take them all together at a higher average. There are fifteen livings which average about £550 a year; and the average of the few remaining livings cannot be taken at so high an average as £800, though two or three of them exceed that amount. ' I have thus given,' adds the bishop, ' a faithful description of the incomes possessed by the parochial clergy in this diocese ; and, if we take the poor livings with the good livings, I am sure there is no reason to complain that the clergy of this diocese are overloaded with wealth ; and there will appear still less reason to complain when the unavoidable outgoings are taken into the account.' Here, then, is a clear, candid, and partiovtlar account of the livings in a single diocese ; and, on taking an average of them all, we shall find that, one with another, they are worth ahout ^290 a year. Now the livings of this diocese are consider- ably ahove the average of the livings generally throughout England, as appears from the returns of tithes made to the tax -"office, and puhhshed hy the House of Commons in the S-18 CEAKMEE. [Essay VIII. estimates and accounts of 1813. For an abstract of these latter we refer our readers to a sheet entitled ' Awkward Facts,' recently published at Cambridge; for the church has no interest in concealing her means, but she has an interest in exposing to the uttermost those shameless misrepresentations of ecclesiastical property which are put forth every day for the purpose of exciting the cupidity or the disgust of the million. We have selected the case of an individual diocese, however, rather than taken the whole kingdom, because it is carefully investigated and clearly put ; because a single case is more open to refutation if there be any error in the reckoning ; and because we "would give the enemies of the Establishment every advantage which an over-estimate of its revenues (for such it is) may afford them, feeling that our argument can well bear it. It seems, therefore, after all, that the average value of English livings is about the same as that of Scotch livings, which is £278 per annum, exclusive of the glebes, the number of clergy in Scotland being nine hundred and thirty-six, and the whole income of the church to which they belong being made up by Parliament to £260,000. Is it the nation's plea- sure to reduce the income of the clergy to a sum lower than this; to make mendicants of them, like the friars, and so to have them, Uke the friars, exclusively of the lowest of the people, unlettered, ill-bred, time-serving, sly, and expert in all the arts of petty and often of vicious intrigue ? To say the truth, however, we do not see what right the nation has to interfere with church property, be the amount ■what it may, except in the way of trusteeship. Tithes are not a tax imposed by the State for the maintenance of the clergy, and, therefore, to be submitted to Parhament with the army and navy estimates;- they are a rent-chai'ge laid by lords of manors upon their own proper estates generations ago, for the support of ministers upon those estates for ever. This is matter of history, of which any man may satisiy himself who will turn to Dugdale's ' Monasticon Anglicanum,' or to ' Selden on Tithes.' Archdeacon Lyall, in a charge recently delivered to the clergy of Colchester, gives a few instances of sucli EssAT VIII.] CEANMER. 349 endowments of livings within his own archdeaconry. They are found in ' Newcourt's Repertorium.' 'Audley, endowed by Robert de Ram, in the reign of King Stephen ; Ashdon, endowed in the reign of William the First, l)y Gaufredus and Radulphus Baynard; Great Badfield, in 1090, by Gilbert de Clare ; Great Beutley, about the same time, by Alberic de Vere ; Great Clacton, by Richard de Beauvys, or de Belmeis ; Coggeshall, by Earl Godwin (with the tithes of Slisted), in the time of Edward the Confessor ; Elsenham, by Beatrix de Say, in 1200; White Notley, by Roger Bigod, in the reign of William the First; Black Notley, by Walter de Mandeville, in 1218 ; Rickling, by Geoffry de Say, in the reign of Henry the Second ; Weeley, by Elgiva, a noble Saxon lady, in the time of Edward the Confessor. It would be easy,' adds the archdeacon, ' to extend the number of examples; and even to produce the very words of the endowments, many of which are given at length by Newcourt.' Estates have been inherited, have been bought and sold — wherever they have been bouglit and sold — subject to this rent- charge ; or, in other words, nine-tenths of such estates have been the object of transfer, and not ten-tenths; and we know not how the possessor of a titheable property can reconcile it to his own sense of common honesty to clamour (as be very often does) for the abolition of tithes, seeing that it is neither more nor less than to declare his fixed purpose to augment a lawful inheritance or purchase by a mere lawless seizure, — to claim so much as his own by right, and so much more as his own by might ; to admit, that whilst he holds his own posses- sions, freely to enjoy, his heart is sick because he happens not to have Naboth's vineyard too. That is the truth. But even allowing that the people might lawfully interfere with tithes to their alienation, would it be their wisdom so to do ? What" property is so accessible to the people at large as church pro- perty ? In what other have they the same chance of being partakers in the same degree ? And do they wish to tie tliem- selves up from this fair field of adventure by appropriating the revenues of the church to individuals, or to the State ? The case is somewhat analogous to that of a common, which, so 350 CEANMEE. [Essay VIII. long as it is unenclosed, is a treasure to all the peasantry who live upon its borders ; but let the act of enclosure be passed, and the cottager's cow-gate or sheep-gate (as they call it in the north) is at an end. So it is with the church, — it is open territory. A poor man's son may be bishop of Durham. Butler was a younger child of a small shopkeeper in a country town, and he a dissenter; but if the property annexed to that see had belonged to a dukedom instead of a bishopric, where would have been the dissenting tradesman's boy ? This is no extravagant case. The bench of bishops at this moment, though never more respectable, is, on the whole, a plebeian bench. On that bench there will be found splendid instances of individuals, having no pretensions to distinction in society beyond those of high talent and spotless character, placed on a level with the most ancient blood of the land, and entitled to lift up a fearless voice in its most august assembly. Nay, the author of the Six Letters to the Farmers,'' of which we wish the circulation were as wide as it deserves to be, was told many years ago by a prime minister's daughter, that her mother's maid was a bishop's sister, and he moreover the head of a college ; so that here we have a peer and a premier going down to the House of Lords to encounter, in equal debate, the brother of his wife's tirewoman. Do we say this in dis- paragement of the bishop ? No ; but in commendation of the system which made him ; and we cannot but wonder that when the rage is for popular rights, as it now is, objections should be started against an institution so popular in its very nature as an endowed church. But it is not of the sum total of the revenues of the church that I complain, says another, but of the unequal distribution of them— for it is singular with what kindness the cause of » We have we beliere, mentioned this admirable tract before. It is generally ascribed to the Rev. Hugh James Rose,"the present Christian Advocate of Cam- bridge ■ and we hope rightly so : for it certainly does the author, whoever he may be infinite honour. A more happy specimen of condensed information, plain manly sense, and native vigorous English, we have not met with ; and the whole is lightened up with a vein of exquisite humour. Such a work is more likely to do good at present than a hundred laboured dissertations. The Drapier himself could hardly have struck the tone for the times more skilfuUy. Essay VIII] CEANMEK. 83 1 the poorer clergy, or the ivorking clergy, that is the phrase, who are, of course, unable to state their own grievances, is advocated just now by ' the friend of humanity.' Unequal, no doubt, the distribution of church property is, which is the case with other property besides that of the church ; and in the latter instance too a similar objection is often heard from a similar quarter, — though, we believe, that many who feel its force as regards the church, feel no force at all in it as regards the laity. Let the question have fair play. Such inequality, up to a certain point, is, in neither case, an evil, but a good, in the church a great good — one woolsack makes many men fit to sit upon it who never do — one dukedom makes many men try to fight their way to it, whose services would otherwise have been lost to their country — and so, one mitre, or stall, or goodly rectory, makes many scholars fit to adorn either, and embark their talents in a profession which has prizes to give, though they may not be the parties to get them. The spirits of men, like other spirits, will not stir upon a dead level ; and the mischief of such an order of things is manifested in our labourers, who have lost all heart and activity, simply because they cannot rise ; thei'e is no scale of holdings for them as there once was, one or other of which they might successively occupy as their means increased ; they are on a treadmill, ever climb- ing and never mounting an inch, till at last, in sheer despond- ency, they stagnate, or study mischief. It would be with the labourers of the vineyard as it is with tha labourers of the field, if their portions were all alike. The zeal of the church would cool ; for it is visionary to suppose that a body of clergymen will not be acted upon by feelings common to all men, — they would be above or below their nature were it otherwise. The hterature of the church would languish ; ' for though many look with an evil eye on the endowments of the Enghsh church, to that church,' says Dr. Chalmers (himself, be it remembered, one of the brightest ornaments of the church of Scotland), ' the theological literature of our nation stands indebted for her best acquisitions ; and we hold it a refreshing spectacle,' he continues, ' at any time that meagre 352 CRANMEE. [Essay VIII. Socinianism pours forth a new supply of flippancy and errors, when we behold, as we have often done, an armed champion come forth, in full equipment, from some high and lettered retreat of that noble hierarchy ; nor can we grudge her the wealth of her endowments, when we think how well, under her venerable auspices, the battles of orthodoxy have been fought — that in this holy warfare they are her sons and her scholars who are foremost in the field, ready at all times to face the threatening mischief, and by the might of their ponderous erudition to overbear it.' So that a church, and a most estimable one, of which the revenues are equally diffused, has to seek its theology, it seems, from a church of which the portions are some ample and some scanty. The character of the clergy would sink in the eyes of the people ; for, as it is, even the lowest amongst them derive a dignity, not a false dignity, but such as renders them more efficient in their call- ings, from the scholarship, the intelligence, the social rank of their more exalted brethren. It would be indeed an anomaly in the system upon which society is constructed in England, to say that one stratum of it, and only one, should be perfectly horizontal, and that men whose profession closes every avenue to a competency but one shall be vexatiously impeded in that also. You have surgeons who ride in their carriages, and see the first people in the land at their own houses, and you have surgeons who breathe a vein, draw a tooth, and farm a club — you have booksellers who mix with the best hterary men of the time, and you have booksellers who deal in quills and Jack the Giant Killer — you have brewers and mercers who are members of Parliament and men of note upon the Rialto, and you have some of the same calling too glad to supply the Lion with a barrel of porter, or to measure out a yard of tape to a maiden on a market-day. Is not this as it should be ? We think it is; aud that by this diversity of ranks all parties have a chance of being shuffled into their right places; a whole class is made satisfied with its lot by the distinction of a few individuals in it ; and a spring is communicated to it throu<'hout, which renders all its movements spirited, vigorous. EssAT Till.] CEANMEE. 353 and elastic. So it is with the church. Its clergy would be hut a tame body were they all provided for alike, be the pro- vision what it might. If, indeed, the talents and acquirements of the clergy were all alike, no man amongst them could reasonably feel aggrieved at such a system ; but that not being the case, the more highly gifted would naturally fret at the conditions of a profession which rendered these their gifts unavailing, and it would soon be found that parents would abstain from sending a hopeful boy into a calling which afforded him no field for distinction, and the church would be filled with the refuse of our schools and universities, and with none other ; meanwhile those universities and schools, of which the tutors and teachers would be still in all probability ecclesiastics, would decay under a generation of men no longer the flower of the scholars of the time, and the light which is amongst us becoming darkness, how great would be that dark- ness! Some inequality, therefore, and, indeed, a considerable in- equality, in the portions which the church has to dispense, ia much to be desired : — still the principle may be pushed too far, and should the inequality be such as to imply an absolute- want of subsistence for the incumbents of the smallest livings of all, and thereby to afford not a pretext, but almost a necessity, for non-residence, it is pushed too far, — for, after all, this must be never lost sight of, that the Church of England is an instrument meant for the effectual diffusion of religious knowledge through- out England, and that whatever seriously obstructs this, its very end and object, its best friends would wish removed — the life is more than the meat and the body than the raiment. Now, by returns made to Parliament in 1815, and published in the Parliamentary papers of 1818, returns made when prices were very high, it appears that 2273 livings were under £100 a year; nearly a third of that number under d650 a year; and that 4809 livings were without any parsonage house (more than half this number actually were so), or with such a one as was quite unfit for a clergymaii's residence, and did not let for more than two or three pounds a year. It cannot, therefore, be denied A A 351 CEANMER. [Essay VIII. that a very large dmsion of our livings are thoroughly poverty- stricken, and that until some remedy can he found for tliis disease, non-residence, which so frequently is as rottenness of the hones to the church, must, to a great extent, he tolerated. How then is the evil to he redressed ? Let the church property be fused, says the reformer with great self-complacency, and a new and a better division of it be made. Now, to many who advocate this doctrine, we have nothing on the present occasion to offer, because they are consistent reformers, and would make thoroughpace work of all property both in church and state ; hut really, to hear men who cling to their own broad acres with the tenacity of their own timber — and, above all, men who are actually perhaps holding tithes themselves to a vast amount as sinecurists, — to hear. these preach the same doctrines, is some- tliing too bad. What has occasioned this extreme inequahty in the value of livings, these pluralities, this non -residence, hut the system of impropriations ? — a system, by which it happens that in about half the benefices of England not a sheaf of the great tithe goe^s to the gamer of the clergyman, but is all swept away to the squire, who forthwith puts his horses to his carnage, the very tithes making them to go, and having lodged himself on one of the benches of St. Stephen's chapel (the only eccle- siastical duty he does), lifts up his voice there against pluralists, non-residents, the indolence and rapacity of priests. Yet, in- dolent as they are said to he, we observe that when functionaries are wanted by these same legislators for carrying any useful measure into effect, the clergy are invited to the work without much scruple or misgiving, and that in their projects, for instance, for the gratuitous education of the poor, for the effectual management of savings-banks, for the organization of fi-iendly societies upon sound principles, for the adjustment of the census of the population, and a satisfactory answer to the statistical questions connected with that census, for the estabhshment of boards of health in the case of dangerous visitations of sickness, and the Hke, the active assistance of the clergy is apt to be counted upon, nor is it counted upon, we imagine, in vain. Neither have the clergy been such idle Es3atVIII.] CRANMEE. 355 observers of the times, as not to be the first to open the eyes of landlords to the disaffection that has been gradually intro- ducing itself amongst the peasantry, and to suggest the wisdom of giving them some interest in the soil, by letting out to them small allotments of it, and so tying them by the tooth. This hint has been taken, and with the happiest effects ; and had another of their suggestions been also listened to as it deserved — a suggestion founded, like the former, on a more intimate knowledge of the habits and dispositions of the lower classes, than commonly falls to the lot of those who make our laws — the bill for the beer-houses would never have seen the light ; places, we firmly believe, where much of the mischief which is now afloat in the country has been brewed, besides the beer. Eapacious, again, as are the clergy when compared with laymen, but a few years ago almost two-fifths of the subscriptions to the county hospital of Durham (we are told) came from the clergy ; and at this moment, in the county where we happen to ■write, that of Salop, where the church is much less splendidly- endowed than in Durham, we discover that one-sixth of the subscribers to a similar institution are clergymen, many of them, very many of them, men of extremely-limited incomes, with large families, and, like all of their profession, having a life- interest only in their possessions, and too often destined to carry along with them the cupboard-key when they die : and, indeed, if the accusers of the clergy will have the candour to look over any list of charitable contributions, we care not what, whether for the relief of the spiritual or temporal wants of the people, and observe the proportion of clerical names which it contains, we do not think it will be such as to make the church ashamed. On casting our eye, for instance, over the last Keport of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and taking a couple of letters at random in the alphabetical list of subscribers' names, we perceive that out of 1348 (which is the amount of those two letters), 677, or somewhat more than one-half, are clergymen. To whatever slanders the church may be exposed whilst it stands, of this we are sure, from an intimate knowledge of its quiet operations among the poorer AA 2 356 CRAXMEE. [Essay VIII. part of our population, that justice will be done it one day by them when it is fallen, and that the worth of the well will be known and acknowledged when it is dry, if not till then. There are others, and real well-wishers to the church, who, without going the length of recasting ecclesiastical property, hope to mitigate, and by degrees remove, the evil of small and houseless livings, by taking a fresh valuation of undischarged benefices, and paying over the actual instead of the nominal first-fruits or tenths, or both, to Queen Anne's bounty, and so to make that fund effectual to the more rapid improvement of the poorest livings of all. Of this class of reformers is the Eegius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, whose opinion, always worthy of respect, is not the less so in the present instance, as, if it were carried into effect in the manner he proposes, it would be much to his own damage. That such a plan presents diffi- culties there can be no doubt; still it deserves consideration whether, if not the scheme itself, some modification of it might not be adopted. Two-thirds of the livings in England and A\'ales are in the gift of laymen — they, no doubt, would he often found unwilling to relinquish a portion of property at the disposal of them and of their heirs for ever. Some persons have bought advowsons, and it may be said to be hard upon them to load them with a payment which was not considered in the purchase-money. There are those who have an objection, and a fair objection, to the principle, which certainly is of a levelling tendency, and might be urged further than was in- tended. Some may argue, and justly argue, that the church establishment is for the general benefit of the public, not for the exclusive benefit of the individual minister, and therefore that the public ought to take their share in the sacrifice thus demanded for the public service ; and some again may contend that though there are many livings so small as to call loudly for augmentation, there are very few livings so large as to bear a reduction for such a purpose. There is much reason in all tliese objections; and some of them, particularly the equaUzing tendency of the principle, have caused many of the most sincere friends of the church to withhold their support from EssiT VIII.l CRANMER. 357 the plan — Lord Harrowby, the discreet and zealous benefactor of the inferior clergy, amongst the I'est. He, therefore, limiting his views to the augmentation of one division only of small livings, those belonging to cathedrals and collegiate bodies (the universities excepted), suggested, in a recent republication of a letter addressed to the late Mr. Perceval, the revival of a measure of the date of Charles II., when deans and chapters and other dignitaries were commanded by an injunction of that monarch (being the repetition of a similar injunction of his father), on renewing the leases of tithes impropriate, to make provision for the augmentation of the poor vicarages and curacies in their gift ; an injunction of which the authority was recognized by act of parliament, and the augmentations made in obedience to it secured to the parties for ever. But the injunctions and the act having fallen into entire desuetude, Lord Harrowby, as we have said, brought them again before the notice of the country; and thus originated, we suppose, the bill of last year introduced into the Upper House ; a bill, if we remember, not compulsory upon these ecclesiastical bodies, but hortatory, and at the same time having for its object to make valid and perpetuate any such appropriation of their revenues as they might deem expedient. We believe that this, like other practical measures, is for the present suspended. Of its great value there can be no question ; for the number of small livings in the presentation of cathedrals and other eccle- siastical corporations is very considerable. The only question is, whether the remedy is commensurate with the disease : the case is urgent ; the church rides, and is long likely to ride, in a very tempestuous sea, and if she could throw out an anchor in every parish in the land — which she would do had she a resident minister in every parish in the land — persuaded we are, that she would weather it all without damage. To be convinced of this, we have only to look at the honest testimony of regard, which any clergyman of common conduct, who has resided a few years in his parish, is sure to receive if circumstances happen to remove him — the reluctance expressed at the separation— the cordial wishes for his future welfare — 858 CEANMEE. pissAT VIII. the parting presents — the unaffected sorrow at the thought that they shall see his face no more — the strength of the hands which kindly intercourse had Imit hetween the parties, never, perhaps, known to either till then. Let all this be witnessed, and we shall soon be satisfied that nothing is wanted but a clergyman in every parish, to walk ' not unseen ' amongst his people, in order to fix the church to which he belongs in the hearts and affections of them all. It is not in human nature that it should be otherwise. Some remember that he taught them when children — some that he visited them when sick — some that he pleaded their cause with the landlord, the agent, or the overseer — some that he was the man to see the last of their friends dead and gone — some that he had rebuked them friendly — some that he had relieved them in want, cheered them in sorrow, and saved them from despair. Let the Church of England, we repeat, establish a resident minister in every parish, at whatever cost, and then we boldly say, let her enemies do their worst — she will have no cause to fear. For so great a good, therefore, should not a point be strained ? and is not such an appropriation of some greater share of the first-fruits or tenths than is at present exacted, the least violent remedy that can be applied ? Stare super antiquas vias, is still a good maxim, let a con- ceited age say of it what it will ; and it would be the maxim here, — for such a reform would be only a recurrence to a primitive practice, which the revolution of years and of money- values has rendered obsolete. In carrying, however, such a measure into effect, it would be for future consideration what should be the details : what should be the value, for instance, of the livings, which should subject them to the action of this additional impost — what the amount to which it should be proposed to raise the smaller benefices before it should cease altogether — whether, in levying the tax, some regard should not be had to the residence or non-residence of the incumbent, as is the case in the Gilbert act — whether a living mortgaged under that act for the building of a parsonage should not find favour in the eyes of the law, at least till the mortgage had Essay VIII.] CE.4NMER. 359 expired — whether the first-fruits should he levied at all, or nt least upon residents ; the year in which u man takes possession being usually the poorest of his life, and so esteemed ia all college preferment, where a year of grace is allowed for this very reason ; (we observe, indeed, that Dr. Burtpn confines his proposition to the tenths, and we think he is right) — ■whether some portion, as we have already hinted, less than a tenth, might not suffice, or whether some graduated scale might not be adopted in reference to the value of the benefice, it being obvious that a living of a thousand a yeaj: could afibrd to pay a hundred pounds better than one of half the sum to pay fifty : but these are all matters which this is not the season for discussing. At all events, the law, whatever it is, must not attach to present incum- bents (even a Lord King would hardly propose this), but should come gradually into operation as a new generation succeeds them. When all the benefices throughout the country shall, by this means, have been raised to a sum competent to the respectable maintenance of a clergyman, then might the legislature, by degrees, throw more and more impediments in the way of pluralities, till that great, but as matters now stand, necessary, evil should at last cease. So would the dues of the church be more cheerfully rendered when they are paid to one who strows where he gathers, — tithes being, in such cases, seldom resisted, or (as far as our experience has gone) grudged ; — so would church preferment be more widely dis- persed when it was no longer accumulated upon individuals, and many meritorious men, who live and die in the harness of a curacy, would come in for their portions ; — so would some unseemly expedients, to which recourse must now be had for the creation of a pluralist, be annihilated, and much obloquy on this score be removed from the Establishment ; — so, above all, would every parish have its own proper spiritual guardian, poor indeed still in very many cases, but yet with less-limited means of exercising charity and hospitahty than the still- poorer curate ; and though in many instances it rpight happen that the parish would be no gainer by the exchange (for curates 300 CEANMEE. [Essay YIII. are allowed by the country to be, in general, in these days no drones), still it would be something to meet the reproach now so often cast upon the church, that one man feeds the sheep ■whilst another shears them — not to say that the rector would be no longer brought into invidious comparison, as at present, •with his curate, in the eyes of his parishioners — with his curate, who enjoys an unwholesome popularity, founded often, if the truth were known, rather upon the covetousness of the people than upon his own worth ; — and the church at large would not be left to suffer by the notion thus naturally put into the heads of tithe-payers, that the services required of the minister may be done (for, in fact, they see them done in a manner) at far less cost perhaps than the amount of their tithes. We have ventured upon these remarks chiefly with a view to ascertain the feeling of the clergy, conscious that the question is one of great difficulty and delicacy; persuaded that even the incumbents of our best livings are, for the most part, so burdened with parochial and other claims upon them (for the clergy ai'e generally of a rank to have poor relations), that they can afford as ill as any men to have an additional tax laid upon their incomes; but, withal, utterly hopeless, from the temper of the times (unless it should please God, by some scourge of His own, to create a stronger interest for religion in the hearts of the people), utterly hopeless, we say, that the wants of the church, however crying, will be reHeved by any other class than the ministers of the church themselves. IX.— ROBEUT HALL/ (OOTOBEK, 1832.) We have not, of late years, undertaken a task of greater diffi- culty than this, of laying before our readers our opinion of Hall and of his ■writings, and the grounds upon which it has been formed. On the one hand there is to be taken into con- sideration the dignity of Hall's talents, for they were surpassed perhaps by those of very few men in his time ; the reverence we naturally feel for one who, so gifted, was content, for con- science' sake, to occupy a far lower station in society than seemed his due; the reserve which we would most sincerely desire to exercise in dealing with a noble mind in which there was a flaw — a flaw extending perhaps further than met the eye; and the allowance which ought, in fairness, to he made for the defects of an author, no longer alive to superintend the pub- lication of his own works, to revise, to reconcile, above all to withhold. On the other hand, we cannot forget, that the editor has been acting a deliberate part towards the memory of his friend, whether a discreet one or otherwise ; that the sentiments of such a man as Hall, so vividly conceived, so eloquently expressed (for he is an absolute master of English), cannot fail of producing powerful efl'ects ; and that, whilst they are often tributary in the highest degree to patriotism, to » 1. The Entire Works of the Rev. Robert Hall, A.M., &c. Published imder the superintendence of Olinthus Gregory, LL.D, F.E. A. S. 5 vols. 8vo. London, 1830-32. 2. Reminiscences of the Rev. Robert Ball, A.M. By John Greene. London, 1831. 36-2 EGBERT HALL. [Essay IX. liberty, to morals, to all the graces of a Christian life, they often again breathe a spirit so fierce, so dogmatical, so impa- tient of fair opposition, so studiously offensive to every honest member of the Church of England, that, though quite un- conscious of party feelings, and certainly having opened these volumes with many prepossessions in favour of the writer, we cannot altogether submit to charges so intemperate, and lick the hand upheaved to lay low what of earthly institutions we most estimate. If, therefore. Dr. Gregory has allowed himself, from whatever motive, to give to the pubhc essays composed at distant intervals, under different circumstances, in the fervour of youth and the circumspection of age, at seasons of extra- ordinary ferment and of calm repose, of bright hope and of bitter knowledge — regardless of the inconsistencies they betray, which are many and grievous — on him and not on us be the blame. We are unwilling to pronounce that there is anything in the condition of the times which stimulates the principles of dissent to unwonted and ungenerous activity — that they are working just now, as they have done in times past (to use Mr. Southey's illustration), because there happens to be thunder in the air ; but if it be so, we advise them to be still a little longer, lest eagerness should get the better of discre- tion — lest that which is probably meant as a menace should be taken as a warning, and the temper already shown, should onlv suggest the caution, if it be such in the green tree what will it be in the dry ? Hall, at the age of seven-and-twenty, publishes a pamphlet, entitled ' Christianity consistent with a Love of Freedom.' It is impossible to read the works of this extraordinary man with- out perceiving that his passions in his youth were turbulent in the extreme— that the energies of his mind were then scarcely under his own control — that years of reflection and dear- bought experience were wanting to him, above all men, in order to tame his spirit— that, like Milton's lion, he was a long time before he could struggle out of earth. ' I presume,' says he, in one of his letters, ' the Lord sees I require more ham- mering and hewing than almost any other stone that was ever Essay IX.] ROBERT HALL. 363 selected for his spiritual building, and that is the secret of His deaUng with me.'" ' Tranquillity,' he writes ia another letter, ' is not my lot ; the prey in early life of passion and calamity, I am now perfectly devoured with an impatience to redeem the time.' '' Why, then, will Dr. Gregory disturb his repose by a republication, to which Mr. Hall would never consent, he tells us, during his life ; doubtless condemning, in his more sober years, the bitter temper which spake in his youthful eifort ; for of the ability with which it is written even Hall could never have had any reason to be ashamed ? It is a poor apology, as it seems to us, to the wounded spirit of Hall, if his spirit can now be wounded, to say, that surreptitious editions of the work had been printed and must be met. What if they had ? These editions, some or all of them, must have been known to Hall himself, yet they did not provoke him to republish. He had unhappily suffered words to escape him which he was not able to revoke, and he made all the atonement he could to his own sense of right and wrong by refusing "to repeat them ; — we cannot but think that it would have been the office of a true friend, to respect his self-accusing silence, and set upon it his seal. For, after all, the treatise, now that it is once again be- fore the public, as compared with Hall's subsequent writings, is full of contradictions; so that whatever honour it may reflect on the genius -oi the man is at the expense of his judgment — a poor compensation. Thus, he calls the maxims of Mr. 's sermon, to which the tract is an answer, 'servile,' because Mr. thinks it better that ministers of the gospel should not turn politicians, or if they do depart from their natural line, that it should be ' to defend governments, to allay dissen- sions, to convince the people that they are incompetent judges of their rights.' " Yet, ' servile ' as was this counsel, the time came when Hall himself was ' determined to have as little to do as possible with party politics, and in the exercise of his professional duties nothing at all.' ^ And again, at a later period, he expresses a reluctance to appear as a political ^ Vol. v. p. 479. I' Vol. v. p. i2i. ' Vol. iii. p. 7. ^ Vol. i. p. 83. 364 EOBKET HALL. [Essay IX. writer, from ' an opinion, whether well or ill founded, that the Christian ministry is in danger of losing something of its energy and sanctity, by embarking on the stormy element of political debate.' * Mr. had said no more. ' Our author,' writes Hall in the same treatise, ' expresses an ardent desire for the approach of that period when all men will be Christians. I have no doubt,' he adds, ' that this event will take place, and rejoice in the prospect of it ; but whenever it arrives it will be fatal to Mr. 's favourite principles, for the professors of Christianity must then become politicians, as the wicked, on whom he at present very politely devolves the business of government, will be no more ; or perhaps he indulges a hope, that even then there will be a suf&oient number of sinners left to conduct political affairs, especially as wars will then cease, and social life be less frequently disturbed by rapine and injustice. It will still, however, be a great hardship, that a handful of the wicked should rule innumerable multitudes of the just, and cannot fail, according to our present conceptions, to operate as a kind of check on piety and virtue.' — Vol. iii. p. 18. Now, to say nothing of Hall misrepresenting his antagonist — for Mr. , if we understand right, was confining his observations to ministers of the gospel, and restricting them, and them only, from taking an active part in matters of state — to say nothing of this — we confess that we do not discover aught, in this irreverent badinage on the fulfilment of prophecy, which should recommend the divine to descend to the politician, and mingle hot blood and devotion. Again, Mr. had presumed to quote the example of our Lord in favour of his view of the question : — ' On this ground,' replies Hall, ' the profession of physic is un- lawful for a Christian, because our Lord never set up a dispensary ; and that of law, because He never pleaded at the bar.' — Vol. iii. p. 40. And in the same vein, in another passage in this treatise. Hall takes advantage of what he considers an obscure allusion i» Vol. iii. p. 81, Essay IX.] EGBERT HALL. 365 to the Birmingham riots, in a turn of Mr. 's sermon, and imputes the obscurity to that ' mystic sublimity which has always tinctured the language of those who are appointed to interpret the counsels of heaven ; '' and recurring to the same figure in the next page, declares himself ' no longer surprised at the superiority he assumes through the whole of his dis- course, nor at that air of confusion and disorder which appears in it,' both of which Hall imputes to ' his dwelling so much in the insufferable light, and amidst the coruscations and flashes of the divine glory.'* Surely this is ground on which angels should fear to tread. Accordingly, we find Hall on this, as on the former occasion, living to see the day when he stood self-corrected — when tbis very flippancy on sacred subjects became a just ofl^ence to him, and was thought worthy of receiving a chastisement, which no man knew better how to administer. Thus, in allusion to an article on Methodism that appeared in the Edinburgh Review, he talks with great indignation of ' the poison of impiety ' (for such he discovers in that paper), ' prepared, it is generally understood, by hallowed hands ' (we pretend not to know whose), ' and distributed through the nation in a popular and seducing vehicle, which had met with a powerful antidote and rebuke from Dr. Gregory, who, himself a layman, will be honoured,' says Hall, ' as the champion of that religion which a clergyman has insulted and betrayed.'" And, in another place, the author of ' Zeal without Innovation,' having talked of a certain class of preachers holding their hearers by ' prosings on the hidings of God's face,' Hall now says, and says well, that ' to good men it will be a matter of serious regret, to find a writer, from whom difierent things were to be expected, treat the concerns of the spiritual warfare in so light and ludicrous a manner.' '^ In the same youthful essay Hall maintains, that the Eevo- lution in France may be defended on its principles, against » Vol. iii. p. 31. i* Vol. iii. p. 33. ° Vol. iv. p. 179. ■iVol. l7. p. 112. 366 ROBERT HALL. [Essay IX. the friends of arbitrary power, by displaying the value of freedom, the rights of mankind, the folly and injustice of those regal or aristocratic pretensions by which those rights were invaded, and that accordingly in this light it had been justified with the utmost success; or, again, that it might be defended upon its expedients, by exhibiting the elements of government which it had composed, the laws it had enacted, and the tendency of both to extend and perpetuate that liberty which was its ultimate object. " Yet the days were at hand, when Hall could commend Mr. Gisborne as the individual to whom the country was under unequalled ohligdtions for dis- crediting this very doctrine of expediency , which threatens, says Hall, ' to annihilate religion, to loosen the foundation of morals, and to debase the character of the nation.'* And for the principles — the real principles — of the French Revolution, Hall lived to lay them bare in one of the most eloquent and philosophical sermons ever preached in any pulpit in any country — a sermon for which England was most grateful at the time, and the extraordinary merit of which renders it painful to us at this moment to unveil the earlier errors of so great a man, which, but for this republication of them, might, for us at least, have slept till doomsday. Mark then the principles which the mature Hall discovers to have been actively at work in the French Revolution : — ' Among the various passions,' says he, ' which that Revolution has so strikingly displayed, none is more conspicuous than vanity ' — vanity, both in those whose business it was to lead, and in those whose lot it was to follow : infusing into the former — • into those intrusted with the enaction of laws — ' a spirit of rash innovation and daring empiricism, a disdain of the established usages of mankind, a foolish desire to dazzle the world with new and untried systems of policy, in which the precedents of antiquity and the experience of ages are only consulted to be trodden under foot:'" vanity, predominating among the latter, the million, by reason of — =■ Tol. iii. p. 22. ^ Vol. It. p. 139. " Yol. i. p. 38. Essay IX.] EOBEET HALL. 367 ' Political power, the most seducing object of ambition, never before circulating through so many hands ; the prospect of possessing it never before presented to so many minds — multitudes who, by their birth and education, and not unfrequently by their talents, seemed destined to perpetual obscurity, being, by the alternate rise and fall of parties, elevated into distinction, and sharing in the functions of government ; the short-lived forms of power and office gliding with such rapidity through successive ranks of degradation, from the court to the very dregs of the people, that they seemed rather to solicit acceptance than to be a prize contended for. Yet, as it was still impossible for all to possess authority, though none were willing to obey, a general impatience to break the ranks, and rush iuto the foremost ground, maddened and infuriated the nation, and overwhelmed law, order, and civilization with the violence of a torrent.'— Vol. i. p. 39. Here -was one of the principles of the French Eevohition, but not one on which it could be defended. Another was, that ferocity of character which was the effect of sceptical impiety, the life of a man being very differently estimated by the Christian and the infidel; its extinction appearing to the one the summons of an immortal being to the bar of its Judge, to the other, the diversion, perhaps, of the course of a little red fluid. Let those who doubt of the close connection -which subsists between atheism and cruelty, ' recollect,' says Hall, — ' that the men who, by their activity and talents, prepared the minds of the people for that great' change — Voltaire, D'Alembert, Diderot, Eousseau, and others — were avowed enemies of revelation ; that in all their writings, the diffusion of scepticism and revolu- tionary principles went hand in hand ; that the fury of the most sanguinary parties was especially pointed against the Christian priesthood and religious institutions, without once pretending, like other persecutors, to execute the vengeance of God (whose name they never mentioned) upon His enemies ; that their atrocities were committed with a wanton levity and brutal merriment ; that the reign of atheism was avowedly and expressly the reign of terror ; that in the full madness of their career— in the highest climax of their horrors — they shut up the temples of God, abolished His worship, and proclaimed death to be an eternal sleep ; as if, by 3 08 EGBERT HALL. [Essay IX. pointing to the silence of the sepulchre and the sleep of the dead, these ferocious barbarians meant to apologize for leaving neither sleep, quiet, nor repose to the living.' — Vol. i. p. 47. Here was another of the principles of the French Eevolution, but one on which it could not be defended. There was a third — that unbridled sensuality to which infi- delity is favourable, by releasing the strongest instincts from the strongest restraints, in a manner which Hall analyzes and exemplifies in a spirit of the truest philosophy, and with an eye to that wreck of the household virtues with which the Con- tinent was at that time strewed.^ Now, we submit that it was not well or wise to involve Hall in these contradictions, by the republication of the unripe speculations of his youth, even though they did contain (what it might no doubt be a pang to forego) many valuable sarcasms upon the church and church- men; though they did speak of the 'liberality of bishops, if ever such a thing existed ^^ and compare in a note (for even this note was too tempting to resign) one Mr. Martin, who had been so unfortunate as to incur the notice and friendship of several of this interdicted brotherhood, to Judas who had ' no acquaintance with the high-priests till he came to transact business with them;'*^ though they did describe the articles of the church as ' the ladder of promotion with the clergy, the cant of the pulpit, and the ridicule of the schools,''' and as for a long time treated by churchmen themselves with contempt, or, if maintained at all, ' maintained with little sincerity and no zeal.' We can most truly say, that we have no pleasure in the line of criticism we are now pursuing, which we feel to be, under other circumstances, unworthy of our subject; but we are forced upon it in self-defence — Hall's friend and editor not allowing it to be otherwise. The 'Apology for the Freedom of the Press ' is another essay of the same class and character as the last, published, however, some three years later, when its author was now thirty. Again Hall appears to have had some misgivings as ^ Vol. i. p. 48. i" Vol. iii. p. 14. = Vol. iii. p. 47. •^ Vol. iii. p. 51. Essay IX] EOBEKT HALL. 309 to the propriety of his conduct in sending this forth to the world ; but as he did consent, ten years before his death, to its republication. Dr. Gregory may be here supposed to stand excused in comprising it in the complete edition of his works : still some regard might have been had to the reluctance which Ilall manifested to comply with the loud and repeated impor- tunities of his friends in this instance also," and though cer- tainly he did at length yield to their wishes, afraid lest his reserve should be mistaken, and imputed to a change of opinions (which he had, indeed, undergone in many respects, but which he was loth to confess, and of which, perhaps, he was not himself fully conscious), still, in the advertisement to his new edition, he puts forth an apology, such as it is, for the acrimony and vehemence of the work in general, and, in par- ticular, suppresses altogether one memorable passage of the original preface, we will not say 'delineating,'^ but mangling the character of Bishop Horsley. It was a passage, which, ' on mature reflection, appeared to the writer not quite con- sistent either with the spirit of Christianity or with the rever- ence due to departed genius.' It might well, indeed, appear so, even upon less than mature reflection. Terms like those applied by Hall to Horsley, in the paragraph in question, were such as any man professing to be governed by Christian prin- ciples, and reflecting upon them in cool blood, might well regard, not only with sorrow, but shame, — and pity it is for his own sake, far more than for Horsley's, that the compunc- tion which caused him to blot out a part, and apologize for more, did not prevail with him to extinguish the whole. But though this was not so, it would have been, we think, only an act worthy of the editor, who was the friend, to aid this falter- ing sense of duty in Hall which did impel him to a half mea- sure of penitence, and, by omitting what was merely abusive in the preface, and retaining, if he pleased, what was argumenta- tive, to have withdrawn our attention from that false pride in Hall which taught him to be so very frugal in the acknow- - Vol. ui. pp. 80, 184, 202. "> Vol. iii. p. 82. B B 870 EOBEKT HALL. [Essay IX. ledgtnent of an injury. As it is, the venomous vituperation (with the exception we have mentioned) is retained and re- peated ; and there Horsley still stands, hlasted by Hall's wrath, as ' the Bonner ' of his time, as the man to ' recognize in every persecutor a friend and brother,' as ' a picture of sanctimo- nious hypocrisy and priestly insolence ' (we are giving Hall's own words) to be quitted with disgust.* This might have been spared; such personalities were unprovoked — Horsley 's only offence having been to preach a sermon before the House of Lords, the sentiments of which Hall did not approve, being hostile, as he thought, to liberty and dissent. And if further ■warrant was wanted for the omission, the editor would have found it in the concession, ungracious as it is, which the author had actually made, and the disposition which it argued in him to relent, as well as in the reluctance which every right- minded man must feel to revive such language of the dead, as they would themselves, no doubt, now wish forgiven' and for- gotten. And, indeed, independent of other considerations, we should be disposed to say of this 'Apology for the Freedom of the Press,' as we said of ' Christianity consistent with a Love of Freedom,' that the more prudent guardian of Hall's fair fame would have hesitated to reproduce a piece, of -which, if we compare it with other works of the same hand, or some- times even with itself, the contradictions are not less remark- able than the talent. And whatever may be the secret satis- faction with which Hall is here again heard to calumniate the Church of England, — whether by asserting, as he does, in one place, that ' there is a disagreement between its public creed and the private sentiments of its ministers'* — or, as he puts it in another place, still more offensively, that she exercises ' a discipline of fraud, compelling her ministers to subscribe what few of them believe;'" or, as he insinuates in a third, that those ministers are 'an army of spiritual janizaries;''' what- ever gratification these and many other passages of the like * Yol. iii. pp. 77, 78. " Vol. iii. p. 144. ' Vol. iii p. 166. ^ Vol. iii. p. 147. Essay IX.] EOBEET HALL. 371 kind may afford to some, still such gratification ought to be considered as too dearly bought at the price of the writer's reputation for consistency in other matters connected with these; and regard for him should at least have taken prece- dence of aversion for others : — but it is not Love only that should be represented as born blind. For instance — in the advertisement to this publication on the 'Freedom of the Press,' Hall bespeaks the reader's indulgence for its imperfec- tions, the warmth of his expressions, and so forth, on the ground that it is a ' eulogium on a dead friend.'^ The free- dom of the press, then, it seems, had expired ; accordingly, in the course of its pages we are told that Mr. Pitt is distin- guished by a 'fatal pre-eminence in guilt;' that he is 'a veteran in frauds while in the bloom of youth ; betraying first, and then persecuting, his earliest friends and connections; falsifying every promise, violating every political engagement ; ' that he was to be despised for ' his meanness and duphcity ; ' ' dreaded for his machinations ; ' ' abhorred for his crimes ; ' and that whilst the nation regards with so much indifference the iniquities of his administration, it is not in a condition to reproach the Eomans for ' tamely submitting to the tyranny of Caligula or Domitian.'* In the same treatise (the freedom of the press, be it remembered, extinct !) religious' establish- ments axe represented as ' nurseries of Banners and Hors- leys;''- and the relation in which dissenters stand to the Church is compared with that of the early Christians to their Pagan persecutors, when the latter lifted up the ruthless cry of Ghristianos ad leones.^ Yet, gross as are these libels upon the most powerful minister of the day, upon the most distinguished, and, perhaps, the most irritable bishop of the bench, and upon this most hateful and intolerant church — we believe that they were suffered to pass with impunity, productive of no other inconvenience to Hall than as they serve to tarnish his character by becoming " Vol. iii. p. 67. *" Vol. iii. p. 65. <= Vol. iii. p. 77. '' Vol. iii. p. 160. B B 2 372 EGBERT HALL. [Essay IX. monuments of his self-contradiction — and this they are in more ways than one. For, independently of the ludicrous con- trast presented between his allegation of grievance and his practical illustration of it, the individual sentiments expressed, both here and in other parts of this treatise, are not easily to he reconciled with those that occur elsewhere in the works of Hall. For instance, ' at this season,' says he, in a good and temperate sermon delivered in 1803, at a general fast, entitled ' Sentiments proper to the Present Crisis' — ' At this season especially, when unanimity is so requisite, every endeavour to excite discontent by reviling the character, or depre- ciating the talents of those who are intrusted with the administra- tion, is highly criminal. Without suspicion of flattery, we may be permitted to add, that their zeal in the service of their country cannot be questioned ; that the vast preparations they have made for our defence claim our gratitude ; and that if in a situation so arduous, and in the management of affairs so complicated and diffi- cult, they have committed mistakes, they are amply entitled to a candid construction of their measures.' — Vol. i. p. 144. It is true that Mr. Addington was now at the helm, and not Mr. Pitt, hut neither was he of the party that Hall favoured ; and if there could be anything in a season to make unanimity especially requisite — anything in a difBcult position of affairs to make mistakes excusable in the minister — surely Mr. Pitt had these arguments to plead in 1793 quite as strongly as Mr. Addington ten years later. How changed again his language, by imphcation, towards Horsley ! ' Admirable consistency in a Protestant bishop ' — had been his exclamation in an evil hour in the 'Apology '" — ' to lament over the fall of that antichrist, whose overthrow is represented by unerring inspiration as an event the most splendid and happy ! ' and this, forsooth, because Horsley had ventured to recommend to the charity of his countrymen the exiled priests of France, whom -a frantic mob had driven to seek shelter upon our shores. Admirable consistency, it might Vol. iii. p. 77. Essay IX.] ROBERT HALL. 373 indeed have been replied, in Jesus to weep over Jerusalem, that had stoned the prophets ! This, however, is not our reply. Turn we to Hall himself; let our appeal be only from Philip to Philip; from Hall, boiling under turbulent passion and casting up his scum, to Hall soothed by the influence of a Christian spirit, and deUvering himself as the advocate of a Christian cause. Then does he too evince a generous pity for these forlorn fugitives, as Horsley had done before him, — 'a Christian priesthood' they too, after all; an expression •which, as he frankly applies it to them, so does he fearlessly defend against the narrow-minded censures of a party who then, as in Hooker's time, were offended at the notion that heaven might enlarge her gates for sincere men, though they might happen to be mistaken men too. Moreover, having occasion to speak in his maturer years of the Socinians (a subject to -which we shall again refer), he tells them, it is time for them to know themselves ; the world being perfectly aware, -whether they perceive it or not, that ' Socinian- ism is now a headless trunk, bleeding at every vein, and exhibit- ing no other symptoms of life, but its frightful convulsions;'^ a tribute which, whether so intended or not, most persons will assign to Horsley, for surely his was the arm by which Sooi- nianism was bereft of its head. Such sentiments, be it observed, we consider greatly to Hall's honour, but then they speak a very different language from that either of ' Christianity consistent with a Love of Freedom,' or ' An Apology for the Freedom of the Press ; ' and we are dis- posed to think, that they would have consulted better for the integrity of his memory, -who had -withdrawn the hasty effusions of his youth from the public altogether (for these are they •which chiefly give occasion to charges of inconsistency), and rather commended to them the fruits of his more dispassionate meditations only. How changed again his language towards the church ! Its cry, he had told us, was in spirit, if not in letter, Christianas ad leones, to the lions with the Dissenters. » Vol. iv. p. 183. 874 EOBEBT HALL. ! [Essay IX. Yet, in a sermon on ' Counting the Cost/ Hall inadvertently admits, that ' violent persecution is not an event, under the present circumstances of the Christian profession in this coun- try, within the range of prohability ; ' * and in his controversy with Mr. Kinghorn, on Free Communion, he acknowledges, that ' a disposition to fair and liberal concession on the points at issue, is almost confined to members of established churches.''' And in Letters from Cambridge to his friends, some of them, by the way, dated about the time of his bitter invectives, he tells them, that ' he has free access to all the libraries gratis,' ° — that ' he was upon very comfortable terms with the church- people at present ; and that never was less party spirit in Cam- bridge.'* Expressions which we leave it to Mr. Greene to reconcile with 'the persecuting church-and-king men' in that place, of whom he takes pains to teU us, in his Reminiscences of the Rev. Robert Hall, and with 'the superciUous airs of consequence and lordly superiority over God's heritage,' exhi- bited, according to him, in the same seat of learning, to which Mr. Hall, says he, 'was by no means insensible.'' But we have not yet done with this ' Apology.' In his former essay on ' Christianity consistent with a Love of Preedom,' the praises of Dr. Priestley were sung with little reserve : his rehgious tenets, it is true, appeared to Hall erroneous in the extreme, but Hall was not the man to suffer any difference of sentiment to diminish his sensibility to virtue, or his admiration of genius ; he tells of his enlightened and active mind — of the light he had poured into every department of science — and in reference to Mr. 's supposed allusion to Priestley, ' as a busy active man in regenerating the nations,' he remarks : — ' Distinguished merit will ever rise superior to oppression, and will draw lustre from reproach. The vapours which gather rouud the rising sun and follow it in its course, seldom fail at the close of it to form a magnificent theatre for its reception, and to invest with variegated tints, and with a softened effulgence, the luminary they cannot hide.' — Vol. iii. p. 28. " Vol V p. 193. '' Vol. ii. p. 160. " VoL t. p. 409. <> Vol. r. p. 422. ' Vol. v. pp. 23, 26. Essay IX.] ROBERT HALL. 375 Again, Priestley is the man he delights to honour in the ' Apology,' and he laments — ' The ever-memorable sera in the annals of bigotry and fanaticism (J. e. the Birmingham riots), when Europe beheld with astonishment and regret the outrage sustained by philosophy, in the most en- lightened of countries and in the first of her sons.' — Vol. iii. p. 131. For those were displays of loyalty in which the dissenters must acknowledge themselves utterly defective : — ' They have never,' he continues, ' plundered their neighbours, to show their attaohtnent to the king, nor has their zeal broken out into oaths and execrations. They have not proclaimed their respect for regular government by a breach of the laws, or attempted to main- tain tranquillity by riots. These beautiful specimens of loyalty' (he then adds, O mens ccBca hominum .') ' belong to the virtue and moderation of the high-church party alone, with whose character they perjectly coincide.^ — Vol. iii. p. 153. But it will he said that Hall, in the passages to which we have referred, praised the philosopher only in Priestley : still we are of Hall's later and more mature opinion (however opposed to his first), which will be found recorded in a review of Dr. Gregory's Letters, ' that ' the fame and science of Priestley procured from the Christian world & forbearance and complaisance to which he was ill entitled;' moreover, that the doctrine oi fatalism, which he grafted upon primitive Sod- nianism, by representing the human mind as perfectly passive in its operations, annihilated all distinction between virtue and vice, the very foundation of rewards and punishments in a future world — and that, when Priestley maintained that a perfect Necessitarian, or, ' in other words, a philosopher of his own stamp, had nothing to do with repentance and remorse,' he was actually ' subverting the whole fabric of society;''' nay more, that his doctrine of materialism, which was further superinduced upon the original tenets of his sect, rendered the- hope of another state of existence a mere delusion, for that, as the material particles of which any individual is made up are said by physiologists to undergo an entire change in the course " Vol. iv. p. 183. " Vol. V. p. ii. 376 EOBEET HALL. [Essay IX; of seven years, their flux is such that a man of forty-nine would lose bis identity no less than seven times, and which of these seven heings was to be the subject of reward and punish- ment in another life, as responsible for his actions in this, is a problem which it would be difiBcult to resolve, nor indeed of much concern to that individual, to his present self, if resolved ever so ingeniously. No wonder, therefore, that Hall, now at length alive to the tendency of Priestley's tenets, should re- present them as differing from those of Socinus only as sedition or sacrilege differs from theft, and should consider the terms ' anti-scripturalists,' 'humanitarians,' ' semideists,' ' Priest- kians,' as convertible terms ;" or that he should contemptuously speak of !Mr. Belsham as ' a mere train-bearer in a very insig- nificant procession I that procession being, as we infer from a preceding sentence, ' Lindsey, Priestley, Hartley, and Jebb.''' But if Hall's sentiments on the subject of Priestley under- went a change, the contradictions in which he involves himself are confined, it will be said, to this one topic, and it would be too much to expect that a clever treatise should be withheld from the world for lack of consistency in a single instance. Such, however, is not the case ; there are other questions, both of a general and a personal nature, here started or pursued, equally irreconcilable with Hall's sentiments expressed else- where — questions so numerous as to lead us to no conclusion but this, that as yet Hall's speculations must be confessed to be crude, passionate rather than patient; and that, where there is no formal recantation of his past opinions (as there is not) on the part of the author, it would have been better that there should be no exposure of them on the part of the editor, lest it should be supposed that the errors which Hall's under- standing would not allow him to persist in, his pride would not suffer him to retract. Thus we have seen the name of Hartley introduced, as making one of a very insignificant procession of Socinian worthies; it is not therefore without surprise that we find him represented on another occasion as ' a profound and ' Vol. iv. p. 185. ' Vol. iv. p. 219. Essay IX.] EOBEET HALL. 377 original reasoner," of whose labours Dr. Gregory had done well to avail himself." So again, Paley, of all men in the world, is said, in the ' Apology,' to be ' a courtly writer in the main.'* Yet, in-other passages of Hall's writings, he is the subject of his generous and unreserved commendation, — ' that venerable writer'" — ' that great man -/^ Paley, for whose talents he enter- tained 'high reverence ;' to whose 'great services to religion he bore a willing testimony ; and the errors of whose moral system he was reluctant to expose.'^ Then again, could the spirit, which a few years afterwards animated the sermon on Modern InfideHty, depicting with such masterly effect the deso- lation it was calculated to work in society, and drawing its examples from the hideous scenes which had been acted in a neighbouring nation, be supposed to be one and the same as that which was now pronouncing certain tenets of Burke, as to natural rights, only not ' abject and contemptible,' because Burke was their author/ which was now defending Dr. Price, ' whose talents and character were revered by all parties,' s and, to a certain extent, Tom Paine, whose system was but a struc- ture built upon the foundations laid by Sidney and Locke'' — Tom Paine, in whom Hall might surely have discovered more symptoms of a ' rooted aversion to the gracious truths of reve- lation' than in Watson, his antagonist, had it not been the misfortune of the latter to be a bishop ;' nay, which could pay a compliment to Miss Wolstonecraft, ' the eloquent patroness of female claims,' with something about ' the empire of the heart,''' — whose work, if it was not so bad as some have repre- sented it, was at least not one for Hall, a severe moralist, to go out of his way to sprinkle with sarcenet terms; terms which, if he remembered them, would probably smite him when Se rose up, some years later, to rebuke the lewdness of the times in which he lived.' Do we then upbraid Hall with his change ? — very far from " Vol. iy. p. 155. !> Vol. iii. p. 107. ' Vol. i. p. 170. <> Vol. iv. p. 28. "■ Vol. 1. p. 170. f Vol. iii. p. 123. « Vol. iii. p. 55. " Vol. iii. p. 122. ' Vol. iv. p. 166. " Vol. iii. p. 133. ' Vol. i. p. 48, et seq. 378 ROBERT HALL. [Essay IX. it He grew in wisdom and moderation as he grew in years ; and we are doing him, we trust, no ill turn in pointing out the process or the symptoms of his regeneration ; hut as the editor has thought fit to give fresh circulation to his early tracts, fraught, as they especially are, with intense mischief to institutions and opinions which we hold dear, and in the ahsence of all positive recantation, we must take leave to neutraUze the effect they might produce were they to go forth as the exposition of Hall's calm and deliberate judgment ; more particularly, as Dr. Gregory gives us to understand that his political principles remained the same through life.^ We must draw upon the patience of our readers a little longer, whilst we still pursue this path of thorns; a path, however, which introduces them to a survey of Hall's opinions, perhaps aa well as any other we could adopt, though in a spirit, they may think, of less deference than is due to so great a name. We can only repeat, that we should have heen well content to he spared the invidious office we are discharging ; but the republication of his works, without any reserve or restriction, leaves us no alternative, and we know not how to reply to Hall more ably than hy making him his own antagonist. In his ' Apology,' as indeed in other of his writings, he ex- presses great aversion to formularies of faith of human autho- rity:'' they are useless, for their subscribers neglect or despise them ;" they are suicidal, for those who refuse subscription are often the most sincere in their support of the principles which those very articles impose ; they are unreasonable, for a belief in divine revelation is all that is wanted to cement a church ;■* they are unjust, for no persons have a right to prescribe, as indispensable conditions of communion, what the New Testa- ment has not enforced as a condition of salvation.* Does it then appear from his own works that he was prepared to follow out his own principle ; to fraternize, for instance, with those " Vol. iji. p. 202. ^ Vol. iii. p. 144. " VoL iii. p. 51. ^ Tol. iu. p. 144. ' Vol ii. p. 4. Essay IX.] ROBERT HALL. 379 ■who, admitting the authority of Scripture, still refused their assent to the doctrines of our Lord's divinity and of the Atone- ment, as not contained in Scripture ; doctrines which he con- sidered as lying at the foundation of the true system of vital religion ? * We apprehend not ; for he very often expresses himself with peculiar acrimony against the advocates of such opinions; and, in the very last letter which he wrote, in allusion to the recent schism in the Bible Society, he declares his satisfaction that ' attempts were making in London to dissolve the union between the orthodox and Socinian ; and vfishes them most heartily success, it being, as he holds, a most unnatural and preposterous union.' * Yet this is, in fact, a surrender of the principle which would make a simple profes- sion of belief in the Scriptures the only bond of church - membership;" and the adoption, in its stead, of another principle, which would make a profession of belief in the Scriptures, according to a certain scheme of human interpre- tation, the bond. Now this latter is all that can be charged upon the Church of England ; so that the question between Hall and the Establishment seems after all to resolve itself into a mere question of degree, and whether the articles shall be three, or nine, or thirty-nine in number. Moreover, were we to judge of the question by its practical merits, and did we desire instances of the disastrous effects of these latitudinarian principles which Hall upholds, we still know not where we could find better than in Hall's own pages. A dissenting academy is established at Daventry ; and Priestley, who resided there, assures the world that nothing can be more favourable to the progress of free inquiry, since the tutors and students were about equally divided between the orthodox and Arian systems ; arguments were marshalled on all sides — the theological professor held the balance with an even hand, careful to betray no predilection for one set of opinions rather than another : what could be more fair ? Yet the result of the experiment was a general indifference to all religious " Vol. T. p. iOS. " Vol. V. p. 568. " Vol. iv. p. 74. 880 ROBERT HALL. [Essay IX. opinions whatever on the part of the students, and an inci- dental confession on the part of Hall, that the school was a ■ vortex of unsanctified speculation and debate.'* The tale is told in a memoir of Mr. Thomas Toller, who was educated there; and the natural rectitude of Hall's mind (as it appears to us) reprohates what his theory would have required him to approve. But he had at length learned that a ' benevolent solicitude to comprehend within the pale of salvation as many as possible, may sometimes lead us to extenuate the danger of speculative error too much.'*' We cannot indeed hut think, that the character of Hall's own mind greatly suffered by the accident of his lot; that it wanted consolidating; and that had it been subjected to the wholesome restraint of liberal, but not lax, formularies, such as would have served to check the mere capricious excursions of a mercurial fancy, it would have been more true to itself, and we should not have been now called upon to expose the numerous contradictions into which it was betrayed. We have seen the eflPect of liberal principles upon a S)'stem of education, — Hall himself being our witness. We are not aware that he recommended them more successfully as the foundations of a church, using the term in its most enlarged sense. He contrasts, it is true, the lofty bearing of the Pro- testant dissenter, whose free and unfettered mind spurns at the shackles of authority, with the abject spirit of those who are content ' to receive their religion from the hands of their superiors in a mass, and relinquish the Uberty of thinking for themselves.'" But let us try conclusions with him. Now, certainly, we never remember to have seen a controversy between churchman and dissenter, much less between churchmen, one with another, conducted in a temper of greater bitterness tlian that displayed by Hall towards his brother Baptist, Mr. Kinghom, on the subject of free communion. He is shocked at the illiberality of Mr. Kinghorn ; he is almost tempted to say, of such societies as his, ' My soul, come not thou into » Vol. iv. p. 307. '' Vol. iv. p. 337. = Vol. ii. p. 467. Essay IX.] EOBEET HALL. 381 their secret;'* he would have him bethink himself of the enormous impropriety of investing ' every little Baptist teacher' with the prerogative of repelling from his communion a Howe, a Leighton, or a Brainerd ;'' he admires the modesty of his opponents in not laying direct claim to their loftiest dis- tinction, which consisted in ' their societies being more select than heaven, and its being more difficult to become a member of a Baptist church than to be saved;'' he conjectures that they are afraid of losing their title to the appellation of ' a little flock,' and that they perhaps consider the Baptist deno- mination as an order of nohility or knighthood, whose dignity is impaired in proportion as it is diffused;* he speaks of Mr. Booth, another Baptist minister, as a ' sturdy saint,' and says that he perfectly reeled and staggered under the weight of an objection with which he was now plying Mr. Kinghorn;^ more- over, that both of them were ' great authorities,' to whom he looked up with profound admiration, but at the same time must give it as his 'humble advice,' that neither of them should be believed.' It should seem, therefore, that dissent does not secure toleration, and that a lack of mutual charity is not to be objected to different parties in the church only.s On the contrary, it appears to us that the liberty of ' thinking for themselves' upon every question, which Hall claims for the dissenters with so much triumph, is an advantage of equivocal value if it generates angry altercation, and that the cause of truth is likely to lose more by the passion of the disputants than to gain by the freedom of the dispute. The same liberty leads to another inconvenience, of which Hall complains ; an evil from which the established church is not altogether free, but to which, by its construction, it is far less exposed; — a taste for spiritual criticism in the hearers. In most dissenting congregations, we are told, there are one or more persons who value themselves on their skill in detecting the unsoundness of ministers ; and who, when they hear a ^ Vol. ii. p. 299. ' Vol. ii. p. 482. " Vol. ii. p. 484. ■i Vol. ii. p. 492. ■= Vol. ii. p. 317. < Vol. ii. p. 385. s Vol. iv. pp. 87, 88, 99, 382 EOBEET HALL. [Ebsat IX. stranger, attend less with a view to their own improvement than to pass their verdict, which they expect shall be received as a decree. It is almost needless to add, says Hall, that they usually consist of the most ignorant, conceited, and irreligious part of the society.* Yet does not Hall perceive that the principle he commends so loudly — the encouragement which dissent gives to every man to think for himself, whether quaUfied for doing so advantageously or not — is precisely that which multiplies such profitless hearers ? Neither is this liberty of thinking for themselves shown to be productive of more harmony in the discipUne of a church than it is in its doctrines ; for again we learn from Hall, though again incidentally, that the removal of a pastor, who has long been the object of veneration, 'generally places a church in a critical situation, exposed to feuds and dissensions, arising out of the necessity of a new choice.'* It may be a question, therefore, whether the interests of rehgion would not be better consulted were the congregation to be passive, and the minister to receive his appointment from other hands. And another grievance, which escapes from Hall, confirms this opinion. In the economy of modem dissenters, it seems, the church, properly so called, is merged in the congregation, its professed members in its fiscal subscribers; and that, accordingly, the management of its spiritual concerns devolves, in great measure, upon those who are actuated by pecuniary considerations only." Now, bad as may be the alliance between Church and State, is it worse than the aUiance between Christ and Mammon ? Neither does this liberty of thinking for themselves, on every occasion, seem to assist those who enjoy it, in their spiritual labours abroad better than at home, for we find Hall, in a letter to the tiaptist Missionary Society, taking violent, but apparently not unjust ofience at the conduct of their brethren at Seram- pore ; alleging it to be a proceeding scarcely paralleled in the history of human affairs, that a ' set of men, in the character of missionaries, after disclaiming the authority of the Society ' Vol. i. p. 476. ■■ Vol. iv. p. 309. ■= Tol. iv. p. 320. Essay IX.] EGBERT HALL. 383 ivhich sent them out, and asserting an entire independence — after claiming an absolute control, whether rightfully or not, over a large property which that Society had always considered, as its own — should demand an annual payment from those from whom they had severed themselves, and thus attempt to make their constituents their tributaries.'* Here again it may be thought, that less latitude in the principle would have secured more effectual co-operation in the cause. But it should seem that this liberty of thinking, which Hall asserts so stoutly for the dissenters, he would deny to others; a dogma which certainly he would not deliberately advocate, and the semblance of which in his writings, for a semblance of it there is, must be therefore imputed (as we have already imputed so much else) to the disadvantage under which a man labours whose works, entire as well as fragments, are exposed to the public — the posthumous outpourings of his multifarious eommon-place books, with all their imperfections on their head. For whilst we are told, in one of these hasty and unfinished essays, that ' the unfortunate Charles ' was undone chiefly by 'his religious intolerance,' it is said, too, that 'nothing con- tributed so much to support the precarious authority of Crom- well, and to produce an artificial calm in the midst of so many raging factions, so many stormy elements, as a general liberty of conscience!^ General liberty of conscience! Why was it then that the conscientious members of the Church of Eng- land had to meet by stealth in order to mingle their prayers and tears together — that the use of the Prayer-book was pro- scribed — that the Protector prohibited, by edict, all ministers of the Church of England from preaching or teaching schools or administering the sacrament, on pain of imprisonment or transportation — that Evelyn and his wife, and a whole con- gregation, on a Christmas-day, whilst they were in the act of celebrating the Lord's supper, were surprised by- a body of Cromwell's soldiers, the miscreants actually presenting their muskets at the communicants as if they would have shot them " Vol. iv. p. 416. ^ Vol. ili. p, 378. 384 EGBERT HALL. [Essay IX. at the altar ! Is Hall's meaning to be explained by a passage in another ' fragment,' where, in touching upon the same sub- ject, he says, that Cromwell supported his usurpation 'by granting to rival sects a general toleration'* — that is, to all sects but the Church of England ; and were they alone to be excluded from the privilege because they were supposed to have no consciences to wound ? We shall now dismiss this portion of our subject, and betake ourselves to a less ungrateful task, drawing, however, at paning, this moral from what has been said already, that when a spiritual person addicts himself to party politics and seciarian disputes, he is apt to become, whatever may be his talents, shorn of his strength, and to be ' as another man.' Besides the political tracts, of which mention has been so often made already, the volumes before us consist of sermons, of notes for sermons, of charges, of biographical sketches of Baptist worthies, of polemical treatises, a few reviews, and many letters. The notes for sermons swell the bulk, without very much increasing, we think, the value, of the publication. ]Jairs powers show themselves far more in filling up an out- line than in forming it, and here we have outline only. It is ever thus with men of fervent imaginations. Milton's rude sketch of ' Paradise Lost,' in the argument of a play, is valuable, because it is a sketch of ' Paradise Lost,' and it is interesting to trace the genius of the poet who could raise such a superstructure upon such a scaffolding; and, in like manner, if the notes which served as elements for Hall's sermon on Modern Infidelity had been given, they would have had their value too, but only because so noble a discourse came of them. In sketches like these, considered indepen- dently, there is little worth, for there is little characteristic. The bold diction, the majestic gait of the sentence, the vivid illustration, the rebuke which could scathe the offender, the burst of honest indignation at triumphant vice, the biting sar- casm, the fervid appeal to the heart, the sagacious develop- " Vol. iii. p. 392. Essay IX.] ROBERT HALL. 385 ment of principle, the broad field of moral vision, — all, in short, -which distinguishes Hall, evaporates; and whilst we are looking for his picture in the mirror of works so imperfect, we find it, indeed, but (to use one of his own metaphors) as if it liad lain in a damp place. On one occasion. Dr. Gregory, assisted by the memoranda of Hall's hearers, himself under- takes to fill up the chasms of a sermon on the vicarious cha- racter of the Eedeemer, which Hall had left unfinished — ausus magna quidem.^ But he does not walk gracefully in Saul's armour : his language breathes not the burning words of his original, nor are his thoughts, we suspect, as Hall's thoughts. For it is difficult to believe the substance of the interpolated passages correctly reported, or that Hall, conversant as he was with the argument of Butler, and emphatic as he is in his praise, '' should have departed from it so widely, and particu- larly in a branch of it satisfactory perhaps beyond any other. It is surely injudicious in Hall's friends thus to run him to the lees-: to produce, first his youthful pieces, with their youthful faults ; then his notes of sermons ; then fragments of sermons, of which the editor has to supply the defects ; and, lastly — such is Mr. Greene's attempt upon the memory of Hall — sermons, of which neither note nor fragment affects to be of Hall's own writing, but the :whole the mere gatherings of a reporter, him- self, we suppose, _ unpractised in his art, and Hall the most rapid of speakers. Alas, for Hall ! the most fastidious of men, with regard to his own compositions — ever falling, in his own opinion, below his own elevated standard, and dissatisfied even with his most finished and perfect performances ! Not that mere indolence oppressed him, but, as he says, a certain diffi- culty of being pleased, which rose to the magnitude of a mental disease." One sermon, and that, too, of the first order, he is slow to publish, because ' it appears so contemptible under his hand.''' With another he is, ' as usual, so much dis- gusted, that he can by no means let it appear, unless it is in ' Vol. i. p. 490. •■ Vol. i. p. 322. <> Vol. v. p. 491. ■1 Vol. Y. p. 471. c c 386 EGBERT HALL. [Essay IX. his power greatly to improve it.'» A third, a funeral sermon, he calls ' a wretched oration, which it is his unalterahle resolu- tion never to print,' however his friends may continue to im- portune him : ' he would not put off the public with a weakly or more deformed part of his intellectual progeny ; ' ' it would not be respectful to the public, nor justice to himself, to publish such a wretched piece of inanity,' — ' let me, my dear sir, hear no more of the oration.'* What would a man of this sensitive spirit have said to so indiscriminate a production of his papers, both bad and good ? Still it is only fair to mention, that in the Notes there certainly are occasional flashes of Hall, but they are few and far between. Such are sometimes to be found in a metaphor : thus, on the subject of family prayer, to which some worldly-minded persons object, as taking up too much time, it is said, that 'what may seem a loss will be more than compensated by that spirit of order and regularity which the stated observance of this duty tends to produce,' for that ' it will serve as an ed(je and border to preserve the weh of life from unravelling.' ^ And again, of swearing, it is observed by Hall, in one of those bold figures which mark his style, that ' it is properly a superfluity of naughtiness, and can only be considered as a sort oi pepper corn rent, in acknowledg- ment of the devil's right of superiority.' ^ He is worthy of himself, too, in the following comprehen.sive definition of wisdom, also to be met with in the same Notes ; a passage so remarkably in the style of Bacon or Barrow (for there is often a resemblance between these two great authors), that we almost suspect it is not altogether original, though we have no proof that it is otherwise : — ' Every other quality besides is subordinate and inferior to wisdom, in the same sense as the mason who lays the bricks and stones in a building is inferior to the architect who drew the plan and superin- tends the work. The former executes only what the latter con- trives and directs. Now it is the prerogative of wisdom to preside over every inferior principle, to regulate the exercise of every " Vol. T. p. 486. b Vol. T. p. 493. c Vol. y. p. 260 " Vol. V. p. 339. Essay IX.] EOBEET HALL. 887 power, and limit the indulgence of every appetite, as shall best conduce to one great end. It being the province of wisdom to pre- side, it sits as umpire on every difficulty, and so gives the final direction and control to all the powers of our nature. Hence it is entitled to be considered as the top and summit of perfection. It belongs to wisdom to determine when to act and when to cease ; when to reveal and when to conceal a matter ; when to speak and when to keep silence ; when to give and when to receive ; in short, to regulate the measure of all things, as well as to determine the end, and provide the means of obtaining the end, pursued in every deliberate course of action. Every particular faculty or skill besides needs to derive direction from this ; they are all quite in- capable of directing themselves. The art of navigation, for in- stance, will teach us to steer a ship across the ocean, but it will never teach us on what occasions it is proper to take a voyage. The art of war will instruct us how to marshal an army, or to fight a battle to the greatest advantage, but you must learn from a higher school when it is fitting, just, and proper to wage war or to make peace. The art of the husbandman is to sow and bring to maturity the precious fruits of the earth; it belongs to another skill to regulate their consumption by a regard to our health, fortune, and other circumstances. In short, there is no faculty we can exert, no species of skill we can apply, but requires a superintending hand ; but looks up, as it were, to some higher principle, as a maid to her mistress for direction, and this universal superintendent is wisdom.' —Vol. iv. p. 229. But -whatever may he the value of the Eough Notes, when Hall not merely hews out materials but brings them too to an excellent work, excellent indeed it is; and his Sermons on Modern Infidelity, on War, on the Death of the Princess Charlotte, on the Discouragements and Supports of the Christian Minister, and, not least, the discourse entitled ' Sentiments proper to the Present Crisis,' are all wonderful compositions ; wonderful both for the scale and the variety of the powers they display ; a head so metaphysical, seeming to have little in common with an imagination so glowing ; decla- mation so impassioned with wisdom so practical ; touches of pathos so tender with such caustic irony, such bold invective, such spirit-stirring encouragements to heroic deeds ; and all c c 2 388 ROBERT HALL. (EasAT IX. conveyed in language worthy to be the vehicle of such diverse thoughts, precise or luxuriant, stem or playful — that most rare, but most eloquent, of all kinds of speech, the mascuhne mother- tongue of an able man, which education has chastened, but not killed ; constructed after no model of which we are aware ; more massive than Addison, more easy and unconstrained than Johnson, more sober than Burke : such are the features of Hall's deliberate compositions, and such is our most willing testimony to their worth. The following is a passage in the Sermon on Infidelity, enumerating some of the advantages which society owes to religion ; advantages which it scatters as blessings by the way, on its march to immortality : — ' Eeligiou being primarily intended to make men wise unto sal- vation, the support it ministers to social order, the stability it con- fers on government and laws, is a subordinate species of advantage which we should have continued to enjoy, without reflecting on its cause, but for the development of deistical principles, and the expe- riment which has been made of their effects in a neighbouiing country. It had been the constant boast of infidels, that their system, more liberal and generous than Christianity, needed but to be tried to produce an immense accession of human happiness ; and Christian nations, careless and supine, retaining little of religion but the profession, and disgusted with its restraints, lent a favour- able ear to these pretensions. God permitted the trial to be made. In one country, and that the centre of Christendom, revelation un- derwent a total eclipse, while atheism, performing on a darkened theatre its strange and fearful tragedy, confounded the first ele- ments of society, blended every age, rank, and sex in indiscrimi- nate proscription and massacre, and convulsed all Europe to its centre; that tbe imperishable memorial of these events might teach the last generations of mankind to consider religion as the pillar of society, the safeguard of nations, the parent of social order,- which alone has power to curb the fury of the passions, and secure to every one his rights — to the laborious the reward of their industry, to the rich the enjoyment of their wealth, to nobles the preservation of their honours, and to princes the stability of their thrones. We might ask the patrons of infidelity, what fury impels them to attempt the subversion of Christianity ? Is it that they Essay IX.] ROBERT HALL. 389 have discovered a better sj'stem ? To what virtues are their prin- ciples favourable? Or is there one which Christians have not car- ried to a higher perfection than any of which their party can boast ? Have they discovered a more excellent rule of life, or a better hope in death, than that which the Scriptures suggest? Above all, what are the pretensions on which they rest their claims to be the guides of mankind, or which embolden them to expect that we should trample upon the experience of ages, and abandon a religion which has been attested by a train of miracles and prophecies, in which millions of our forefathers have found a refuge in every trouble, and consolation in the hour of death; a religion which has been adorned with the highest sanctity of character and splendour of talents ; which enrols amongst its disciples the names of Bacon, Newton, and Locke, the 'glory of their species, and to which these illustrious men were proud to dedicate the last and best fruits of their immortal genius ? If the question at issue is to be decided by argument, nothing can be added to the triumph of Christianity ; if by an appeal to authority, what have our adversaries to oppose to those great names ? Where are the infidels of such pure, uncon- taminated morals, unshaken probity, and extended benevolence, that we should be in danger of being seduced into impiety by their example ? Into what obscure recesses of misery, into what dungeons have their philanthropists penetrated, to lighten fetters and relieve the sorrows of the helpless captive ? What barbarous tribes have their apostles visited ; what distant climes have they explored, encompassed with cold, nakedness, and want, to diffuse principles of virtue, and the blessings of civilization? Or will they rather choose to waive their pretensions to this extraordinary and, in their eyes, eccentric species of benevolence (for infidels, we know, are sworn enemies to enthusiasm of every sort), and rest their character on their political exploits ; on their efforts to re-animate the virtue of a sinking State, to restrain licentiousness, to calm the tumult of popular fury ; and by inculcating the spirit of justice, moderation, and pity for fallen greatness, to mitigate the inevitable horrors of revolution ? Our adversaries will at least have the discretion, if not the modesty, to recede from the test. More than all, their infatuated eagerness, their parricidal zeal to extinguish a sense of deity, must excite -astonishment and horror. Is the idea of an almighty and perfect Ruler unfriendly to any passion which is con- sistent with innocence, or an obstruction to any design which it is not shameful to avow ? Eternal God ! on what are Thy enemies 390 ROBERT HALL. [Essay IX. intent ? What are those enterprises of guilt and horror, that, for the safety of their performers, require to be enveloped in a darkness which the eye of Heaven must not pierce ? — miserable men ! proud of being the offspring of chance ; in love with universal disorder ; whose happiness is involved in the belief of there being no witness to their designs, and who are at ease, only because they suppose themselves inhabitants of a forsaken and fatherless world ! ' — Yol. i. pp. 67-70. It is not the blaze of eloquence with which this passage burns so brightly, that ought to turn to it our eyes ; but the sound argument, the practical wisdom, which supplies the fuel, and lies buried in the flame. The great price of Hall's pearls continually runs a risk of being unobsefved, through the lustre and richness of the setting. Declamation soon becomes weari- some and oppressive, beyond any form or fashion of speech whatsoever ; yet Hall, who often resorts to it, never wearies ; simply because with him it is always instinct with strong sense — there is the bolt as well as the thunder. As for the subject, the virtue which religion possesses to uphold society, it is one which Hall delights to handle ; and he is never greater than when so doing. The conclusion to which he comes on one of these occasions, brings the matter so well home to every man, is so wholesome for these times, and is so beautifully expressed, that we will not withhold it. It occurs in his sermon on War. He had been speaking of the horrors of the French revolution and of their origin : — ' Our only security against similar calamities,' he then continues, ' is a steady adherence to religion — not the religion of mere form and profession, but that which has its seat in the heart ; not as it is mutilated and debased by the refinements of a false philosophy, but as it e.xists in all its simplicity and extent in the sacred Scriptures ; consisting in sorrow for sin, in the love of God, and in faith in a crucified Redeemer. If this religion revives and flourishes amongst us, we may still surmount all our difficulties, and no weapon formed against us will prosper: if we despise or neglect it, no human power can afford us protection. Instead of showing our love to our country, therefore, by engaging eagerly in the strife of parties, let us choose to signalize it rather by beneficence, by piety, by an Essay IX.] ROBERT HALL. 391 exemplary discharge of tlie duties of private life, under a persuasion that that man, in the final issue of things, will be seen to have been the best patriot, who is the best Christian. Pie who diffuses the most happiness, and mitigates the most distress within his own circle, is undoubtedly the best friend to his country and the world, since nothing more is necessary than for all men to imitate his conduct, to make the greatest part of the misery of the world cease in a moment. While the passion then of some is to shine, of some to govern, and of others to accumulate, let one great passion alone inflame our breasts, the passion which reason ratifies, which con- science approves, which Heaven inspires, that of being and of doing good.'— Vol. i. p. 110. We are tempted to arid to these passages a third, directing attention, as it does, to that jjprtion of society in England, ■which at the present crisis cannot be watched too vigilantly, or ministered unto too carefully. The passage is found at the end of a sermon, on the 'Advantages of Knowledge to the Lower Classes.' 'We congratulate the nation, on the extent of the, efforts em- ployed, and the means set on foot, for the improvement of the lower classes, and especially the children of the poor, in moral and religious knowledge, from which we hope much good will accrue, not only to the parties concerned, but to the kingdom at large. These are the likeliest, or rather the only expedients that can be adopted for forming a sound and virtuous populace ; and if there be any truth in the figure, by which society is compared to a pyramid, it is on them its stability chiefly depends ; the elaborate ornament at the top, will be a wretched compensation for the want of solidity in the lower parts of the structure. These are not the times in which it is safe for a nation to repose on the lap of ignorance. If there ever were a season, when public tranquillity was ensured by the absence of knowledge, that season is past. The convulsed state of the world will not permit unthinking stupidity to sleep, without being appalled by phantoms, and shaken by terrors, to which reason, which defines her objects and limits her apprehen- sions by the reality of things, is a stranger. Everything in the condition of mankind announces the approach of some great crisis, for which nothing can prepare us but the diffusion of Knowledge, Probity, and the Fear of the Lord. While the world is impelled 392 EOBEET HALL. [Essay IX. with such violence in opposite directions; while a spirit of giddiness and revolt is shed upon the nations, and the seeds of mutation are so thickly sown, the improvement of the mass of the people will be our grand security ; in the neglect of which, the politeness, the refinement, and the knowledge accumulated in the higher orders, weak and unprotected, will be exposed to imminent danger, and perish like a garland in the grasp of popular fury.' — Vol. i. p. 218. The death of the Princess Charlotte was an event eminently calculated to call up in Hall all that was within him. It ap- pealed at once to his imagination, his reason, and his heart. The dignity of the sufferer — the vast interests, positive and prospective, involved in the loss — the lesson of mortality which it read to a whole nation — the touching nature of the death she died — all combined to make it a subject in which Hall's varied powers might freely expatiate ; and accordingly, in none of his sermons, perhaps, does the exuberance of his mind display itself to greater advantage than in this ; every fresh position, as he successively occupies it, seeming to open to him a bound- less field, and his only difiBculty being to circumscribe his picture. Where all is so striking it- is not easy to make a choice ; but the following reflection is so fine in itself, and the wording of it so brilliant, that in spite of the number and length of the quotations we have already made, this must have a place : — ' Eternity, it is surely not necessary to remind you, invests every state, whether of bliss or of suffering, with a mysterious and awful importance entirely its own, and is the only property in the creation which gives that weight and moment to whatever it attaches, com- pared to which, all sublunary joys and sorrows, all interests which know a period, fade into the most contemptible insignificance. In appreciating every other object, it is easy to exceed the proper esti- mate; and even of the distressing event, which has so recently occurred, the feeling which many of us possess is probably adequate to the occasion. The nation has certainly not been wanting in the proper expression of its poignant regret, at the sudden removal of this most lamented princess, nor of their sympathy with the royal JEssAT IX.] EGBERT HALL. 393 family, deprived by this visitation of its brightest ornament — ■ sorrow is painted on every countenance, the pursuits of pleasure and of business have been suspended, and the kingdom is covered ■with the signals of distress. But what, my brethren, if it be lawful to indulge such a thought, what would be the funeral ob- sequies of a lost soul ? Where shall we find the tears fit to be wept at such a spectacle ? or, could we realize the calamity in all its extent, what tokens of commiseration and concern would be deemed equal to the occasion ? Would it suffice for the sun to veil his light, and the moon her brightness ; to cover the ocean with mourning and the heavens with sackcloth? or, were the whole fabric of Nature to become animated and vocal, would it be possible for her to utter a groan too deep, or a cry too piercing, to express the magnitude and extent of such a catastrophe? ' — Vol. i. p. 357. The sermon, on the ' Discouragements and Supports of the Christian Minister,' is full of hints vrhich no man engaged in the pastoral office can read without advantage. Hall is for a well-educated clergy : — he is of opinion that learning is no enemy to piety, and that the orthodoxy of a public teacher of religion derives no security from his professed ignorance on every other subject; — in his preaching, he would have him, not indeed personal, but still characteristic, so that every individual of his congregation might know where to class himself, and feel that the hand of the preacher was upon him ; — he would have him endeavour to insulate his hearers, to place each of them apart, and render it impossible for him to escape by losing himself in the crowd; — he would have him adapt his addresses to the different casts of his audience, and select his topics accordingly; remembering that some among them are only capable of digesting first principles ; that some require more ample variety and a more comprehensive grasp of scriptural truths ; that some are phlegmatic and can only be approached by cool argument, and, though believers, are indisposed to pay much attention to naked assertions; that some are of a softer clay, and must be pricked at the heart ; that some again are callous sinners, and must be subdued by the terrors of the Lord. Thus will he become all things to all men, that he may save some. He would not have him too formal or mechanical 304 EOBEBT HALL. [Essay IX. in the construction of his sermons, ever abating the edge of curiosity by making a point of proclaiming what is to come next ; method, indeed, he would have, but not such as comes of observation, — it being impossible to object a want of method to Cicero or Demosthenes, though it would be very difficult to dispose one of their orations under heads, without extinguish- ing its fire ;^he would have him smite friendly, in order that he may smite effectually, not denouiicing God's threats as if he took pleasure in the office, but, with St. Paul, telling his people iceeping, whenever he has to tell them such a truth, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: — he would have seriousness a feature of his discourses, intending thereby not merely the absence of light or jocular topics, in which few would in these days be likely to indulge, but the use of that ' sound speech,' which St. Paul recommends to Timothy, a Bober dig- nity of language and subject, so that in describing the ' pleasures of devotion, for instance, or the joys of heaven, there should be nothing weak, sickly, or effeminate,' ' no puerile exaggerations or feeble ornaments,' but rather that chaste severity which is ever found in the representations of the apostles; he would have him draw his instructions immediately from the Bible, take them fresh from the spring; — he would have him seek to fix the attention of his hearers, not by any peculiar refinement of thought or subtlety of reasoning, much less by any pompous exaggerations of secular eloquence, but rather by imbibing deeply the mind of Christ, letting His doctrine enlighten, His love inspire the heart, thereby placing himself in a situation, which, in comparison of other speakers, " will resemble that of the angel of the Apocalypse, who was seen standing in the sun.' Above all, he would have him persuasive in his life, not indeed continually teaching from house to house, nor always having the subject of rehgion upon his lips, but so discharging the ordinary duties of the passing day, as to add weight to his ministerial functions, properly so called, and to give token that he is aware of the high trust reposed in him, and that 'moral delinquency in him produces a sensation as when an armour- bearer fainteth.' Essay IX.] ROBERT HALL. 395 In his polemical treatises, ■wliicli are confined to the question, of free communion, or the admission of Psedo-baptists to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, Hall is the advocate of liberal principles, taking part against those who maintained the doctrine of strict communion, constituting, we believe, the great majority of the Baptist church, and considered its orthodox members. Here Hall shows himself a very powerful and very vehement reasoner, but not always a very candid antagonist, sometimes dextei-ously evading an argument which presses, sometimes resorting to weapons at the risk of piercing his own hand, rather than yield, and sometimes descending to arguments coarse and personal. Thus he considers the doc- trine of regeneration in baptism, 'a pernicious error,'^ but being aware that such a doctrine was held by all the early fathers of the church, he takes an opportunity to descant upon the tendency there exists in the human mind to sink from the spirit to the letter — from what is vital in religion to what is ritual, — and then he adroitly introduces the sentiments of the fathers, on the subject of baptism, in illustration of his theory.'' Again, Hall on one occasion considers, and with reason, as we believe, the future appearance of the Messiah to be the great article of the Jewish faith." Tet in the heat of contro- versy he will rather put his sentiment to hazard, than be worsted in the dispute. For, in arguing on the side of free communion, he contends that there can be no ground for insisting on baptism at all, previous to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, since this latter sacrament itself was instituted before baptism. To this it is replied. True, but John's baptism was instituted before the Lord's Supper. Yes, is the rejoinder," but the baptism of John was very different from the baptism of Jesus. Not so different, is again the answer, seeing that John and the older prophets taught of Jesus. So they did, is the retort, but how indistinct was their conception ! ' Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbras ' — "^ - Yol. iy. p. 174. ' Vol. ii. p. 74. "= Vol. ii. p. 23. ^ Vol. ii. p. 211. 396 ROBERT HALL. [Essay IX. — where we see Hall allows himself to he drifted hy his argu- ment to a position which prohahly, at another time, he would not have occupied hy choice. Instances of the same tactics might he produced from other of his writings; — whilst to his opponents in general he displays a carriage the most super- cilious, not to he excused hy the consciousness of possessing talents, however unrivalled ; and to one of them, who had con- structed a synopsis of the principles advanced in the treatise ' On Terms of Communion,' in such a manner as to provoke Hall's wrath, he so far forgets the rules of common courtesy, as to liken him ' to a certain animal in the eastern part of the world, who is reported to he extremely fond of climhing a tree for that purpose, inasmuch as he merely pelts the author with his own produce.'" Certainly, whatever can he advanced in favour of the most latitudinarian principles of church member- ship may be collected from these dissertations, though, on experience, Hall would have found their application imprac- ticable, and, as we gather from certain inconsistencies discover- able in his writings and already produced, actually did find them so. His reviewals are of very different degrees of merit. Those in which he has to commend his author seem to us to labour —to drag their slow length along; they perpetually suggest to us Hall's amusing confessions of faith and feeling on this subject, to which he so often gives plaintive utterance in his letters : — ' Eeviewing at the request of particular friends he holds to be a snare for the conscience.''' 'He has the utmost aversion to the whole business of reviewing, wHich he has lono- considered, in the manner in which it is conducted, a nefarious and unprincipled proceeding, and one of the greatest plagues of modern times.'" 'He wishes that the whole body' (of reviews or reviewers, liorrescimus referentes) 'could be put an end to.''* And, to crown all in one word, 'there is no kind of literary exertion to which he had an equal aversion by many degrees, and were such things determined by choice, it is » Vol ii p. 228. " Vol. v. p. 490. ■= Vol. t. p. 523. ' ^ •) Vol. T. p. 537. Essay IX.] EGBERT^ HALL. 397 his deliberate opinion, that he should prefer going out of the world by any tolerable mode of death, rather than incur the necessity of writing three or four articles in a year.'" Even precious balms, concocted in such a mood as this, were very likely to break a man's head; but if it was unfavourable to flowing panegyric, it was precisely the thing to give a sting to censure ; and, accordingly, the reviews of ' Zeal without Inno- vation,' and of ' Mr. Belsham's Memoirs of Lindsey,' are in- comparably above the others, and of whatever else they may be accused, they are certainly clear of all charges of tameness and constraint. Certain biographical sketches of departed friends, who had been great in their generation as Christian examples, place his powers very high in this delightful and difficult department of literature, and lead us at the same time to lament (which we do without meaning any disrespect to the excellent of the earth whom he has chosen for his subjects) that such powers should not, like those of Lord Clarendon, have been exercised upon characters who had acted more conspicuous parts upon the stage of life. Hall, indeed, appears to have been a very nice observer of men and manners ; drawing his conclusions some- times from trifles, which none but a keen critic of his kind would have considered as tests. ' Mr. ,' says he to Mr. Greene, 'is too much taken up with the world — he is overdone with business — if you observe, sir, he always stoops when he walks out, and looks towards the ground, as if he were of the earth, earthy.' "" A remark of the same class as that of John- son, who pronounced upon the general character of a lady, when he saw her forbear to cut a cucumber at table ; or that of Shakspeare, who makes Caesar observe upon the lean looks of Cassius, that 'such men are dangerous,' and that he would rather 'have men about him that are fat.' Accordingly, in his biography, which (as may be supposed) is confined to such persons as, upon the whole, he admires, he still does not allow his admiration to dazzle his judgment; but discriminates in a ° Tol. V. p. 495. l" Eeminiscenoes, p. 192. 398 EGBERT HALL. [Essay IX. way to set the party vividly before our eyes, and to work in us a conviction that the sketch is from the life. Of the letters more need not be said than that they are valuable, as all honest men's letters are, from throwing light upon the character and sentiments of their author. We have frequently referred to them already in the course of this paper, and shall be still more indebted to their contents, whilst we attempt, as we shall now do in conclusion, to put our readers in possession of a more personal knowledge of Hall — premis- ing, however, that we have little means of estimating him but such as his writings afford. He has been described to us as a preacher of a very marked character; at the opening of his sermon somewhat embarrassed, and subject to the perpetual interruption of a short and teasing cough ; but no sooner did he kindle with his theme, which he speedily did, than his manner became rapt and impassioned, his soul commercing with the skies, and the vehemence of his mind bearing before it in triumph both himself and those that heard him. His father, of whom he speaks with great feeling, was a decided Oalvinist; he also a Calvinist, but of a more moderate school — that of Baxter and Howe," their opinion upon election being that of Milton in Paradise Lost — ' Some I have chosen of peculiar grace Elect above the rest ; so is my will ; The rest shall hear me call and oft be warn'd Their sinful state, and to appease betimes The incensed Deity, whilst offer'd grace Invites.' The coiTuption of human nature he considers very great, perhaps total ; ho speaks of the mind as ' fatally indisposed,' 'ahenated from the life of God,' 'having no dehght in his converse," as 'having lost the divine image.'"' Yet he argues with almost all the leading divines of our church for the evidence of the 'law written on the heart,' for a 'moral im- press ;'" an opinion scarcely consistent with the utter depravity - Vol. V. p. 454 ; iii. p. 47S. " Vol. i. pp. 237, 171, 349. "= Yol. i. p. 171. Essay IX.] ROBERT HALL. 899 of our nature. The change which he maintaius it necessary for man to undergo before he becomes a new creature he holds to he rather of slow growth than of sudden impulse ; " and as a con- sequence perhaps of this, he does not entertain the doctrine of assurance;* he has for himself, indeed, a feeble hope, which he would not exchange for a world ; but more than this, though a most desirable attainment, he does not regard as essential, nor would he lay claim to more in his own case."^ The need we have of the Holy Spirit to guide and support us in all things he strenuously and amply asserts ; ^ whilst he precludes every enthusiastic pretension, by entering as a caveat, that the in- ternal illumination of the Spirit is merely intended to qualify the mind for distinctly perceiving and cordially embracing those objects, and no other, which are exhibited in the written word.° He disclaims the notion of conditions of salvation as meritorious, but still contends for them as a sine qua non ; ^ the idea of the former being inconsistent with the gospel con- sidered as a system of free grace, but the latter being necessary to confound the pretensions of a licentious professor ; he holds it culpable, therefore, to flinch from the use of plain language upon this subject, inasmuch as it would pave the way, he thinks, to antinomianism.s This heresy, and every approach to it, however remote, he is on every occasion most anxious to condemn ; for of all the features of Hall's religion this is the most conspicuous — the practical nature of it ; it shows itself at every turn ; every attempt that has been made to rear religion on the ruins of nature, and to render it subversive of the economy of life, has proved, according to Hall, but a humiliating monument of human folly.'' He loves not squeamish auditors, who can listen to nothing but doctrinal statements.' He considers the general principles of morality to be not less the laws of Christ than positive rites, such as baptism or the supper of the Lord.'' The credenda, or things ^ Vol. i. p. 236. >> Vol. T. p. 292. ° Vol. y. pp. 531, 558. " Vol. i. p. 448. = Vol. i. p. 257. f Vol. ii. pp. 230, 231 . ^ Vol. It. p. 452. ' Vol. iii. p. 41. ' Vol. i. p. 470. " Vol, ii. p. 138. 400 EGBERT HALL. [Essay IX. to be believed, must indeed precede the facienda, or things to be done, but the two must not be separated by an interval ; those who have been long detained in the elementary doctrines being found to acquire a distaste for the practical, — an im- patience of reproof, an aversion, in short, for everything but what flatters them with a favourable opinion of their own state ; so that their rehgion evaporates in sentiment, and their sup- posed conversion is nothing more than an exchange of the TJces of the brute for those of the speculator in theological difficulties.' His preaching at Plymouth, be tells us, gave general dissatisfaction, arising, as he suspects, from its practical complexion.'' His injunctions to Mr. Carey, when he was going out to India as a missionary, are mainly practical ; he was to be mild and unassuming in his deportment, attentive to the temporal as well as spiritual interests of the natives ; — ^he was to study human nature, the success of any great and hazardous undertaking depending, under God, on the voluntary co-operation of mankind — and the first ministers of the gospel, who were for examples] being in nothing more remarkable than in the e-!LC^\i\s\te propriety with which they conducted themselves in the most dehcate situations; — he was not to devote much time to an elaborate confutation of the Hindoo or Mahometan systems — great practical effects upon the populace being never produced by profound argumentation; his instruction was rather to run in the form of a testimony, and his manner of imparting it, though not his spirit, to be dogmatic." Hall's philanthropy is still practical: that species of it which affects to feel for every part of mankind alike, he regards as spurious ; it must warm in proportion as the object on which it spends i I self is near, the first duty of life being to cultivate well one's own field.* With respect to Hall's own temperament, we gather from various passages in his writings, that it was by nature indolent ;^ and many and unfeigned are the lamentations which he utters Yol. iii. p. 381. ■> Vol. t. p. 427. " Vol. i. p. 302. ^ Yol. i. p. 250 ; t. p. 466. ' Vol. v. p. 421. Essay IX.] EOBBET HALL. 401 over his own unprofitableness:" — it was averse to every kind of display ; he sighs for the leisure of an obscure village, where he might escape from visitors and call his time his own ; he declines a lecture in London, partly from the vanity argued by the acceptance of it ; he is reluctant to attend public religious meetings, discovering in them something of an ostentatious spirit, and figuring to himself, that the Great Head of the church ' did not strive, nor cry, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street;'* he is offended at the perpetual rivalry displayed at missionary sermons, as to whose collection shall be the greatest ; " he is not pleased with the spectacle presented at an ordination in the Baptist denomination, when elders are congregated from far and near, more, as he thinks, for show than use ; * he is a foe to all canting, all gestures, all manoeuvres, all display of self;= and professes no aptitude for what is called religious conversation in general company/ He was irritable, as might be conjectured from a passage in his Memoir of Dr. Eyland, where there is a specie.-s of apology for occasional outbreakings of anger, — a violent suppression of the natural feelings being, as he holds, not the best expedient for obviating their injurious effects.s We come to the same conclusion from a very charac- teristic, and, to Hall, honourable, letter of excuse to a friend for his incivility to his servant, who had caused some interrup- tion to his closet-devotions by the pertinacious delivery of an unimportant message;* and, indeed, from the general tone' of his writings, especially those of a political or controversial kind. Some allowance, however, is to be made for a little habitual spleen in a man who, conscious of high superiority, was depressed by circumstances below his natural level in life : for such a person, so placed, not to kick against the pricks would indeed have been a spectacle of protracted self-denial of the rarest. merit, but was one which required a degree of virtue unreasonable to expect. Though unsocial, as he tells us more than once," and when at Cambridge reluctant, as we have " Vol. T. p. 435. '' Vol. V. pp. 478, 503. " Vol, v. p. 513. issenter ? But church-rates — is there not a hard- ship here, that men should be made to contribute to the main- tenance of a fabric which they never enter ? No greater hardship than a thousand others, which a state of society (as opposed to a state of nature) involves. Individuals are con- stantly compelled to support institutions in which they have no direct interest themselves, but which the public good is understood to require. We pay our quota to a county-rate for the erection of a mad-house which we shall never occupy, or of a bridge which we shall never pass ; we are taxed for the maintenance of the soldier, though we may have serious scruples as to the lawfulness of the profession of arms, or political objections to a standing army. But the Church of England is the creature of an act of parliament. And why should it not be ? A certain form of worship is agreed upon in convocation, i. e. by a synod of the clergy and of the clergy only, after patient investigation, as having Scripture for its warrant ; and then, being submitted to parliament, in order that the nation should signify its solemn assent to the same by the body which represents it, is acknowledged by parliament in the people's name. Where is the scandal in this ? And if parliament further estabhshes such worship by the act of uniformity, it in like manner establishes (Lord Mansfield uses this very word in this very case") the worship of the Dissenter by the act of toleration— so that both Church and Chapel may be said in this sense to stand upon act of parliament. But the Church Establishment no longer represents the reUgious sentiments of the vast majority of the nation, as it once did, and therefore is no longer to be supported by the » See Neal's Hist, of the Puiitans, vol. v. p. 284. EbSAY X.] ADAM CLARKE. iSl na'.ional government. We iippreljend tbat its numerical mii- jority is still great ; (the cliildren educated in the principles of the Church at the schools in connection with the National Society only, which are by no means all that are so educated, are nine hundred thousand ;) that in all country parishes it is very great; in the best-educated and most intelhgent, as well as the wealthiest classes — those therefore upon whom the burden chiefly falls, if burden there could be said to be — greatest of all. The true comparison, however, to institute is this : — what pro- portion do the members of the Church of England bear to those of any single body of Dissenters ? Is there any single body that will admit of being named as its rival — we mean its rival in numbers ? For to speak of the Dissenters as a com- munity, in the same sense as we speak of the Church, is an abuse of language ; the various sects into which they are split differing from one another at least as much as from the Establishment itself: in fact, holding nothing in common save jealousy of that, and a determination to combine for its over- throw. Besides, if the Church of Kngland does not represent the vast majority .of the people which it once did, is it there- fore to be abandoned without inquiry into the cause ? Suppose it should appear that Dissenters are made, for the most part, not by scru])les but by circumstances, might it not be well to ascertain whether those circumstances do not admit of remedy before we condemn the Church as unsatisfactory to the country ? For instance, when the present Church Establish- ment was formed, the county of Lancaster was thinly peopled — its wilds and moors were divided into sixty-two parishes ; but, in the lapse of time, Lancashire becomes the very focus of our manufacturing system, and gathers within its borders a million and a half of inhabitants. Meanwhile, the parochial divisions and the churches, until quite lately, remained just what they were ; and, accordingly, twenty thousand souls on the average fell to the lot of every parish priest. What wonder that there should be some two or three hundred thousand Dissenters generated in that county ? There the people were sheep without fold or shepherd — surely it was not conscien- 432 ADAM CLAEKE. [Essay X. tious objections to our ecclesiastical constitution, or to our liturgy, that withdrew from us these multitudes, but a mere want of accommodation within the Church walls, and of a per- sonal knowledge of a Church minister ? And were churches and ministers provided now on an ample scale, we should not despair of seeing crowds of these stragglers brought back, without the need of any sacrifice whatever on the part of the Church, either of discipline or doctrine : and until this experi- ment has been tried, no such sacrifice should be made. The fashionable remedies of these days do not meet the case. The Dissenter, so made by accident, wants a seat in a church, and you tell him you have no seat in church for him, to be sure, but you will make your articles more comprehensive. The Dissenter upon j)rinciple wants the abolition of episcopacy and the dissolution of the alliance between Church and State — and you tell him, you cannot consent to part with your bishops" or to divorce yourselves from your government, but you- wiU new-model the prayer-book. This is to give stones when the cry is for bread. To know the real amount of seces- sion, founded on scrupulosity of conscience, .you must let the Church have fair play — provide it with the means of asserting itself — put on fresh shafts to its engine — adapt it not to the whims of the times, but to the substantial wants of a popu- lation that has overgrown, more than deserted it. It is not that our people like living in a tabernacle best, but they have pitched for themselves tents, rather than lie out of doors. If greater legal encouragement to individuals to build and endow churches is wanted, let it be supplied : if the facilities afforded by the law, as it stands, are not sufiBciently known (which we believe to be the case), let a clear and succinct manual of Church Acts be drawn up by some man who has built a church himself, and applied those acts practically, and let it be freely circulated. If the Society for "the Building and Enlarging of Churches is not supported so universally as it ought to be, let its claims be enforced by the clergy, both by official charges and recommendations in private. If the erection of galleries and side-aisles is impeded by the expense of obtaining facul- Essay X.] ADAM CLAEKE. iHS ties (which is sometimes the case in small parishes), let the impediment be examined, with a view to its removal. If any- periodical review of pews could be made, in order to accom- modate them better to the fluctuating population of a parish, let it be attempted. Only give the Church, by some method or other, more power of expansion — present it bodily to the multitude — let them be brought into contact with it, as it was intended they should be — and, if it woo them in vain, then, and not till then, despair. But it is not desired that any form of Dissent should super- sede the Establishment, and rise upon its ruins. The wish is, that there should be no Establishment whatever — that every man should he left free to choose for himself to join what con- gregation he will, or gather one of his own. The experiment lias been tried in our history. When Charles I., in the year 1642, gave consent to the exclusion of the bishops from the House of Lords — ivliich was in fact the moment when the Church of England fell — the great bulk of the people were Presbyterians. But look at the country again at the end of four short years, and observe what was the practical effect of the suppression of the Established Church;— the land was by this time flooded with Independents, Manifestarians, Brownists, Millenarians, Libertines, Fanatics, Antinomians, Anabaptists, Seekers, Perfectists, Enthusiasts, Socinians, Arians, Anti-trini- tarians. An ti- scrip turists. Sceptics, and Questionists : each of these sects again, by subdivisions and interlacements, ringing changes with one another, till, according to the author of the ' Gangraena,' no less than a hundred and seventy-six distinct churches were the issue. " Meanwhile, the creed of the country, which, for the sake of the peace of mind of millions, and especially of the poor and ill informed, should be rendered as stable as may be, was set upon a seat as vertiginous as a ivindmill-sail ; and the charities of hfe were wrecked in the hurricane of unprofitable dogmas that were let loose. Moreover, when it is proposed that there shall be no Esta- " Ediyard's Gangrgena, p. 18. 43i ADAM. CLAEKE. [Essay X. blished Church at all — that the State shall make no proyision for the religious wants of the people — it is assumed, that the people will assuredly provide for their own wants : their zeal being sufiBciently manifested, it is pretended, by the voluntary churches they already uphold: otherwise, the Dissenters, we suppose, fierce as is their hatred of the Establishment, would scarcely pull it down in order to make heathens of their coun- trymen. Let us try, then, this question by the test of expe- rience. Now it appears from Mr. Yates's calculation, in a valuable and well-timed Letter addressed to Lord Liverpool, and published in the year 1815, that the population of the Tower Hamlets division of London, of the Ossulston hundred, the Finsbury division, Holborn, Kensington, and Westminster divisions, together with Southwark and the adjoining parishes, amounted to 905,715 souls; that the number of churches, for the supply of this population, was forty-five — so that, allowing 2000 persons to a church — (which is much too large an allow- ance) — more than 800,000 would still be left with out the means of enjoying the public ordinances of religion. Here, therefore, was ample scope for the operation of the voluntary system, in order to supply so monstrous a defect; a defect which was obvious to the eyes of every one who dwelt in those quarters. Did it prove eflPective ? Take the account of the Dissenters themselves. The ' Congregational Magazine,' for December, 1832, makes the total number of Dissenting chapels in that district, including the meeting-houses of Quakers, Eoman Catholics, and every description of seceders, amount to one hundred and eighty-six. The same authority reckons 400 persons to each, making 74,400 in the whole ; so that there still remains 700,000 outcasts, to furnish recruits to the Eotunda. ' So much,' says the author of the Essays of which we have already spoken, 'for the assumption, that if the Stale does not provide a rehgion for the people, the people will be sure to provide one for themselves.'" It will be contended, however, perhaps, that the Church Essays on tlie Church, p. 36. Essay X,] ADAM CLAEK.B. 435 Establishment actually existing stands in the way of the volun- tary system. It embarrasses its natural progress — the people not caring to possess themselves of ground which has the appearance, at least, of being already occupied ; and then America is pointed to with triumph — where religion has been left to itself. We are not yet thoroughly acquainted with the religious condition of the United States : recent events, how- ever, have led to some investigation of the subject; and the result is not so favourable to the efficiency of the system of voluntary churches as some might imagine. In the first place, then, we should remember, that many of the original colonists of the United States were men who expatriated themselves on religious grounds : they were a devout and zealous race, and the impulse of their character was likely to make itself felt for many generations after them ; so that, had America been in fact all that its friends represent it to be, it might be still a question whether there were not peculiar circumstances in the character of its population which were propitious to the growth of a religious spirit. But, next — it is not true that rehgion has been hitherto left to itself in America. In several parts of the Union the main- tenance of religion is, or rather was, compulsory — though the sect to which any individual would attach himself was at his own option ; and wherever the compulsory system has given place to the voluntary, religion has rapidly declined. Indeed, nothing can be more satisfactory to the friends of an Establish- ment, than the example of America, if candidly considered. Dr. Dwjght's authority stands high with the Dissenters in this country. In his ' Travels in New England and New York,' he explains the nature of the ecclesiastical establishment which then existed in Connecticut (it has since been destroyed), and contrasts the condition of religion in that province with its condition in the more southern provinces, where there was no establishment at all.^ The result is, in a few words, this : — " Vol. iv. p. 397. F F a 43<5 ADAM CLARKE. [Essay X. That in a State in which Christianity was estahlished hy law, the Presbyterian ministers— for they were the great body of the clergy — supported and settled, were in the proportion of one to every thirteen hundred and twenty-eight inhabitants ; whilst in the States where the voluntary system prevailed, the proportion was one to every sixteen thousand six hundred and sixty-eight. Nay more — for we are anxious to give the enemies of the Establishment the full benefit of their favourite example — whilst, in the former State, out of 209 congregations — for so many it counted — there were 20 vacancies, i. e. about one-tenth without ministers ; in the latter States, out of 430- congregations — which was their whole number — there were 160 vacant, or considerably more than one-third — the inhabitants being to this extent too poor or too supine to support a minister ; and of the rest 81 were served by plurahsts : and 'yet the advocates of voluntary churches,* adds our Essayist, ' are perpetually referring us to America for proof, conclusive proof, of the excellency and efficiency of their scheme ! — to America ! one glance at which ought to close their mouths for ever ! But they know not what they say, nor whereof they affirm.' Moreover, though in the large towns of America there is much Christian profession — such as it is — a great part of it is believed to be of the Socinian school — a corruption not un- usually engendered by the want of a fixed scriptural standard of faith, by which aberrations might be early felt and corrected — a corruption, therefore, which in this country derives its chief supplies from the decomposition and decay of the Independents. In like manner, we do not deny that the populous towns in England would probably maintain, even without any extrinsic help, a body of ministers of one kind or other ; but, in the meanwhile, what would become of the country ? — how would voluntary churches be furnished to our agricultural communities, consisting, as they often do, of one or two gentlemen, eight or ten farmers, and a few scores of cottagers ? How, in fact, does this district, composing the chief suj'face of every kingdom, fare in the favoured land Essay X.] AH AM CLAEKK. 437 across the Atlantic ? We see no reason to doubt the correct- ness of the picture drawn by a late traveller in the United States — certainly no enthusiast: — ' A stranger taking up his residence in any city in America must think the natives the most religious nation upon earth ; but if chance lead him among her western villages, he will rarely tind either churches or chapels, prayer or preacher; except, indeed, at that most terrific Saturnalia — a camp-meeting. I was much struck with the answer of a poor woman whom I saw ironing on a Sunday. "Do you make no difference in your occupations on a Sunday?" I said. " I be'ant a Christian, ma'am ; we have got no opportunity," — was the reply. It occurred to me that the Government would be guilty of no crime, did it so far interfere, as to give them all an opportunity of becoming Christians, if they wished it.' ^ But, if exceptions be taken against this testimony, as coming from a vfitness under passion or prejudice, hear the account given of the matter by an American himself — a minister, too — the Rev. Samuel J. Mills, who thus describes what he had seen ■with his own eyes : — ' Never will the impression be erased from our hearts, by behold- ing those scenes of wide-spreading desolation. The whole country, from Lake Erie to the Gulf of Mexico, is as the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Darkness rests upon it. Only here and there a few rays of gospel light pierce through the awful gloom. This vast country contains more than a million of inhabitants. Their number is every year increased by a mighty flood of emigration. Soon will they be as the sands on the sea shore for multitude ; yet there are at present only, a little more than one hundred Protestant or congregational ministers in it. Were these ministers equally distributed throughout the country, there would be only one to every ten thousand people. But now, there are districts of country containing from twenty to fifty thousand inhabitants, entirely desti- tute ; " and how shall they hear without a preacher ?"' '' Such is the fate of an agricultural district where religion is to be maintained by a system of voluntary churches, " Domestic Manners of the Americans, toI. i. p. 155. '' Narrative of a Tour, by the Eev. S. J. Mills ; quoted by Dr. Chalmers ' On Endowments,' p. 189. 438 ADAM CLAEKE. [Essat X. There is, however, another view of this question to be taken, which has been much overlooked, though perhaps the most important of any. We have, indeed, already touched upon it in a previous part of this paper, but not with the emphasis it deserves, — that this system of voluntary churches would be absolutely fatal to all efficient pastoral intercourse of the minister with his people ; that however it might provide places of worship for the Sunday, it would provide no adequate parochial super- intendence during the week ; for the class and hand-meetings of the Methodists amount to nothing of the sort, and produce none of its fruits. As it is, there are some ten thousand men circulating throughout this country for two or three hours most days of their lives, upon various home-missions of charity, of pity, of exhortation, of reproof, — each man of them all knowing precisely the district within which he has to wallc; confident in the soundness of the warrant by which he enters every house in it uninvited ; and, in general, hailed by the welcome of all, as one of those whose feet are beautiful. What a mass of misery is thus daily explored and relieved ! what heart-burnings are quenched ! what complaints hushed ! what follies withstood ! what knowledge imparted ! what aifections stirred up ! Who would rashly disturb this under-current of good-will which is diffusing itself, silently and secretly, throughout all the darkest and most dismal recesses of society, and mitigating so much that is evil in this hard-hearted world ? Yet, withdraw the Church Establishment, and it is done. There will then be no minister who has a district assigned to his peculiar care and keeping, where he individually feels himself answerable for the souls that are therein. He will share it with other parties of other persuasions. The latch of the door will no longer be lifted with the same boldness as now. The whole parish will be debatable ground, and no man will know in it his own. The several ministers will find it no pleasant thing to encounter one another in the sick man's chamber, under a temptation, perhaps, to wrangle out points of divinity over the couch of death ; or, at all events, each uncertain whether he is not tres- passing on the province of the others ; and so the patient will Essay X] ADAM CLARKE. 439 probably be abandoned altogether. This is no speculative objection: the inconvenience is already felt, in a small degree, in parishes' where Dissenters abound; and the ministers of such parishes feel themselves under some embarrassment in the discharge of their pastoral duties to that portion of their flock, even with the advantage of their present position; and yet we believe, were they to abstain from making their call upon such persons through any false fear of intrusion, their absence would not often be supplied from any other quarter. We are most anxious to press this consideration upon all whom it may concern, — that perhaps the most comely parts of the Church of England are those which are least displayed. Doubtless her ritual is spirit-stirring — her pulpits are fountains of religious knowledge — her ceremonies full of solemnity — her temples worthy of being dedicated to God ; but these are only the grosser features of her beauty : they may be all done away, and some calculation be made beforehand of the amount of that portion of the loss; but the unobtrusive provision she makes for the perpetual disasters of a working- day world — for the things which are happening out of sight — this is the province in which she wanders amongst the people unseen ; her services here are not easily appreciated, because noiseless ; in this department, even more than in the pulpit or the senate, she repays the State for its protection and support ; and whatever power for good of this kind she possesses, be it never forgotten, she owes entirely and altogether to the situation in which she stands as the sole accredited guardian of religion in this land, according to its parochial divisions. XL— CHUECH-RATES/ Pecembek, 1836.) Whilst the matter is still in abeyance, we are anxions to say a very few words on the subject of church-rates, with the simple view of putting our lay readers, and through them the public at large, rather more in possession of that question. We are encouraged to hope that such an attempt may not be alto- gether fruitless, by observing that many popular hallucinations have been abated of late by the gentle operation of time, which has allowed a nearer investigation of things, so that matters which at first sight were the easiest in the world to despatch (for qui pauca considerat facile pronunciat), were found on approaching them more intricate than had been sup- posed. When one of our enterprising northern voyagers looked on one occasion from the mast-head, be saw, as he thought, his way smooth over the snow to the Pole ; yet on actual experiment, the surface which seemed so level at a dis- tance, proved to be a succession of chasms and ridges, pre- senting obstacles the most formidable at every step. We know not what Ministers may propose to do on a sub- ject into which, we must be allowed to say, they rushed, as " The Chwch and Dissent considered in their Practical Influence. By Edward Osier, Surgeon to the Swansea House of Industiy. London, 12m0. ]856> Essay XI.] CHUECH-RATES. 441 Baxter would express it, ' with the shell upon their heads.' However, if they are to make any change at all, there are but two ways of proceeding open to them : either to uphold the churches still out of the national purse, hut by some other mode than church-rates ; or to leave it to their respective con- gregations to uphold them for themselves. If the first plan be adopted, and the repairs be charged on the consolidated fund, for instance, where is the relief to the dissenter ? for the prin- ciple by which he is made, indirectly to be sure, but still sub- stantially, to contribute to the maintenance of a building which he never enters, is just in as full force under this system as under the system of rates ; and it is \he principle of the pay- ment, if we understand it right, to which the dissenter objects, and not to the amount. And yet it seems singular that whilst he sees so much to reprobate in the principle which makes one man minister to the support of another man's creed, he should, nevertheless, accept on his owil part, the regium donum, a pro- vision for poor preachers of the three denominations voted out of the national purse ; and which, it appears, from the discussion in parliament towards the close of the last session, he is not wilhng to relinquish. True it is that the sum is small— a four or five thousand pounds matter — but the principle is not the less objectionable on that account; for we presume that he would shrink from sheltering himself under the argument of the frail girl, ' That her child though it was, it was a little one.' The dissenter in his new Marriage Act does not abstain from drawing upon the churchman's purse for the support of his registrar, he being clerk of a union, though he must be well aware that so far as that functionary is employed in celebrating a marriage, he is employed in doing a gross violence to the con ■ science of every churchman who pays him his salary ; and who differs from the dissenter in holding marriage to be a holy rite, and not to be made over to unconsecrated hands. Surely it would be as well that the dissenter should not decry a prin- ciple when it happens to work for the church, and hail it when it happens to work for the chapel, lest he should expose him- self to misinterpretation, and give room for the surmise that 442 CHURCH-RATES. [Essay XI. his scruples are not so disinterested as they profess to be. The principle, however, to which the dissenters object thus inconsistently, is one of vast importance to maintain, and the pertinacity with which it is impugned by parties hostile to all our institutions shows that they think it so. Indeed, the prin- ciple lies at the root of all government, for it is merely this, that the minority shall give way. And if the contrary be contended for in our rehgious relations, why should it not be in our civil ? One man may think it hard to support a church when he dissents from its doctrines; another to support an army and navy when he objects to the profession ol arms ; a third, to support a police, when he repudiates such abridgment of the liberty of the subject. Now, if all these objections are to be allowed — and why should they not, if all men's alleged scruples are to be listened to ? — all government is dissolved ; for the nation must split into sections, according to corre- sponding divisions of opinion-; and as opinion is infinitely divisible, those sections must split again ; till at last each individual must do what seems right in his own sight ; and then the principle has worked itself out, and the decomposition of the social system is complete. It may be replied that in the cases we have supposed, the parties objecting do, in spite of themselves, reap the benefits of the institutions against which they protest, by their reflex operation for good upon themselves, their property, their com- forts, or their lives ; — that though they resent an army, yet, there being an army in spite of them, no foreign foe lays waste their fields ; or a police, yet, there being a police, no robber breaks open their doors ; and that thus they receive ample interest for what they contribute towards these wants of the State, having nothing to complain of, save that (as King Lear's fool says) they get ' a blessing against their will.' The same answer may be made to those who resist church-rates: they too ' have their full equivalent,' to use the nervous language of Archdeacon Bather, in one of his admirable charges, 'in having a better land to live in ; the purification, through the Gospel, of the moral atmosphere in which they breathe being Essay XL] CHTJE0H-RATE3. 443 ■worth more than any man has to pay for it/ Or, as the great anti-puritan divine puts it — ' If there were not a minister in every parish, you would quickly find cause to increase the num- ber of constables ; and if the onurohes were not employed to be places to hear God's law, there would be need of them to be prisons for the breakers of the laws of men.' Nay more — ' Dissent,' says Mr. Osier, in the little work of which the title heads our paper, and which we hope to make thus more gene- rally known, ' Dissent is a fluctuating creed, and seldom con- tinues in a family beyond the third generation. Without, there- fore, alluding to the powerful influence which an orthodox and pervading religious establishment exerts upon every man, the Church is the source whence the individual dissenter re- ceived, either directly in his youth, or through his immediate forefathers, that religious knowledge which, when he became a separatist, made him a dissenter instead of an infidel ; and how- ever unwelcome the truth to his present feelings, he may con- clude, from all the experience of society, that his own descend- ants wiU worship in the Church, and that, perhaps, even in his lifetime. Add to this, that the Church offers to himself secu- rity, that if the changes to which every Meeting is liable should destroy that which he attends, or compel him to leave it -, or if he should remove into the country, or to a distant part of the kingdom, he will be sure to find a place where God is wor- shipped according to the truth of the Bible. In as far, there- fore, as every man is interested in the source whence he derived the good he enjoys, in the welfare of his children, and in the contingent probabilities of his own life, every dissenter is inter- ested in supporting the Church of England.' Nor is this all that can be said in defence of the principle of church-rates. So long as you have national church-rates you have a national church establishment properly so called. Eates are a sort of pepper-corn rent (for they are little more) paid by the people in testimony that the people has an interest in its services. Accordingly, the nation at large, without any refer- ence to distinction of creed, does benefit in other ways besides those we have named, in having a body of functionaries in 441 CHUECH-EATES. [Essay XI. the country on whom society can devolve a number of offices which they are peculiarly qualified to fill ; some springing out of laws and regulations which Courts call for at the hands of the Legislature ; and some out of laws and regulations which private societies adopt for themselves. It is a great public convenience, independently of the question of religious in- struction, to have in a nation a body of individuals of the station, class, and character of the clergy — safe men upon the whole to trust ; intelligent- from their education ; pledged to good behaviour from their profession ; known in their several districts from their functions ; at hand from the necessity of fixed residence ; universal in their presence from the parochial divisions to which they are severally attached, and so covering every nook where it is wanted that a law or a regulation, public or private, shall penetrate. And, accordingly, it is difficult to frame an act of parliament for any improvement whatever in our internal economy, without some appeal or other in it to the services of the clergy; services which they never undertook to discharge, but which, when required of them, they discharge cheerfully, under a feeling that whilst the nation, without any distinction of creed, maintains a Church Establishment of which they are the ministers, they owe to the nation, without any distinction of creed, whatever services their favourable position in society enables them to afford. Thus, if the Government is called upon to meet any emergency, any national visitation or distress, the clergy are the organs of which it avails itself to act upon the prudence, the energies, the benevolence of the people. If the Government has occa- sion to ascertain the life, the identity, the character, the con- duct of persons who have claims upon it, say soldiers or sailors, it resorts to the clergy for its information as the readiest and most trustworthy it can procure. If the Govern- ment has need of any statistical details, such as may conducei* to the public welfare, the clergy are the quarter to which it chiefly looks for satisfactory intelligence. If, again, in private life, friendly sogjeties have need of certificates of the honajide sickness of their members on their application for relief, the Essay XI.] CHURCH-EATES. 445 signature of the clergyman is that they insist on. If the sol- dier or sailor has any communication on his part to make to the War-office or the Admiralty, it is to the clergyman that he repairs for assistance and advice. If a poor man falls under any family disaster, his limb broken, his pig dead, it is to the clergyman that he goes for a testimony to the truth of his tale and the fairness of his fame, and that testimony secures to him the help of the district in which he lives. If the thrifty cot- tager wants his little earnings deposited in the savings-bank, to the clergyman he confides it, to negotiate the matter for him. If he desires to have his frugal will made, that the nothing he possesses may be secured to the parties whom he loves best, it is the clergyman that he solicits to draw it out. These are but a mere sample, medio ex acervo, of the little services of a hundred kinds which the clergyman renders to the country at large, as a free gift, quite independently of his ministerial duties, and without any reference whatever to creed, sect, or sentiment. So that none but the clergy themselves, or those who happen to be under their roof for a season, and witness the numberless calls of this sort that are made on them, know how very large a portion of their time is occupied in such vocations as these; and none but they, whilst they are so engaged, can feel the full injustice of the hard measure which is dealt out to them in these days by that very public for whose welfare they are spending themselves in unostentatious but most effectual toil. Yet their capacity to do all this, and the justice of expecting it at their hands, arise entirely and altogether out of their being ministers of a national church ; and sure we are that such good offices to the nation at large are far more than a set-off against the payment of rates, which in turn are exacted from the nation at large, the only pecuniary support the nation lends to the Church ; for its endowments are of private origin as strictly as those of an hospital or an almshouse. We have sometimes amused our- selves with -thinking what would be the amount of fees which the other learned professions would receive for the discharge of -offices such as these — the time, the mileage, the material, all 446 CHUECH-EATES. [Essay XI. taken into strict account; the daily life of a clergyman, it should be remembered, being in fact the daily life of a profes- sional man of the best education in great practice. Another consideration there is, not altogether distinct from the last, yet sufficiently so, perhaps, to deserve a separate notice. The parish priest has hitherto been accustomed to look upon himself as the pastor of his whole flock, however some of them may have strayed from his fold, inasmuch as he is a pastor of the Established National Church. Accordingly, he has held himself in duty bound to render to all the poor within the limits of his parish his helping hand, without much discrimination, searching and endeavouring to relieve the wants of any distressed member of a family, which, however large, he still regards as in some sort his own. We do not suppose it will be denied that good accrues to the labouring class in fjeneral from this disposition of things ; and though we do not believe that any circumstances will induce the clergyman to discontinue such promiscuous intercourse with his people, we nevertheless do think it unwise in the Legislature to tempt him to it by drawing distinctions for him, and in spite of him, wliich he would never seek to draw for himself, and so make him feel that indiscriminate charity is not so much an act of duty in him as of forbearance. But if ever there was a time when the clergy of the Church of England, independently of their calling as ecclesiastics, were rendering essential service to the State at large, without respect of party or profession, in both those capacities to which, we have adverted, &b function- aries and && j)hilanlhroj)ists — if ever there was a time when the Establishment was fairly earning a national church-rate for national benefits imparted, it is now, when the new Poor Law Bill is furnishing so ample a field for its profitable intervention. We are not at present contemplating the clergy as directly exercising the office of guardians under this bill, though this, we perceive, they are doing in many instances; but we are contemplating them as moderators — a position, in our opinion, in which they are of much greater use, and one vastly more suited to them. Here they stand between the guardians and Essay XI.] CHURCH-RATES, 447 the poor, and hold the balance between them ; — they have opportunities, by personal communication with both classes, such as fall to the lot of no other persons, and in our rural districts especially, of encouraging consideration on the one side, and content on the other; of upholding authority and abating resistance; of explaining objections, correcting mis- takes, heahng heart-burnings, and removing, in short, by the word in season, a thousand obstacles to the success of this great experiment. So much for them as advocates, ■with reference to this bill; then as almoners, — none but those who live amongst the poor, as the parish priest does, and witness the "workings of this austere enactment in detail, can tell the revolution it is effecting in their habits, and the sufferings they have to undergo in the process of their regeneration. In all parishes there have grown up under the old laws a number of people who lived upon them or by them ; som,e as. dependents, some as subordinate administrators. The recoil upon private charity, arising from these parties being, as it were, disbanded upon the country, the most helpless of discarded j)lacemen, and without pensions too, is very great ; and if trade were less prosperous than it is, a contingency for which we must be pre- pared, it would be much greater. The applications to the minister of the parish for his ticket of admission to the county hospital; for his name and support to petitions, such as we have already alluded to ; for the means of discharging a doctor's bill — of providing a child with clothes before it can go to place — of rescuing a poor family from ejectment for arrears in rent — are multiplying fast; and whatever scruples many of these applicants may have about going to the church, they have none whatever about going to the parsonage — nor, as matters stand at present, need they have any. Should cir- cumstances render this resource less open to them, we think they would feel the change both in the amount the parsonage contributes, and in the example it sets; and we repeat, that however it might be done with impunity, it is bettor for all not to practise experiments upon the generosity of the clergy over much, or put their feelings as churchmen, which are strong. 448 CHURCH-RATES. [Essay Xf. and which have been a good deal tried of late, in array against their feelings as citizens. If we suppose, then, the Government to retain the principle of upholding tlie churches out of the public purse, which we have shown to be a defensible principle, it becomes a question whether it is best to do it by a grant from the consolidated fund, or by the continuance of church-rates — a question of expediency alone. We confess that the system of rates seems to us far the better course to adopt. It is established, which is something. It has worked tolerably well till wilfiilly dis- turbed ; and when once more affirmed to be the abiding law of the land, we doubt not will work well again; more especially as the dissenters have by this time discovered in the contests they have waged, or refrained from waging, on this subject, that they had considerably over-rated their strength. An applica- tion to any fund set apart by Government for the repair of all the churches in England would necessarily be cumbrous and expensive — the measure which Lord Althorp contemplated would have been eminently so. There must be an apparatus of surveyors, and estimates, and approval of estimates, which would waste both time and cost; for church-work, which has ever proverbially gone upon crutches, would be doubly halt under such embarrassments. Then again, small repairs would be beneath the attention of a process so majestic. A pane of glass is broken — a spout is stopped^a tile is damaged by the wind — a lath or two have been rotted by the snow; — the churchwarden on the spot is aware of the mischief as soon as it shows itself; applies (what in such repairs above every other is true economy) the timely stitch ; and by an outlay of a shilling or two on the instant prevents the necessity of renew- ing a casement or stripping a roof in the end. Were the ap- plication for repairs to be made to some distant quarter, the damage would be allowed to accumulate till there should be a case worthy of such august intervention; and the ruin of the churches would proceed rapidly, whilst the sum spent upon resisting it would be infinitely greater than at present. Mean- while, the obvious interest of the churchwarden and vestry Essay XL] CHUKCH-RATES. 449 would in general suffice to check all lavish expenditure; and if such restraint were thought insufficient, nothing could be more easy, as nothing would be more just, than to define with accuracy the purposes to which a rate was to be confined, and prune, if you will, the luxuriance of the over-zealous official. If, however, in spite of the principle of a national provision for the repair of the national churches being so defensible, and the application of that principle by means of a rate being so comparatively free from objection, the congregations of the Church of England should be left nevertheless to maintain tlieir places of worship for themselves, and we should profess the anomaly of having a national church unsupported by the nation, let us consider whether the probable consequences would be such as would be satisfactory to the dissenter — whether the measure he seeks with so much pertinacity and violence would not be, if carried, a suicidal measure after all. On the whole, we believe it will be found that the wealth of the country is principally in the hands of members of the Established Church. The lists of benefactors to our charitable establishments throughout the land, which have of late been published from time to time, to meet a challenge thrown out by the enemies of the Church, have proved this ; unless we are to suppose that the dissenter has indeed the means, but not the will, to contiibute to hospitals, infirmaries, asylums, and the like — an imputation which we will not indulge, but presume rather that the wealth of the country is with the Church ; that its members, in short, are the parties amongst us who are the chief huyers. On the other hand, a great proportion of what dissenters there are will be found, we think, to belong to the class of retail dealers ; or, in other words, a very large division of the dissenters are sellers rather than buyers. As matters have stood in times past, churchmen have made no distinction in their dealings— they have resorted to the shop of the churchman and dissenter alike, only having respect to the honesty of the party, and the quality of his merchandise. In- deed, so long as the dissenter was content with his position in the State, which was that of complete toleration, and did not G G 450 CHUECH-BATES. [Essay XI. seek to disturt the Establisbmeut, his scruples were respected, which -were the rather supposed to be conscientious, because they subjected him to some additional charge — a small one, it is true, but some additional charge — in supporting a place of worship of his own; and a friendly feeling was accordingly en- tertained towards him. But once exempt him from church-rates, and the case will be altered. The churchman will then naturally do his best to uphold the man who upholds the Church — it would be exceedingly unreasonable to expect that he should do otherwise; to do so would give just cause for complaint to his own allies. We have no manner of doubt that the abolition of church-rates would be the signal for a separation between the churchman and dissenter, complete as soon as present engagements or connections should cease to operate. Now we submit that the dissenter would not have cause to rejoice in this result. As it is, by contributing perhaps a crown to the repairs of the church, he secures to himself the advantageous handling of scores, perhaps of thousands of pounds in the year. Retaliate he cannot, because, in the first place, the funds, as we have said, are chiefly on the churchman's side ; and, in the next place, the dissenter does already, almost to a man, spend whatever be has to lay out viith. his brother in dissent, and with none besides ; he cannot do more. We would appeal to dissenting tradesmen in towns where resistance to church- rates has been attempted, and ask them whether they have found their books improved by the agitation of the question, or whether many good customers have not since left them, and whether many others whom they had reason to believe mitrht have become so, have not held their hand. We have no sort of doubt that, in a profit-and-loss view of the matter, the dis- senters are far more deeply interested in the continuance of church-rates on their present footing than the members of the Church themselves ; and that, if their friends in power should give them their wish, they will be the first to exclaim, Pol/ me occidistis, amici! We can assure our readers that we have discussed this great question— which is in truth, though under a new diso-uise no Essay XI.] CHITECH-EATES. 451 Jess a one than that of the severance or non-severance of Church and State — without any apprehension about the pecu- , niary loss the Church would sustain by the relinquishment of church-rates. Indeed, our bias lies quite another way. As Englishmen we may grieve to see society, which has so long been tolerably harmonious, split into parts; but as churchmen we are rather tempted to hail than to proscribe any measure by which the members of our own communion may be made to stand confessed as such, and the Church of England be gathered up again. By a desire to meet the dissenter on neutral ground — (how vain a desire, if conciliation was the object, events have shown!) — we have for some time sunk the sin of schism by mutual consent, as if there was not a word about it in all Scripture ; and given occasion to many to sur- mise that those who sign the Articles do so rather because they hold livings than hold them. The present process of legisla- tion is applying a succession of tests to churchmen by which they will be eventually sifted clean. The new Municipal Cor- poration Bill has done much for this ; the new Marriage and Registration Bills will do more ; but the abolition of church- rates would do most of all. Every man will soon have to take up his ground, and the Church of England will have at length to know herself again ; to feel that she has nothing to do with other men's opinions, but must be true to her own ; that in all her proceedings she must keep within the compass of her own constitution, and abate no jot of that ; that her immortal founders ' set her feet in a larye room,' expressly that her members might be under no temptation to stray out of it ; that they contemplated her, in their construction of her, as the single accredited agent through which all religious operations at home and abroad were to be conducted, so that the house- hold was to be visited, the congregation to be taught, the colony to be quickened, the heathen to be converted, but still through her — through her, a noble instrument for the work if effectually wielded, and made to develope the resources that are in her. That those her founders imagined they had left ample scope for the exercise of zeal the most intense, for the pro- GG 2 452 CHURCH-RATES. [Essat XT. mulgation of doctrines the most evangelical, for the application of labours the most abundant and the most devoted, strictly within the confines of the Church they marked out; and that they never contemplated, as they never would have allowed, a compromise, direct or indirect, of the great principles it in- volved, for any object however plausible. That if this be bigotry (which will be said), it is bigotry to be of the Church of Englaud at all, and the charge can effectually be removed in no other way than by withdrawing from her altogether, for that the twenty-third Article is quite incompatible with the lax church notions of modern times; and still more Cranmer's sermon ' Of the Authoritie of the Kayes,' which may be re- garded as a comment from head-quarters upon that Article. This sermon will be found in Cranmer's Catechism, which, with several other works admirably calculated to throw light upon the nature and construction of the Church as our Ke- formers conceived it, has been lately re-published at the Clarendon Press. And with a strong recommendation to our younger clergy to peruse it, as an authentic record of that great man's views, we shall close this short paper. High time it is to plumb our building again, and apply a correction by a reference to these original documents, which will demonstrate that, liberal as were Cranmer's notions, so liberal indeed that his first impression was to draw up articles that should serve for Christendom, and not for England merely, he was so little of a latitudinarian that in these days he would assuredly come under the name of a very high churchman : — meaning, how- ever, by that word, not one who reposes upon the dignity of his order ; talks largely about the Church, and leaves others to labour in it ; seeks personal distinction, and praises pastoral retirement; thinks he is orthodox because he is dogmatical ; is so fearful of being extravagant himself that he is dull, and chills all around him lest he should make them fanatics ; — but one who holds that he has a special commission, yet never relaxes in the practical duties which flow from it, finding, on the contrary, a call to exertion in every provision his Church has made in her services for hallowing every crisis of the life of Essay Xl] CHUKCH-IUTES. J 53 her members and baptizing it to God; one who feels that in phiying the zealot indeed he would be untrue to her, but that in every word she causes him to utter, and every act she causes him to do, she counts upon his zeal being awaked ; one who readily admits, to be sure, that she most probably insists on all things pertaining to the worship of God being done decently and in order, hue only as the platform for high and holy objects to rest upon ; and one who regards her most truly as the uncompromising advocate of the strictest morals, but beholds her, in every aspect she presents, bearing the Cross for her crest, and hoc signo vinces fur la-r motto. XII.— VILLAGE PREACHING/ (July, 1837.) We do not often handle matters directly theological ; but still there is a class of subjects that lie on the borders. In that debatable ground between literature and religion, in which we hold ourselves at liberty to make inroads ; and in something of that doubtful mind, at least, in which Bums took up his pen to indite what might perhaps ' turn out a song, perhaps a sermon,' we now propose to say a few words which may prove theological strictures on the publication before us, or an essay on village preaching. We have here two volumes of sermons preached by their author, the Eev. Augustus Hare, to the inhabitants of a small sequestered hamlet in Wiltshire, and published after his pre- mature death as a legacy bequeathed by him to his parish. They are, in truth, as appears to us, on the whole, compo- sitions of very rare merit in their kind, and realize a notion we have always entertained, that a style of sermon for our rural congregations there somewhere was, if it could be hit off, which in language should be familiar without being plebeian, and in matter solid, without being abstruse ; that there was no " Sermons to a Country Cowjregation. By Augustus 'WilliaTn Hare, A.M., late Fellow of New CoUege, and Rector of Alton Barnes. 2 toIs. 8vo. London. 1837. Essay XII.] VILLAGE PEEACHIl^G. 455 need for tlie slieplierd, in wliatever wilderness his flock might feed, to let such ' lean and flashy songs grate on his pipe,' as are frequently produced under the title of sermons to a country congregation ; and that \¥ith a little pains a quickening spirit might be introduced into the village pulpit, which should rescue it from the charge of dulness under which it has so long laboured, and render it a more efiectual engine than it is, for impressing the people. But ' coughing will drown the par- son's saw,' so long as a saw it is, — 'the curate will enjoy sweet sleep in his desk, and sweet, the clerk below,' so long as it is the drowsy rector that drawls over his head ; and no wonder if the congregation is small, whilst it can be said of the vicar, as Sir Walter Scott writes of him, if we remember, in an early imitation of Orabbe, — ' Dry were his sermons, though his walls were wet.' The observations, however, which we have to make on the sub- ject of village preaching in the abstract, will arrange them- selves perhaps most conveniently under the several aspects in which we shall consider these sermons. Now first with respect to style. The language then of a sermon to a country congregation should be of Saxon, not of Latin or French extraction. Your country congregation con- sists of the best and the worst educated people in the land, and the sermon should be so constructed as to be as far as possible alike edifying to both. The squire needs not to be revolted by its coarseness and vulgarity ; or, which is more to be apprehended, be led to esteem it an effusion obviously in- tended for the poor to follow, and for him to patronize : and, on the other hand, the peasant must not be sacrificed to the refinement of his superiors, nor be made to feel that whatever scraps of saving knowledge come to his share are but crumbs that fall from the rich man's table. But Saxon-English has the merit of being at once acceptable to the higher class, because it is good in taste, and to the lowest, because it is intelligible in meaning ; and thus both profit by it. It is the Saxon character of the language of the Liturgy that suits it to 456 VILLAGE PREACHING. [Essat XII. every congregation, from the parish-cliurch to the chapel-royal. Were it saturated with terms of Latin or Norman origin, it would iiot be a whit more fit for a court, and it would be utterly unfit for a cottager. Let no man despise the power of this dialect. Some of the finest bursts in our literature are in almost pure Saxon. Milton is never greater than when he is ■speaking in it. His noble sonnet on the massacre in Pied- mont contains scarcely a word which is not Saxon. His ode on the ' Nativity ' is of the same stamp : so are his ' Allegro ' and ' Penseroso.' Crabbe's ' Hall of Justice,' and Cowper's ' Cast-away,' each the most powerful copy of verse, perhaps, which. thejr respective authors penned, are monuments of the simply majesty of Saxon-English. But were it less vigorous than it is, it is the speech of the people, and it would be a pitiful ambition in a minister of God to be playing the pedant in the pulpit, and to be painting the window till he has dimmed the light. Let any man read the sermons of Parr, addressed to the good people in Hatton church, and he will see at once that it was as necessary for him to have spoken by ' by two or three (sentences), and to have had one to interpret,' as it ever was for man who spake in an unknown tongue of old. It is not, however, pedantry, so much as a want of due attention to the vocabulary of the labouring classes, that renders so large a share of what is provided for them quite useless ; and we could name several publications on the list of the Society for Pro- moting Christian Knowledge which make no pretensions to learning, and of which the writers are above all suspicion of vanity, and yet which are lost upon those to whom they are addressed, because they do not speak to them in the vulgar tongue. Now it is a merit "in these sermons of Mr. Hare that they speak in no other. For instance, on the reasonableness of the duty of obedience to parents — ■ What plant from the Indies is so difficult to rear, or needs such constant care and watching, as a delicate, sickly child ? Think of the wear and tear in the mother's heart. I have often seen it during that rearing. It is not the child-bearing so much as the child-rearing; it is the watching the cradle with patient eye, day Essay 511.] VILLAGE PKEACHING. 457 after day, for hours together ; it is the care and fear, and anxietj' and weariness, while nursing children through their illnesses, that drives the colour from a mother's cheek, and makes it pale and wan before its time.' — Vol. ii. p. 378. Or, on the Eesurrection ; thus the sermon opens — ' " Christ is risen !" Such is the greeting in Eussia on the morn- , ing of Easter-day. In the great city of Moscow, and throughout the whole country, when two friends meet on this morning, one of them says to the other, " Christ is risen ! " Among nil the customs I ever read of, this to my mind is one of the most Christian and most beautiful. It is the seeing the resurrection of Jesus Christ in its true light, not as a fact which we are merely to believe, because it is written in the New Testament, without thinking or caring much about it, but as a piece of good news to ourselves which we cannot help speaking of for joy. What the Russians then have said to each other on Easter-day for hundreds of years, let me now say to you : let rpe say to you with a joyful and thankful heart, " Christ is risen !" '—Vol. i. p. 283. The most fastidious hearer could not find fault with such English, nor the most unlettered misunderstand it. The defect of style against -which we have hitherto directed our caution, the use of exotic diction, so fatal to the perspicuity of village sermons, issued from the school of Johnson. The next to which we shall advert, the use oi periphrasis, from that of Gibbon. Gibbon's fondness for this figure is quite unaccountable, driving him, as it often does, to the clumsy expedient of explaining his own meaning at the foot of his own page, as if the text were to be the puzzle of which the note was the solution. For example — ' After a war of about forty years, undertaken by the most stupid, maintained by the most dissolute, and terminated by the most timid, of all the emperors, the far greater part of the island submitted to the Eoman yoke.'* And then we are told beneath that Claudius, Nero, and Domi- tian are the emperors meant. In Gibbon this came of affecta- • Decline and Fall, f. i. p. 6. 12mo. 458 VILLAGE TEEACHING. [Essay XII. tion ; in such humble followers as Hayley (who is profuse in the use of it), of feebleness too, as the tumidity of the limb does but indicate the debility of the system. Affectation is hnd enough anywhere, in the pulpit intolerable; and if the preacher, especially the preacher to a country congregation, does not put pith into his wordsj and ' make them pierce as nails,' they will scarcely find their way through an honest hind's or yeoman's head. Mr. Hare, who, throughout these sermons, gives proof of his intimate knowledge of the poor, derived from pastoral intercourse with them, never bewilders them by any such circumlocution, but goes right to the mark. 'AH extortion,' says he, for instance, 'according to this rule, comes under the 'eighth commandment. So does the taking advan- tage of a neighbour's ignorance, or of his necessities, to drive a hard bargain with him. So do all those things which too many reckon fair, such as cheating the king's revenue, smuggling and buying of smugglers, poaching and buying of poachers : all these are breaches of the eighth commandment.' — Vol. ii. p. 402. Or again — ' There is hardly a poor person in these parts of England who does not get what our great grandfathers would have deemed to be luxuries. I will mention two of these — tea and wheaten bread. If any one, a hundred years ago, had foretold that the time would come when every cottage in England would have its teapot and its loaf of wheaten bread, he would have been laughed at as a foolish dreamer. Yet that time is come.' — Vol. ii. p. 368. We have heard preachers in our time who would have flinched from expressions so natural and straightforward ; and would infallibly have warned these poor people on the Downs against holding any intercourse with the nocturnal marauder on the main or on the manor; and have suggested to them the gratitude they owed for a fragrant beverage and farinaceous food. And so might Mr. Hare, if his taste had been less cor- rect, and his desire of doing good less earnest ; and he would then have had the comfort of thinking, after he had delivered his discourse, that though he had left his Wiltshire peasants in the dark, to be sure, as to the' offences they were to shun, or Essay XII.] VILLAGE PREACHING. 45!) the blessings for which they were to be thankful, yet the dignity of the pulpit, at any rate, had not suffered in his hands. We next come to the use of illustrations in a sermon. ' The country parson in preaching,' says Herbert, ' sometimes tells the people stories and sayings of others, according as his text invites him ; for them also men heed and remember bett^ than exhortations, which though earnest, yet often die with the sermon, especially with country people, which are thick and heavy, and hard to raise to a point of zeal and fervency, and need a mountain of fire to kindle them ; but stories and say- ings they will remember.' Before the Eeformation, as well as for some time after it, sermons abounded iii such tales, so much so indeed as to require regulations to correct the excess. But in those days many causes concurred to render discourses from the pulpit more colloquial. The chief preachers were the Friars ; men who might take rank with our own Eanters. Their hearers were perpetually coming and going during the sermon, as suited their convenience, the church-door open, and no ceremony used ; often, indeed, it was delivered in the open air, at a cross, or from a window. If the audience laughed outright at a passage that pleased them, or coughed at one that galled them, no offence was taken, nor any scandal felt ; the license of the church being pretty much the same as that of the play-house; — for indeed the two reciprocated, the pulpit being always dramatic, the stage often theological. This freedom from all constraint, both of the teacher and hearer, became by degrees abridged ; the country clergy rising in rank and education (for immediately after the Eeformation they were very low in both .these respects), and so growing more fastidious, and a severer influence shedding itself both upon them and upon their people by the progressive ascen- dancy of the Puritan. Accordingly within a century after the downfall of Popery, we find Thomas Fuller — the last man, from natural temperament, one would have thought likely to offer a caution upon such a subject — saying of the ' faithful minister,' ' his similes and illustrations are always familiar. 400 VILLAGE PKEAGHINQ. [Essay XII. never contemptible. Indeed reasons are the j^Hars of the fabric of a sermon, but similitudes are the windows which give the best light. He avoids such stories whose mention may suggest bad thoughts to the auditors, and will not use a light comparison to make thereof a grave application, for fear lest his poison go further than his antidote.' Preaching, therefore, now took an opposite tack, and from having been certainly once succulent, by the time of John Wesley had become sapless. This was one cause which ren- dered the new style of preaching adopted by him and his followers so attractive; the people not staying to examine whether the water wanted filtering, because their throat was dry through the drought which had preceded. The standard, according to which the character of the imagery and diction of the pulpit of modern days was regulated, was not fixed before the divines of Queen Anne's time ; as the vocabulary of poetry, according to Johnson, was not determined before the age of Dryden. In both cases, the restraint has been injurious to the subject of it. There was a Doric simplicity, — ' wood-notes wild ' — in the poets before Dryden, for which the greater cor- rectness, it maybe, 'of those who have since lived, is but a poor substitute ; and there was a homely vigour in the senti- ments and phraseology of the pulpit of the days of the First and Second Charles, which has been ill replaced by the deco- rous tameness of later times. Surely it is a morbid taste, and one that requires correction, which would kick at images that satisfied a Barrow; and yet we could point out numbers in his sermons, which would be now rejected by the preacher, even the village preacher, as mean and pedestrian ; and whilst such things are, it is not on the tithing-day alone that we have cause to lament that the farmer should be so coarse, and the clergy so fine. The familiar illustration, therefore, by which a subject is rendered clear to persons slow to apprehend, and interesting to persons hard to be excited, is a figure not lightly to be renounced in deference to the false refinement of the magnates of a congregation — though, doubtless, capable of abuse. We say false refinement ; for there are parables both Essay XII.] VILLAGE PREACHING. 4G1 in the Prophets and in the Gospels, against which the same par- ties might find the same ohjection. Mr. Hare, therefore, adopts the use of such images with all boldness. The man who does not grow in grace is ' a dwarf in soul ; ' a spectacle as hideous and misshapen to the spiritual eye, as a dwarf in body to the eye of flesh (i. 50). Men think highly of those who rise rapidly in the world; whereas nothing rises quicker than 'dust, straw, and feathers' (i. 45). Eeligion must he learned by practice, not by hearing or reading only ; ' it is not by hearing or reading about shoes, that a man becomes a shoemaker' (i. 97). You must not be content with spelling and reading a parable, but ' do as the bees do ' with a flower, settle upon it and suck out the honey (i. 39). 'Laws are like looking- glasses, they may show us our ugliness, but cannot give us new shapes' (i. 257). Eeligious services are the means, not the end, — -'the road to London is not London' (ii. 131). ' The tooth of a child is easier to draw than that of a man, because it has no fangs ; so is it with his evil passions ' (ii. 387). Easy illustrations of this kind are scattered in profusion throughout these sermons, certainly impart to them an air of great freshness and vivacity, must have had the effect of baiting the pulpit, and gathering a congregation, and no doubt at this moment live in the memory of many of the inhabitants of Alton Barnes, and will be long quoted as the apothegms of their beloved and departed pastor. If in a few instances they may be felt to border on the ludicrous, as where a child is compared to an unfledged angel fallen to earth, and to be restored to heaven (ii. 114), it should be borne in mind that when Mr. Hare wrote these sermons, and still more at the moment when he sanctioned the publication of them, he was occupied with far other thoughts than how to approve himself to those ' who ai-e nothing, if not critical.' Still this is the danger to be guarded against in the use of famihar illustration ; and we notice it the rather, lest the imitators of his style of preaching, of which we foresee many, should be led to tread in Mr. Hare's steps, not in the hundred cases where he has trod straight, but in the two or three where he may have trod awry. 4G2 VILLAGE PEEACHING. [Essay XIL Tliere is another suggestion as to village preaching which the puhlication before us presents. It is a feature in these sermons, and one greatly to be commended, that they make much use of the less trite passages of Scripture, whilst those which are in the mouths and memories of all, they take for granted are so, and rather touch than draw out at full length- guarda e passa. For instance, to show that the seed of the heaviest crimes may be lurking in a man's heart when he least suspects it, the case of Hazael is quoted. ' Is thy servant a dog,' says he to Elisha, ' that he should do tliis great thing ? ' Hazael thought at the time that it was impossible for him to commit such a crime as murder ; yet the very day after his return to the King of Syria, ' he took a thick cloth and dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that he died' (i. 290). Here we have a passage, not recondite certainly, but still not trite, to exemplify the doctrine. Again, in a sermon on Isaiah Ixi. 3 — ' Trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord' — occasion would naturally present itself, it might be imagined, for a reference to the parable of the barren fig-tree ; and so it does ; but Mr. Hare quotes no more of it than the three words of warning with which he closes his sermon, 'cut it down' (i. 478), satisfied that he thereby touched a spring, and that the memory of his hearers would supply the rest. For he probably considered that the members of a congregation of the Church of England hear certain passages in Scripture — the most important passages, no doubt — always once, possibly several times every year of their lives — that those amongst them who have been at weekly or Sunday-schools, have learned many such passages by rote — that it may, therefore, be safely presumed that such passages are tolerably familiar to them, and may for the most part be called to their minds by a hint, and that more is superfluous : again, that the Bible is the whole compass of a poor man's literature; and that on this account he is often much better versed in it than greater scholars who are spending themselves upon every work that comes out — that he is therefore frequently not an incompetent judge of the degree in which his minister is master of the Scriptures ; and that he will be much more Essay XII.] VILLAGE PEEACHING. 4C3 likely to listen to liim with reverence, when lie perceives his range over them to be wide and commanding, than when he suspects his knowledge to be just commensurate with the chapters that occur in the Sundajr services. It is true that the practice for which we are pleading is not that adopted by our Reformers in the homilies. The homiliey make long and large extracts from the portions of Scripture at present the most popular and best known ; but when the homi- lies were composed, it must bo recollected, no portion whatever was well known and popular. Latimer's sermons presume upon an utter ignorance of Scripture even amongst the Jiighest class of all. When he preached before the Duchess of Suffolk and her household, a family as likely to be intimate with Scripture as any of the time, he relates circumstantially, and as though the passages would be strange to his hearers, the interview of Jesus with the Samaritan woman, and the death of Ananias and Sapphira. Even the early deliberate writings of the chief Reformers are not without blemishes which betray that Scrip- ture was as yet a novelty even with the best-informed. ' The Institution of a Christian Man' talks of Jesus being brought before one Pontius Pilate ; of his being bound fast to a pillar ; and of Lot and his three daughters ; all of them passages revised and corrected in the re-publication of the same work with additions, a few years later, and when the Bible had been more studied, under the title of ' The Doctrine and Erudition of a Christian Man.' When, however, the Reformation had established itself, it became quite characteristic of the English divines, of Jewell, for instance, eminently, of Hooker, of San- derson, to have an apposite passage of Scripture for every- thing — Scripture being found in their hands a mine which might ever be worked, and never be worked out ; and so far from dwelling upon threadbare quotations, such as might occur to any man just as well as themselves, and thus giving token that it was by virtue of a commission that they occupied the teacher's chair, and not by right of superior knowledge, they were perpetually interesting, and very often surprising, their hearers or readers by the. dexterous application of texts 461 VILLAGE PREACHING. [Essay XII. not commonly produced, but, being produced, to tbe purpose and decisive; stamping tbe impression tbey were wishing to communicate more effectually by the smartness with which they struck it in ; and creating at once a reverential curiosity about a book which was found to be so full of resources, and a whole- some respect for the character and ofBce of men who could develope them so successfully. But these were divines who had drank deep in the writings of the Fathers, in several of whom this faculty is remarkable ; and whilst we may smile at their exercise of it, when they find an argument against the buskin of the player, in that it ' adds a cubit unto his stature,' &c., &c., we cannot but admire the same research as applied to a more worthy end, when it discovers a number of subordi- nate prophecies relating to the Saviour to come, in passages commonly overlooked : and we think the preacher would only have the more attentive audience, who, whilst he did not keep back such prophecies as are the most striking and prominent, as, for instance, that of the Miraculous Conception, contained in the seventh chapter of Isaiah, that of His character and office, in the ninth, or that of His person, reception, and end, in the fifty- third — should nevertheless season his sermon with those more secondary predictions which TertuUian detects, or thinks he detects, elsewhere, of His being sent by Pilate to Herod ; of tbe darkness at noonday ; of the veil being rent ; of the body being missing ; of the resort of the women to the sepulchre ; and of the charge they received on seeing the vision of angels. * The observance, therefore, of this rule in the construction of sermons, to presume upon the congregation having some ac- quaintance with the common-places of Scripture, though much to learn as to the remainder, would have the effect of relievinsr them from that tediousness which naturally attaches to com- positions that enlarge upon what we know well, and keep silence upon what we know imperfectly ; and though the remark applies to all sermons alike, yet the country parson is " TertuUian, adv. Marcion. iv. i?. 42, 43, p. 4.59. Essay XII.] VILLAGE PREACHING. 465 he who is likely to offend against it most, heing under a temp- tation beyond others to reckon upon the simple people loving simplicity over-much, and thus to dilute his divinity till it is really too small for babes. Baxter, who, as everybody must be aware, is for the plainest of all plain-speaking in the minister, nevertheless cautions him with his characteristic good sense, ' lest in fearing to go beyond the present understanding of the people, he teach them nothing but what they know already, and thus entice them to think that he is as ignorant as they, and that they are as worthy to be preachers as he, because they can do as much and as well as he is used to do.' " It is not indeed in the nature of things that a class of -persons who delight in a pithy proverb beyond any other, and seldom open their lips without one, can take much pleasure in a thin and threadbare address ; and the preacher who is to hold together even the most rural congregation for any long time, must be prepared, with Mr. Hare, to bring out of his treasures things new as well as old. It may not be here out of place to add, that the staple of these sermons is rendered still more substantial by their author's theological reading, independently of Scripture. We can trace in them, for instance, Taylor, Baxter, and, we think. Hall, not always as works which Mr. Hare was directly quoting, though this sometimes, but which he had digested and made his own, and might draw from, without knowing it ; and it will be found in theology, as in all other sciences, that how- ever elementary may be the treatise required, it will be best done by the best-informed man ; that the Church Catechism, simple as it seems, could only have been framed by deep divines ; and that a village sermon will be most to the purpose, when written by one who, like Mr. Hare, combines with a knowledge of village ways, such reading as would qualify him for a far different audience. There is another canon to be observed in the composition of a sermon, of which we are reminded by the publication before us, — to make it preach the gospel as often as possible through ^ Cure of Church Divisions, H H 466 VILLAGE PEBACHING. [Essay XII. the ordinances of the Church. It is trae that this rule, like the last, applies to all sermons ; hut like that, it applies to sermons dehvered from a village pnlpit above all. For the country people have need beyond others that the rehgious instruction imparted to them should refer to formularies which are familiar to them ; the instruction so presented to them being in that case sorted for them, and therefore more likely to be profitable to persons whose apprehensions are dull and memories feeble ; those formularies serving them for a syllabus, and the lecture seeming no longer a rhapsody without a plan. We believe, too, that nothing would be so effectual to bind the members of the Church together and to disqualify them for dissent, as the systematic observance of this rule on the part of the preacher, — a rule, indeed, which the terms of his ordi- nation vow seem to make obligatory upon him ; for by that he pledges himself ' to give his faithful diligence always so to minister the doctrine and sacraments, and the discipline of the Church, as the Lord hath commanded, and as this church and realm hath received the same! ' Let us not be misunderstood. We are not recommending a crusade from the pulpit once a week against the Separatist : it is the thing furthest from our thoughts ; but we would have the minister take every oppor- tunity that presents itself, direct, and more especially incidental, of showing that the Bible and Prayer-Book speak a language one and the same ; that a Christian truly formed after the model of the Church of England would hold the doctrines, discharge the duties, imbibe the spirit, set forth in the Word of God ; that the component parts of the Christian character dis- persed through the Bible are collected and organized in the services of the Church. Thus would the members of a con- gregation be imperceptibly moulded into the form of Christians and Churchmen at once ; and, being so fashioned, would not be adapted to any other frame without feeling that violence was done to them. We would have the minister, therefore, some- » See a, very, good sermon, entitled ' Tlie Duty of Liturgical preaching stated and enforced,' by the Ee?. K. ParMnson, the present Hulsean Lecturer in Cambridge. Essay XII.] VILLAGE PREACHING. 467 times ask himself, when his sermon is completed, whether it could he delivered as appropriately in the chapel as in the church ; and if it could, though the fact might not imply that there -was anything in it unsound, it might imply that there ■was something lacking ; — it might be what it was, and some- thing more. The non-observance of this rule in the construc- tion of sermons of late years — for it is impossible to read many of our most popular volumes of sermons, and deny that such is the case, — has tended, we believe, more than anything besides, to leave the professing members of the Church a prey to any and every species of dissent which might happen to come across them. For, on quitting the Church, they had no bonds to break, no lessons to unlearn, no prejudices to over- come. They were sheep that had been never marked, and were therefore readily lost. The following may not be the best illustrations of- the practice we are recommending, which these volumes supply, but they are the first that come to hand; and may suf&ce : — ' To the end that we may keep Passion-week in a proper manner, by thinking and feeling about Christ's sufferings as we ought to do, the Church has appointed the forty days of Lent to be a sort of preparation for Passion-week and Easter, just as it has appointed the four Sundays in Advent to be a preparation for Christmas. For there are two great seasons in the year which it behoves every Christian to keep who- wishes to pay dutiful honour to his Saviour, or who would awaken and stir up his heart to a thankful recollection of what Christ has done for mankind. The lirst season is Christ- mas, in honour of Christ's birth, to preserve the memory of His wonderful loving-kindness in coming down from heaven, and putting on the nature of man. The other season is Passion-week and Easter, to commemorate His love in dying for us, and to celebrate the glory of His resurrection. Both these seasons are so important, and it is of such moment to the welfare of your souls that you should keep them both in a godly manner, that the Church has set apart the Sundays in Advent, which come before Christmas, and the forty days of Lent, which come before Passion-week, as a time of pre- paration for them. The use of such a preparation is plain enough. In the first place, it answers the same purpose that the early bell HH 3 468 VILLAGE PKEACHING. [Essay XII. on Sunday is meant to answer. As that bell calls us to get ready for church, so do Advent and Lent call on us to get ready for Christ- mas and Easter. When a musical instrument has been laid by awhile, it needs being put in tune, or it will make but sorry music. The minds and hearts of Christians too require to be got in tune before they can bear their part fitly and harmoniously in the services by which the Church commemorates the birth, and death, and resurrection of her Lord.' — Vol. i. p. 935. Or in another place — ' I am going to speak to you about the historical books of the Old Testament. By the historical books I mean the book of Joshua, the book of Judges, the two books of Samuel, the books of Kings and of Chronicles — in a word, all those parts of the Old Testament which contain the history of the children of Israel, and relate their dealings and goings on from the time of Joshua, when they first crossed the river Jordan to conquer and take possession of the land of Canaan, down to the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah, when Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and the Jewish people were carried away captive far from their native land. These are the chief historical books of the Old Testament : out of them the lessons are taken for thirteen Sundays together, that is, for a quarter of the year. Now what do we learn from the Book of God during this quarter of a year ? Why has our Church appointed the fourth part of every year for the reading of chapters from these historical books ? What are the chief truths which the great body of Chris- tians are to gather from them ? For it must be clear to every one that these chapters would not be read to you over and over again, year after year, unless the Church had hoped that the hearing them would in some way make you better. Moreover, it must be clear to you, that a mere knowledge of the names and facts set down in these books can do you no good whatever. That Jehu was the captain who conspired against his master, — that Joram was king of Israel, and Ahaziah king of Judah, — that the prophet Elisha's servant was called Gehazi, — what can it profit a man to know? Facts of this kind are like the beard of the barley ; they are the part which comes first in sight, but yields no nourishment. If a person learnt nothing from Scripture but a list of names and facts — such as that Samsou was the strongest man, and that Solomon was the wisest, — he would not be a jot the better for his knowledge. Knowledge of this sort may. puff a man up with a vain conceit of Essay XII.], VILLAGE PREACHING. 469 his learning and cleverness, but most assuredly it cannot edify. One little verse from the Sermon on the Mount would be worth it all. The lessons we are to draw from the histories of the Old Testament are not of names and facts, but of laws and principles. We are to look on those histories as showing us the wires and springs by which God governs the world The his- tory of most countries may be likened to a great clock : we see the hands move and hear the hours strike ; but we cannot see and ex- amine the works by which the hands are set in motion and the hours are made to strike. With the history of the Jews, however, it is otherwise. In their case God has lifted up the veil which mostly covers His dealings with mankind; He has shown us the inside of the clock and given us the means of observing how the wheels and pulleys act upon the hands. In other words, He has set before us in the Bible how entirely the welfare of a nation depends upon the piety and true religion of the people This is the great practical truth to be drawn from the historical books of the Old Testament ; and the Church of England has wisely allotted a large portion of every year to a course of chapters teaching it.' — Vol. ii. pp. 85-40. But besides many such short and passing allusions to the Liturgy, which help to keep it in view of the people, and instil it into their minds not the less effectually, as we have already hinted, because done without form, there is an admirable course of sermons in the second of these volumes, in which the services of the Church are explained, illustrated, and enforced ; sermons which it is impossible to abridge, and from which it is not easy to make extracts : and whilst they serve to display the prin- ciple we are laying down, they serve also to correct any mis- apprehension which might arise from a solitary passage in the twenty- fifth sermon on the ' Unthankful Lepers.' In the spirit in which Latimer conveys a notion of Capernaum by com- paring it to Bristol or Coventry, and of Jairus the ruler of the synagogues by supposing him a churchwarden, Mr. Hare ex- plains the Samaritans to be 'Dissenters.' It was the Dis- senter, therefore, who turned back to give thanks, whilst (if the parallel be pursued) it would be the Churchmen who went their way. But Mr. Hare does not pursue the parallel; and 470 VILLAGE PKEACHmo. [Essay XH. • certainly nothing could be more remote from his intention, when he used this illustration, than to compliment the Dis- senter at the Churchman's expense ; for Catholic as J\Ir. Hare's spirit waSj every line of these sermons proves that he was not of those, whatever may he the numbers of such, who assert themselves to be no bigots, by a fling at the Church whose Articles they have signed, to whose services they have assented, and whose bread they eat. It is scarcely needful to add, that every care in the com- position of a village-sermon, or indeed of any sermon, will be thrown away, unless \he feeling of the preacher, his sympathy with his hearers, carry his arguments home to them. Without this they are arrows without feathers, and will drop short ; and it is not the least merit of these sermons that the interest their author took in the people he was addressing, is radiant through- out them. From first to last they speak from the heart, and therefore go to the heart; the best of eloquence. There is nothing here of ' stand by thyself; come not near me; I am holier than thou,' expressed or implied; nothing of theprocul este profani whatever; but, on the contrary, Mr. Hare spares not himself whilst he rebukes his hearers : his honesty is re- markable ; and from the unembarrassed manner in which he ever deals with his subject, he evidently does not flinch from its recoil. He can afford, though we are sure he would have been the last man to think or say so, to challenge that spirit in a congregation against which Paley puts the younger clergy on their guard ; telling them, ' that those who are slowest in taking any part of a sermon to themselves are surprisingly acute in applying it to the preacher.' But Mr. Hare had no traitor within. For instance — ' Now do we really wish for the coming of that great day ? Should we be' glad to know it was to come to-morrow ? If an angel were to show himself at this moment, and to bring a message from our Lord and Master, that to-night at twelve o'clock He will descend from heaven, with the voice of the archangel, with the trump of God, and that we are straightway to be caught up into the clouds, and to appear to-morrow before the judgment-seat of Christ, to give Essay XII.] VILLAGE PREACHING. 471 an account of our past lives, — if such a message were to be brought to us at this moment, should we rejoice at it? Yet this, and nothing short of .this, is the coming of God's heavenly kingdom. I fear there are very, very few men who can say from the bottom of their hearts, that for themselves, without thinking of their neighbours, they would be truly and heartily glad of this. / am sure, for one, I could not say it. I could not say that I desire, without a mo- ment's further preparation, to be hurried before Christ's tribunal. My prayer would be the same as David's: O spare me a little! And your prayer, brethren, would doubtless be the same.' — Vol. ii. p. 237. It does not fall within the plan of our paper, as we have happened to shape it, to speak at any length on the doctrines of these sermons. We may just, however, observe that they maintain the corruption of our nature to he very great, but enter into no metaphysical controversies ; sometimes repre- senting the image of God as lost (i. 88), and sometimes 'sparks' of the 'original brightness' as remaining (ii. 99). As a consequence of this corruption, they afSrm that ' we cannot take one step towards holiness except by the assistance of the Holy Spirit' (i. 75). They teach justification by faith in Christ alone (ii. 440) ; but they are occupied throughout with Christian duties and dispositions which should be the fruits of faith, so as to be eminently practical. They serve under no banner but the Articles, and these Mr. Hare con- siders framed in a comprehensive spirit, and says of the seven- teenth, in a very admirable visitation sermon (the first of the two) annexed to the others : — ' Is it not desirable to have the road so formed that two equally good men may walk abreast in it, the one on the shady side, the other on the sunny ; leaving room for the unpolemical Christian to walk humbly and contentedly between them? or, to look at the question from a historical point of view, will any be bold enough to wish that our Articles had been framed in such accordance with either Arminian or Calvinistic notions, as that either Leighton or Jeremy Taylor should have been excluded by them?' — Vol. ii. p. 508. That the intention of our Reformers is here correctly given, we 472 VILLAGE PEEACHING. [Essay XIL think has heen put heyond all douht, since the correspondence of Eidley and Bradford on this subject was published by Arch- bishop Laurence. On the whole we will venture to press these sermons on the attention of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, as better calculated than any we have met with for parochial lending libraries to circulate, and (what will be acknowledged to be a very great desideratum by all who have sought for such a book to little purpose) for masters and mistresses of families to read to their households on Sunday nights. In our perusal of these volumes one reflection has suggested itself to us very constantly, — the testimony they incidentally offer to the value of an endowed church. Here we have a man of good birth, of perfect education, of ripe scholarship, of easy means, we believe, setting himself down in entire content, — for many passages give token of it, — in a small secluded hamlet in the Downs, vervecum in patrid, with no other object in life than how to make all these high qualifications subservient to the intellectual, the religious, and the temporal advancement of its poor and unlettered inhabitants. Suppose the voluntary system, as it is called, to prevail, what is there in the character and importance of such a parish to secure for it a teacher and a benefactor anything like this ? Would it be for the public good that such a man, so gifted, should be exchanged, as he almost certainly would be in such a case, for a pastor of the lowest of the people, of mean acqturements, but fluent speech, though not of speech more intelHgible than Mr. Hare's; in the pulpit, probably an ignorant and jealous controversialist ; in private, a partisan in every village feud and faction, there being nothing in his station to set him above ' the stir of that dim spot ; ' without taste to civilize, or dehcacy to attach, or rank to restrain, or endowments to command respect ; so far from having the means to relieve another's wants, himself seeking the priest's ofi&ce, that he may eat a piece of bread. The ex- change would be altogether disastrous. There is another consideration which has also presented itself to us whilst engaged with these sermons : — the meek, yet dig- Essay XII.] VILLAGE PREACHING. 473 nified, answer they supply to the noisy slanders against the Church that have been long abroad. We would desire no other or better reply to all the assaults upon her with which the House of Commons and the meeting-house have rung alike, than such a peep behind the scenes as these sermons afford, such an insight into what she has been actually about, alone, and in quiet, and unobserved, in many a nook and corner of the land, even at the very moment whilst these rancorous indig- nities have been poured upon her. It was probably about the very time that Mr. Hare was employed in writing and deliver- ing these sermons, and in the discharge of those pastoral labours of love corresponding to them — evidence of which modestly breathes forth in every page, that a rude and rash man had the face to describe our Church as ' destroying more souls than she saved.' But the great bulk of the people who lived in retirement, and had not been poisoned by sectarian jealousy, called scruples of conscience, and who only knew the Church by the blessings they beheld her shedding around their own doors, felt that she deserved better things to be said of her, and at length rose in her defence ; rose in her defence, to the surprise of a Government which had thought the lion dead, and to he kicked at discretion. Probably the spirit shown on the subject of church-rates is without example ; a whole nation — at least, almost the whole of the nation on whom the burden fell — petitioning their governors by acclamation not to remit, but to retain a tax — and assuring them that individually, little as such an avowal would meet with their sympathy, they would rather pay several shillings a-year than deprive ' the poor man of his rights, and God of His honour.' Without meaning any invidious comparison with the clergy of the towns, whose ex- ertions, often under circumstances of great discouragement, have been most exemplary, but which, being in oculis civium, plead for themselves, we may say that no doubt the faithful discharge of their duties by the country clergy, after the man- ner of which these sermons give proof, had laid up a treasure of good feeling towards the Establishment in country parishes which, though long dormant, awoke at last ; and now that it has 474 VILLAGE PEEACHING. [Essat XIL manifested itself, will check, we trust, an Administration like the present from further aggression, by an argument to which they seem alive, that they are biting a file which may break their teeth ; whilst on the other hand, it will, we hope, encou- rage some future Administration more friendly to the Church, to legislate for the extension of her usefulness, with the confi- dence that in so doing they will have the people on their side. XIII.-VILLAGE SCHOOLS. (April, 1838.) A SHORT time ago we ventured upon a few remarks on Village Preaching — we will now follow them up by a few more on Village Schools ; in neither case affecting any other philo- sophy than such as belongs to a working-day world. With respect to the estabhshment of national schools in country parishes (and to country parishes we mean to limit our obser- vations), we cannot witness the attempts now made from time to time, and especially in the proposed bill of Lord Brougham'' — (which differs from his former one by its provisions being extended from towns with municipal corporations, to the whole kingdom) — to take the education of the rural population out of the hands of the clergy, with whom it at present rests, and with whom it is natural it should rest, and to lodge it elewhere, without the reflection presenting itself very forcibly, how much derangement, hoth fiscal, moral, and religious, would ensue from such a transfer ; how much existing machinery for the purposes of education, actually working well, every year in- creasing in efficacy, and promising eventually, and before long, to embrace in its operation the whole body of the peasantry, it ' Hints on Scriptural Education, and on Instruction, hj Catechising; in- tended for the use of the Superintendents of Parochial Schools. A Charge de- livered to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Salop, in June, 1835. By Edward Bather, M.A., Archdeacon of Salop. London. 8vo. ^ [This bill did not come into law. — Editor. ] 476 VILLAGE SCHOOLS. [Essay XIIL is proposed to disorganize and break up. We shall confine ourselves to this single argument. Looking at the parishes around us, from the spot where we write (and we challenge the same survey elsewhere), we find them almost all furnished with schools ; some daily, some Sunday schools only, — the latter, however, constantly expand- ing into the other; hut both begun and continued by the clergy. We see the schoolrooms sometimes built by local subscriptions at their suggestion, and to which they are them- selves chief contributors; sometimes converted out of tithe- bams, or other superfluous buildings attached to the parson- age, in the disposal of which they have an absolute control. We see funds provided for the salary of the master or mistress, the purchase of books and other necessaries, through the same channel, with or without the aid of weekly contributions from the children — which, if any, are in all cases so small, as to be only enough to stimulate the appetite for knowledge by putting it at a price. We see clothing clubs very frequently grafted upon these schools, the honus still raised from the same quarters as before, and through the same exertions ; an incidental, but still a very wholesome adjunct to scholastic education, inculcat- ing practical lessons, not less valuable than Mr. Wilderspin's, of order, frugality, foresight, and self-dependence. We see the clergy in their parish-rambles dropping in upon these schools often and unawares ; working them for an hour themselves ; animating the system ; keeping teachers and scholars wide awake ; exercising again, through their wives and daughters (at least as much alive to the welfare of the schools as themselves) a narrow in- spection into the works and ways of the girls that resort to them ; which, under such superintendence, become the cunabula of diligent housewives, the future mothers of the hamlet. We see the clergyman, the cus'tos morum of the parish, by means of these schools, put in a condition to be so with effect; enabled to discover the character and conduct of every family in it, by representatives which faithfully reflect it at the school; qualified through such information for applying endless correc- tives in the right place, of a minute kind perhaps, but by their Essay XIII.] VILLAGE SCHOOLS. 477 aggregate amount, and personal propriety, more successful, it may be, for the reformation of morals than all the sermons he delivers ; his reproofs, on such occasions, felt to fall grace- fully by the parents, and well received by them, because evi- dently prompted by the interest he is taking in their own flesh and blood ; and having weight besides, because founded, as they would themselves confess, in accurate knowledge of facts. We see, in short, in a school in a country parish, on its present construction, a sort of small Exchange, where the minister learns all that is going on which requires his interference within the district that belongs to him ; so that half an hour's visit to the school (drawing its tributaries, as it does, from every comer of that district) acquaints him perhaps with particulars that put him in motion for the week. For here he leams who are sick, who out of work, who leaving the parish, who coming into it, with a hundred other matters, with which the children come charged, too trivial to name, but an acquaintance with which on the part of the minister greatly conduces to the com- fort, order, and regularity of his people, and to the usefulness of his ofiBce. We further see this same functionary acting in his vocation as a dispenser of knowledge in the parish, whilst he appeals to the farmer for his pecuniary help to diffuse it ; bringing before him, amongst other and higher considerations, the bearing of education upon the security of his property, the habits of his labourers, the amount of his rates ; till, yielding partly to the force of the argument, and partly to kindly feelings for the advocate, he gives his guinea. We see much humanity imparted by these homely colloquies, these clinical lectures on the advantages of learning — much prejudice re- moved — much sympathy fostered — and besides all this, an exchequer furnished for a war against ignorance, without tax, warrant, or officer. But, above all, we see the clergyman as the accredited teacher of religion in the parish, possessing in these schools an instrument for the dissemination of it so effective, that withdraw it from him and you rob him of the use of his right hand. Indeed, the power thus given him has 478 VILLAGE SCHOOLS. [Essay XIIL scarcely yet made itself fully recognized, or received its com- plete development. We feel that we shall he adding strength to our argument, which mainly Hes in a simple exposition of the system it is proposed to put in jeopardy, and shall, at the same time, he doing our present schools a service, if we draw our reader's attention to a Charge of Archdeacon Bather's, of which the title is prefixed to our paper. For these ' Hints on Scriptural Education, and on Instruction hy Catechising, intended for the use of the Superintendents of Parochial Schools,' are calcu- lated beyond anything we have met with to open the eyes of the coimtry, and even, in a degree, of the clergy themselves, to the resources, the yet unexhausted resources, for the ad- vancement of religious knowledge, which these schools present. They are evidently the fruits of sagacious observation and long experience — they are communicated in a manner the most plain and unambitious, yet graphic withal, by one whose aim is not to spin theories or split hairs, but to take mankind as they are, and amend them — and they descend to a minuteness of direc- tion, which those only wiU appreciate who have had dealings with their fellows, and know how specific instructions must be, if they are to be useful. Although preaching, the Archdeacon argues, is very much improved in its character of late years, and exhibits far more entirely the fundamental doctrines of Scripture and of the Church than it once did, it may be doubted whether its effects upon our congregations are commensurate with this improve- ment ; whether it prevails for good to the extent it might. Now if this be true, it has happened, perhaps, because we have not in times past begun from the heginning in our teaching; the hearer not having been a fit recipient of instruction irom the pulpit, because not previously prepared in a school. In the primitive Church it was otherwise. There, none were mem- bers of the congregation who had not once been catechumens. To this natural order of Christian education we are now (if we are not cut short) reverting ; catechizing the child, that is, Essay XIII.] VILLAGE SCHOOLS. 479 grounding him in the principles of the faith hy vivd voce con- ference with him, in order that the man may he taught to edi- fication. But whilst we are thus dealing with him, the fault is our own, if the very first ohject of all education is not answered, even as our economists themselves would admit — ' For, if they say that something more is desirable for the poor than mere reading and writing and a little arithmetic, so say I too,' cries the Archdeacon ; ' I should like to see them taught to think.' And accordingly he proceeds to point out how this primary object of education is achieved, and in a manner the best of all, by the very same discipline which serves to make them profitable hearers for the Church ; and that, whilst your aim is to train up in them sound Christians, you are incident- ally forming them into thinking men. The catechist, tEen, who will seldom be amy other in a country parish than the minister himself, having fixed upon his subject, which will seldom be taken from any other book than the Bible — that being of all books the one which is found on trial to interest children most, and therefore to be the fittest to quicken them to mental exertion — ' first instructs his pupils by questioning the meaning into them, and then examines them by question- ing it out of them.' The former part of this task he does by putting what the lawyers call leading questions, that is, ques- tions which instil a meaning, to be extracted by-and-by; and if the answers prove such as require to be corrected, which they will often be, still the children are brought to make the correction themselves, which is done by means of further ques- tioning, after the same fashion as before ; till at length they find themselves surprised into a full knowledge of the subject proposed to them, and apparently by efi'orts of their own ; the process keeping them on the alert, and the result flattering their sagacity. We shall be excused, we are sure, if we follow Mr. Bather into an example, fractional as it may seem; for the more thorough the insight aiforded of the faculties of our schools, constructed as they are, the more will people be induced to pause before they give their voice for their extinction. The 480 VILLAGE SCHOOLS. [Essay XIII. sight even of a fly through a microscope would often stay the hand that wa-s raised to crush it, by unfolding beauties over- looked. Our example is the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee : the catechist begins by taking the passage to pieces, making the child in fact construe it, so as to give proof that he has not been merely talking in his sleep : — what was done — who did it — what was said — who said it. Then comes a hard word, a Pubhcan — he asks — what is he ? The child caunot tell, or tells him wrong. It is very easy for the ques- tioner to set him right; but why do this when it is much better and very possible to make him set himself right ? He will remember, if he is put upon it, that there were twelve Apostles ; that one of them was a Pubhcan ; that his name was Matthew. He can tell where Matthew was sitting, and what he was doing when he was called. He thus works his own way to the meaning of the term Publican ; and besides, learns to bring passages of Scripture, which he has read, together ; thus gets at a good principle of interpretation ; and, above all, holds fast that which he has in this manner made his own. ' But the two men went up into the Temple to pray.' This reminds the catechist to give the child some simple notion of prayer. He may make a speech to this effect, but it will be to little purpose, and there is no need of it. In answer to his question the child can inform him what it was they went into the Temple pro- fessedly to do : a beggar in the street would furnish him with an illustration of this ; for he would teach the child to quote a text -^here praying is expounded by ' ashing! Then, when the child has told him whose house the Temple was, he will be at no loss to tell him further who was to be addressed in it. And, looking to what the Publican and the Pharisee severally said, he will be led to state that the one asked for mercy, the other asked for nothing; consequently, that the one did actually pray, whilst the other forgot his errand. We need not pursue the example further ; but, on the whole, this method will do more for a child than the plainest sermon whilst he is a child, and when he becomes a man he will put away childish things. -Now, doubtless, had the catechist turned lecturer, and his in- EssAT XIII.] VILLAGE SCHOOLS. 481 terrogations been orations, he would have delivered in the same space ten times the doctrine which the other has ex- tracted ; 'but what of that?' says Mr. Bather, in a passage which may remind us of Mr. Hunt's diverting picture of the Sunday-School Boy — ' the listlessness of his youthful auditory, the vacant looks of some, and the impatient gazings of the rest in all directions, let you know infallibly that their minds have never been occupied at all ; perspicuous the speech may have been, but "like water that runneth apace," it has passed away from them as it flowed, and whether the matter discussed related to Peter, or James, or John, or the facts were done at Jericho or Jerusalem, or the scope of the argument was to teach men to pray or to give alms, to repent or to beheve the Gospel, they know not. The sermon was blameless, but there was no constraint upon them to give their thoughts to it.' Having thus questioned the meaning into them, for which the school for obvious reasons is the fittest scene — and which indeed there is scarcely any other opportunity for doing, but such as a school affords — the Archdeacon next proposes to question the meaning out of them, which may be done not there only, but in the church, in the face of the congregation, in accordance with the injunctions of the fifty-ninth canon, and the mbric at the end of the catechism. Here the minister, who is bound up, it will be perceived, with these schools from first to last, gives the children an occasion of producing their knowledge; he extracts it from them piece by piece, and with an eye in the process to the edification of the bystanders ; thus he reaches the ignorant adult through the better-informed child ; awakes a ftesh interest in that quarter, for to hear others questioned is the next thing to being questioned oneself : the listener will have the curiosity to catch the child's reply ; a thought can scarcely fail to cross him, how he would reply himself, or whether he could reply at all ; he will be glad to get information without the risk of exposing his present ignorance, and when the information is watched and waited for, it is retained. Parents, too, will be amongst the lookers-on, and, besides gaining knowledge themselves, will learn to set a II 482 VILLAGE SCHOOLS. [Essay XIIL value on the school which they discover to be a fountain of it, and thus co-operate the more cheerfully with the minister ; pastor and people are embarked in a common cause; /ervet ojiiis, the work thrives ; and contributions, if wanted, come in freely. Thus is the congregation brought up every way to the mark of an intelligent audience ; partly through knowledge imparted to those not of the school, by means of the public catechizing of the children, and partly through the children themselves, as they successively leave their benches, and take their place in the pews, leavening the whole : — ■ ' And now, as wise master-builders, )'ou have laid the one sound foundation, and, as you list, you may build thereon. You may reason with them out of the Scriptures, for they know the Scrip- tures,, and are capable of hearing reason. You may quote the Scriptures, use Scripture terms, illustrate at your pleasure by Scripture similitudes and Scripture history ; and they will not wonder with the utterly ignorant, to whom he that speaketh is a barbarian, nor cry out with the self-conceited, " What will these babblers say ?" Nor will they be in the condition of those who, because general beads have never been explicated to them, estimate a sermon by the presence or absence of the phrases of a party, which phrases they themselves cannot render into other language, and therefore can never have obtained any definite instruction from them. Your hearers, on the contrarj', will admit your authorities and your vouchers. They will be familiar with the facts which you adduce. Words will stand for something in their minds, and Scriptural allusions be recognized and understood; and with hope you may advance to application and exhortation, having so thoroughly made good your ground.' In this manner will the minds of the poor have been exer- cised so effectually, that they will be in a condition to grapple with anything they are ever likely to have to deal with ; for they will be possessed of a power which they can apply to any necessities or opportunities of any kind ; and though that power was not in the first instance called forth by secular training, it may be made available for secular objects, provided they are honest — to which only it would lend itself. But this isnot all : for so long as the alliance is. preserved between the EssatXIII.] village SCHOOLS. 483 schools and the Church, the collateral benefits which flow from them are as many and considerable as the direct ones. If the congregation is thus approximated to the preacher, so is he to the congregation. The system improves both ; for he on his part, ' "Will find,' says the Archdeacon, ' upon trial, that there is no better way of analyzing and studying a portion of Scripture or a head of doctrine, in order to discourse upon it, than by breaking it up, if I may so express myself, in the manner required for the purpose of instilling it, by little and little, into the weak and unin- formed. He will master the matter in this way for himself — many useful lights will come in upon bis own mind in the process — he will see how truth may be best submitted to his hearers, and what they want to make it plain to them. When the school-questioning is^over, he will have collected so many materials, and made so many experiments on the best method of arranging them, and so have possessed both his mind and his feelings with the subject, that he will be just in a condition to write upon it fully and clearly and impressively ; and he will be full, moreover, of matter and good thoughts, which he may carry with him from house to house, in his private visitings of his flock, to great advantage.' And if, in point of fact, village sermons of late years have become better adapted to the ends they were ever meant for — if, as Baxter expresses it after his own fashion, the village preacher knows now, better than he did some time ago, ' how to get within men,' ' how to screw the truth into their minds/ which we believe to be the case, — the improvement has arisen, we are convinced, very principally from the operation of our charity-schools, which have brought pastor and people into nearer contact^ disclosed to the former the true approaches to their understanding and hearts, and taught him how to say the right thing in the right manner. Such are our village schools, and such and so various their uses, whilst they are in the hands of the clergy ; and though certainly religious knowledge, as it is perceived, is the chief thing looked to in them, yet it is not to the exclusion of other knowledge ; only care is taken that the latter shall not occupy II 2 484 VILLAGE SCHOOLS. [Essay XIIL an undue proportion of that time for learning which, in the case of the children of the poor, must be necessarily short ; that 'the schoolmaster shall not he allowed to seek his own credit by having a variety of such things to exhibit in his pupils as worldly parents are apt to over-estimate ;' and that the boy or girl shall not be dismissed from the school, to play their parts in life, without a stock of motives, safeguards, con- solations, hopes, to influence them, other than could result from any acquaintance they might be made to have with ele- ments of science, or compendiums of political economy. For passions are to be provided against that ' will crack ten thou- sand curbs of more strong link asunder,' than the remem- brance of a lecture on the physical ill effects of ardent spirits or voluptuous excess will supply ; and servants, and husbands and wives, are not made good ones of their kind, by a smat- tering of history, or chemistry, or mechanics ; and the burdens of life, and especially of a poor man's life, are not effectually relieved by arithmetic; and when men lie them down on the bed of sickness or death, and feel themselves immortal, they do not take courage and confidence from the thought, how much they have known of things below the moon : surely that scheme of national education which has an eye to these mat- ters, nay, which makes a preparation for them its first and fore- most object, is not very far wrong ! Meanwhile the positive success of the system we have been thus very imperfectly developing is to be found in the fact mentioned in the last Eeport of the Education Society, that no fewer than 993,864 children in England and Wales are in one shape or other at this moment reaping the benefit of our schools ; and argument of their still greater prospective suc- cess is to be found in another fact published in the same document, that tho applications for grants in aid of local subscriptions have increased in the last three years in the proportion of 65, 122, 230;" so that, if the 'friends of edu- " [It may be observed that the argument has been greatly confirmed since 1838, when this essay was written. The total number of grants in nirl i,n t« Christmas 1858, was 4477.-Editok.] ^ ^' "P ™ Essay XIII.] VILLAGE SCHOOLS. 485 cation ' can be restrained from lending it their help for a few years more, the whole population of our rural districts will, as we have said, be absorbed by these schools, and not a commis- sioner be paid for it. Already ' Their understanding Begins to swell, and the approaching tide Will shortly fill the reasonable shore That now lies foul and muddy.' True it is that under this system the peasantry will be brought up in the bosom of the Established Church, which is the gravamen of the whole matter; for the very name of incumbent or churchwarden does not once occur in the length or breadth of Lord Brougham's bill ; but it is no less true that they have in general no misgivings whatever upon this subject — are perfectly ready to avail themselves of the advan- tages of the schools as they are, and think the damage done to their children by their learning the catechism and going to church inconsiderable. And this being the case, we do main- tain that our legislators might be better employed than in sowing these scruples amongst them, which do not spring of themselves ; leading poor and ignorant people to imagine that religion is rather to be shown by entertaining pedantic niceties in a confession, than by keeping the commandments; and fly-blowing the country with schismatical notions, instead of seasoning it with salt. Alas 1 to one who really knows what the people are made of, and observes the coarse and rampant vices which prevail amongst them, scourging them worse than a hundred relieving officers, it is matter for a smile and a sigh to contemplate such provisions as those contained in the nine- teenth clause of the Poor Law Amendment Act (an Act which we have no wish, on the whole, to condemn), and which are striking tjrpes of that spirit upon which we are now animad- verting. The inmates of a workhouse are for the most pnrt these and such as these — ' There children dwell, who know no parents' care ; Parents who know no children's love are there. 486 VILLAGE SCHOOLS. [Essay XIII. Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed, Forsaken wives, and mothers never wed. Dejected widows with unheeded tears, And crippled age with more than childhood fears ; The lame, the blind, and — far the happier thej ! — The moping idiot, and the madman gay.' And these are the persons for whom it is provided, that ' No rule, order, or regulation shall oblige them to attend any reli- gious service which may be celebrated in a mode contrary to the religious principles of such inmates, or authorize the education of any child in such workhouse in any religious creed other than that professed by the parents or surviving parent of such child, and to which such parents or parent shall object;' and as if this was not enough, it was added — at the suggestion of Lord Morpeth, if we remember — ' or, in case of an orphan, to which the godfather or godmother of such orphan shall ohject ! ' Surely it would be diiScult to meet with a finer example of 'cutting blocks with a razor' than this. Now we submit that, supposing the people are thus netted into the Church, the national Church, the evil is not so great as to render it advisable to undo so much that has been done for the education of the poor, and to stop so much that is doing, by such enactments as Lord Brougham proposes. Yet such a bill as his, or any other of its kind, would utterly lay waste the ■whole of this goodly fabric which is now growing up so prospe- rously, and without the noise of axe or hammer. At present the education of the poor is a voluntary and gracious act on the part of their superiors — an affair of persuasion and bounty. It is advised to make it a matter of compulsion and law ; and, in the instance before us, by a process the most offensive ; in- vesting five rate-payers (be their payments small as they may) with the power to convene a parish meeting ; that meeting with a power to elect a committee of five rate-payers (still with- out any qualification as to the amount of their payments) ; and that committee with a power to decide whether a school is wanted, and to make a report of the same to the hoard (for a board of course there is to be) ; and the board, concurring in Essay XIIL] VILLAGE SCHOOLS. 487 their views, with a power to inflict an overseer's rate upon the parish for the establishment of the school. Thus would the small rate-payers be able by their numerical majority to con- trol those -who could buy them up a hundred times told ; vote the parish in ignorance, twhich if they happened to be dis- senters they would infallibly do ; and, in their zeal for know- ledge, generously dip their hands into their neighbours' pockets for means to disperse it. It is, we think, impossible that a project so inordinate as this can pass into a law; but still all the education schemes that issue from the same mint proceed, if we mistake not, upon the principle of a tax ; and as it assuredly is not intended that such tax shall be applied to the uses of the existing schools it would only tend to break these schools up, by diverting the funds that feed them ; since it is not to be supposed that people will give to one school and pay to another in the same parish. Nor is this all. It is further proposed that Inspectors shall be appointed by the board to examine into the state of the schools, and to make their report. Now even if the clergy entertained no other or more serious objections to the plan, they would, no doubt, shrink from making themselves accountable, not to their eccle- siastical superiors, but to commissioners in London or their roving deputies, for their method of teaching the children of their own parishes, and would decline serving under any such flag. But other and even graver objections they would have which would keep them aloof; for the books used in these would not be of their choosing, and probably would not meet with their approval! The Bible, it is true, would be read, but only, we apprehend, as an item, perhaps a subordinate one, in the studies of the school ; and certainly not with a church- man's comment, or in conjunction with any formularies of the Church. The spirit in which the cause of education is taken up,- and the party by whom it is pressed, are pledges enough for this; and indeed in the present bill the mask is so far dropped, as that a clause is introduced to protect Jews and Eoman Catholics from having their ears offended by it ; and such consideration cannot be had for them, without the dis- 488 VILLAGE SCHOOLS. [Essat XIIL senters sharing the like ; for, if the former are to be spared hearing the Bible read, the latter, in common fairness, must he spared hearing it interpreted. A clergyman, therefore, would feel himself quite out of his place in schools so conducted, and would retire from all participation in them. But sure we are that in almost all country parishes no substitute could be found for him and his ; and that, abandoned by the minister, the school would languish for want of looking after. Thus the only practical result that could prove satisfactory to the framers of this bill or such bills as this would be, that the clergy, to be sure, would be rendered helpless in their own parishes ; the sympathy, such as it is (not over-much even now in agricultural districts), on the subject of education, between rich and poor, of which they are the medium, pai'a- lyzed; their best opportunity of getting a thorough insight into the characters of their parishioners, and the abuses as well as the virtues that prevail amongst them, taken away; the principal channel through which they communicate with the rising generation, closed ; the chief means of training up a more ■ intelligent body of hearers for the preacher to act upon, lost and gone; and all this derangement purchased at the price of establishing a rickety school for writing, accounts, and very small philosophy, which the upper class would loathe because they would be taxed to support it, whilst they disapproved of its principles ; which the minister of the parish would do nothing to promote, because it confounded him in all his functions; and which the dissenter, and the dissenter only, would rejoice in, because it would be another thorn in the side of the Church, and another step in the march towards a republic. And yet the party which would thus strip the clergy of the powers by which they are enabled to be effective in their cures, is the very same which clamours beyond every other for laws to enforce their residence. Surely there is a strange anomaly in thus confessing how important are their services and then trying how best to defeat them. Why all this idle jealousy of the Church, which is at the bottom of these education projects ? She stands, as an Esta- Essay XIIL] VILLAGE SCHOOLS. 489 4 blishment, no doubt, upon privilege. The fact must be avowed and defended, not disguised. The Church partakes of the general character of the form of the constitution. Man is not more a bundle of habits than a monarchy is a bundle of privi- leges ; and if the Church is to be henceforward regarded only as one sect of several, and dealt with accordingly, the prin- ciple may be right or wrong, but it is another principle from that on which society is constructed throughout in this country, and a disturbing force is introduced into our system which most assuredly will not spend itself upon the Church only and there stop. We throw out this observation not for the benefit of those who hold other forms of government to be better than a monarchy, for such persons are right in endeavouring to accommodate so essential an element as the Church to the ulterior changes they contemplate ; but for the consideration of the numbers who seem to think that they may have the mo- narchical principle in State, and the republican principle in Church, and no loosening of the Commonwealth. They may as well think that twisting the same rope different ways at different ends would not dissolve its continuity. XIV.-BISHOP BUTLER/ (OOTOBEB, 1839.) On the ■works of this great prelate we have expressed our- selves at large in former numbers of this Journal.'' His life, now written for the first time in any detail, demands some notice, uneventful as it is, — Both because it is the life of Butler, and because it proceeds from the pen of a connection of his own : Mr. Bartlett having married (if we read him right) the great-granddaughter of the bishop's elder brother. It may be presumed, therefore, that whatever tradition of their illustrious relative survives is most hkely to be found in this quarter; and that if it prove scanty, as it does, it is neverthe- less all that is to be had. Joseph Butler, the author of the ' Analogy ' and the ' Ser- mons,' was born at Wantage, a market-town in Berkshire (which had the glory also of giving birth to Alfred the Great), on the 18th May, 1692. He was the youngest of eight children of Thomas Butler, a substantial linen and woollen draper, who had retired, however, from his shop, and established himself at the Priory, a house near the town, where the room in which ^ Memoirs of the Life, Character, and }Yritings of Joseph Butler, D.C.L., late Lord Bishop of Durham. By Thomas Bartlett, A.M., Rector of King- stone, Kent, and one of the Six Preachers of the Cathedral of Christ, Canter- hury. London. 8yo. 1339. ^ The Quarterly Reviein. See particularly Vol. xxxviii. , the Review on "The Works and Character of Paley;" and Vol. xliu., that on " The Writings of Bishop Butler." Essay XIV.] BISHOP BUTLER. 491 Butler first drew breath is yet to be seen nearly as it then was. His education was begun under the Eev. Philip Burton, a clergyman of the Church of England, and master of the grammar-school of that place. From him he was by-and-by removed to Mr. Jones', who kept a dissenting school, first at Gloucester and afterwards at Tewkesbury ; Butler's father being of the Presbyterian persuasion, and intending his son for its ministry. Here he had Seeker for his schoolfellow ; and the friendship between the future primate of England and prelate of Durham, commenced under these singular auspices in a nursery of nonconformity, lasted throughout life. It was whilst he was yet at Tewkesbury school, though now in his twenty-first year, that he addressed his Letters (so well known) to Dr. Clarke, wherein he professes himself dissatisfied with that author's 'Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God.' The reasons which he assigns for this are so acute ; are urged in so calm and ingenious a spirit; and so clearly proceed from one whose desire really was, what he -avowed it to be, ' to make the search after truth the business of his life ' — that Clarke replied to them, anonymous as they were, evidently under a sense that he had to deal with an antagonist worthy of him, and eventually attached the whole correspond- ence to his treatise. In order to preserve his incognito in this affair. Seeker was employed to convey these letters to the post-office at Gloucester, and bring back the replies : such was the modesty of this masterly reasoner, — a feature of his mind which impresses itself on his writings from first to last; for ' the shortness of our faculties,'' to use a phrase of his own, was that which made itself most felt, as was likely, on one who exercised them on such high argument ; and instead of the oracle many an ordinary man esteems himself — esteems himself in proportion as his parts are shallow — Butler's con- fession ever was, 'I have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep.' It was now becoming time that he should enter on his profession ; but after reflecting on the question of noncon- formity, he could not satisfy himself of its reasonableness or innocence ; and, in spite of the bias of education and a 492 BISHOP BUTLEE. [Essay XIV. father's wish, he decided for the Church. When the tempera- ment of Butler's mind is considered, and the ahsence of all temptation in the Church at that time to warp his choice, it must be confessed that she has great reason to triumph in the deliberate verdict of such a man ; and it was probably not forgiven or forgotten when, some years after his death, an attempt was made to fasten on his memory an accusation of popery, partly founded on a Charge which he delivered to his clergy at Durham, in which he had ventured to plead for ' the importance of external religion/ — ' of forms which should daily bring the subject before men's thoughts, and lead bad men to repent, and good men to grow better;' and partly on the fact that, when repairing his private chapel at Bristol, he had fixed a cross over the altar. It was reserved for the reformers of Bristol, eight years ago, effectually to do away all traces of the latter reproach ; and when they had set the bishop's house in order, after their manner, and search was made amongst the iTiins for this memorial of Butler's episco- pacy, it was found to be broken in pieces and destroyed. And yet this papist had written, in one of his sermons, of popery, that it ' was the great corruption of Christianity, which is ever hard at work to bring us again under its yoke!' But that age, like this, knew not how to discriminate between popery — an invention of modern times, which shrinks from the test of real antiquity — and the primitive Church, which was indeed full of the visible signs of invisible things, in order the better to appeal to thoughtless men ; and delighted to present the cross on all occasions to their eyes, that their hearts might be turned to Him who died on it. Butler never was married ; but an acrostic epitaph upon a female cousin, written about this period of his life, gives token that he too ' had felt the softer flame.' The lines are withheld, from a natural desire of the biographer not to exhibit Butler in a position below himself; but well may that passion be thought to foster the muse, which could excite the author of the ' Analogy ' to deeds of verse. In 1714 Butler was entered a commoner of Oriel College, Essay XIV.] BISHOP BUTLER. 493 ■where he soon formed an intimacy with Mr. Edward Talbot, son of Dr. Talbot, shortly after Bishop of Durham; an event which gave a character to the rest of his life. Through Mr. Talbot's influence, seconded by that of Dr. Clarke, then rector of St. James's, he was in 1718 appointed preacher of the Eolls Court, apparently his first regular ministerial charge ; for though his autograph is found in the register of the bap- tisms and burials of the parish of Hendred, near Wantage, during the year 1717, it is probable that he was merely officiating for his friend Mr. Talbot, the incumbent of the living. Meanwhile Seeker was studying medicine at Paris ; for though he too, like Butler, was designed by his father for a minister amongst the dissenters, yet being unable to determine to what communion amongst them he should attach himself, and dissatisfied moreover with the divisions that, prevailed amongst them all, he had resolved upon a different walk in life. But far other things were in store for him than he con- templated. Butler, without his knowing it, had spoken of him in such terms to Mr. Talbot, that the latter promised, if he thought proper to take orders in the Church of England, to recommend him to the notice of his father the bishop ; and after some deliberation Seeker accepted the offer, and was ordained in 1722 to the rectory of Hough ton-le- Spring. Butler himself was presented the same year, by the same patron, to that of Haughton, near Darlington. We think it is Fuller who tells of an inscription over a parsonage door to this effect, — ' If here you shall find A house built to your mind. Without any cost ; Praise God the more, And give to the poor, And then my labour is not lost.' But Butler had not this piece of good fortune. He was accordingly upon the point of involving himself in the expenses attending the erection of a new house — a work in 494 BISHOP BUTLER. [Essay XIT. which he was thought very little fitted to engage, when his patron, at the suggestion of Seeker, hastened to his rescue by presenting him with the rectory of Stanhope. This was in 1725. In the following year he resigned the preachership at the Eolls, which he had hitherto held with his living, dividing his time between the duties of town and country, and resided altogether at Stanhope ; not being dead, as Archbishop Black- burn replied to Queen Caroline, who had thought him so, but huried. On quitting the Eolls, however, he published his ' Sermons,' fifteen in number, preached at that chapel, taken at random, as he tells us, from amongst others delivered by him in the same place ; and however deeply we may lament his modest disposal of the rest, it is characteristic of Butler that he should have left it as ' his positive and express will,' that ' they should be burned, without being read by any one, as soon as might be, after his decease.' In the Sermons which he published, the true foundation of morals is affirmed in the principle of the supremacy of conscience ; and though overlaid for a season by the principle of expediency of Paley, which had the disastrous advantage of being recommended to the world by the most popular of writers, truth is once more beginning to show how mighty it is, and Butler's assertion of it to prevail. In the retirement of Stanhope he was ' chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancies ;' — of sweet, for he was here rearing up that everlasting memorial of his genius, ' The Analogy of Eeligion to the Constitution and Course of Nature ' — and (to adopt the majestic language of Mr. Southey) 'was laying his strong foundations in the depths of that great argument, there to construct another irrefragable proof of the truth of Chris- tianity, thus rendering philosophy subservient to faith, and finding in outward and visible things the type and evidence of those within the veil;' — of litter, for the seclusion in which he was living began to try his spirits, which were at best perhaps not high, and made his friends anxious to relieve him from his solitude. Accordingly, Seeker, who, though nearly of Essay XIV.] BISHOP BUTLER. 495 liis own age, >yet being probably the wiser in his generation, seems to have watched over him with a kind of parental affection, interceded with the Lord Chancellor Talbot, the brother of Mr. Etiward Talbot, their common patron in early life, to nominate him his chaplain, and Butler began once more to spend half the year in town. Of his habits at Stan- hope, all that can be gathered on the spot is contained in the following letter of the present Bishop of Exeter to Dr. God- dard. Archdeacon of Lincoln : — ' Exeter, January 25, 1835. ' My dear Sir, — I earnestly wish I could justify the report ruade to you by the Provost of Oriel, that I could supply you with several auecdotes of Bishop Butler. The truth however is, that although tantalized by seeming opportunities of acquiring some information respecting the private life and habits of one to whom I have been accustomed to look up as the greatest of uninspired men, I have been mortified by my almost entire failure. In .the rectory of Stan- hope, I was successor to him after an interval of eighty years ; and one of my earliest employments there was to search for relics of my illustrious predecessor. I was assured that an old parishioner, who, with a tolerably clear memory, had reached the age of ninety-three or ninety-four, recollected him well. To him I frequently went, and in almost all my conversations endeavoured to elicit something respecting " Kector Butler." He remembered him well — but, as I ought, perhaps, to have anticipated, could tell me nothing; for what chance was there, that one who was a joiner's apprentice, of thirteen years of age, when Butler left Stanhope, could, fourscore years afterwards, tell anything about him ? That he was respected and beloved by his parishioners, which was known before, was confirmed by my informant. He lived very retired, was very kind, and could not resist the importunities of common beggars, who, knowing his infirmity, pursued him so earnestly, as sometimes to drive him back into his bouse, as his only escape. I confess I do not think my authority for this trait of character in Butler is quite sufiicient to justify my reporting it with any confidence. There was, moreover, a tradition of bis riding a black pony, and riding always very fast. I examined the parish books, not with much hope of discovering anything worth recording of him ; and was unhappily as unsuc- cessful as I expected. His name, indeed, was subscribed to one or two acts of vestry, in a very neat and easy character ; but if it was 496 BISHOP BUTLER. [Essay XIV. amusing, it was mortifying, to find the only trace of such a. man's labours, recorded by his own hand, to be the passing a parish account, authorizing the payment of five shillings to some adven- turous clown who had destroyed a " foumart,'' ox wood-marten, the marten-cat, or some other equally important matter.' Standing once more in oculis civium, as he now did, Butler ■was not a man that could be passed by, and he was soon made Clerk of the Closet to Queen Caroline, a princess whose piety and acquirements gave her a taste for theological discussions ; and Butler, who was in daily attendance upon her, had often to bear his part in them in the royal presence, with Berkeley, Clarke, Hoadley, Sherlock, and Seeker — a subject for a dialogue of another Erasmus. It was in 1736, soon after this appointment in the household, that he published the ' Analogy :' and it marks the estimation in which its author was held, that a work of such a nature, so little adapted ' volitare per ora virum,' should have reached a second edition within the year. But he had by this time a public name. Men now seem to have gone up to him to seek counsel, as to an oracle of God. As an instance of this, Henry Home, Lord Karnes, we are told, earnestly entreated that he might be allowed a personal interview with him, though he would have had far to travel for it, in order to the removal of certain doubts which arose in his mind, when he first turned his attention to the Evidences. But Butler, though answering the application with politeness, and endeavouring to satisfy Mr. Home's inquiries by letter, declined a meeting, alleging his own natural diffidence and reserve (again manifested in this incident), his inexperience in oral controversy, and his fear that the cause of truth would suffer from the unskUfulness of the advocate. David Hume also was anxious for an intro- duction to him, that he might have his opinion on his treatise on ' Human Nature' before its publication ; and the respect, not to say, awe, with which the sceptic contemplated the Christian philosopher, incidentally manifests itself in a passage in one of his letters to the author of * Douglas,' wherein he says, ' I am at present cutting off its nobler parts, i. e. endeavouring it shall Essay XIV.] BISHOP BUTLER., 497 give as little offence as possible, before which I could not pretend to put it into the Doctor's hands. This is a piece of cowardice, for which I blame myself, though I believe none of my friends will blame me.' But though Hume called upon Butler, he did not see him ; and one cannot help feeling that this was just one of those trifles in life which sometimes have consequences altogether disproportionate ; and that had Butler been within, Hume might have been a believer. The prophet, however, had least honour in his own house. John, one of his nephews at Wantage, a wealthy and eccentric bachelor, fonder of mechanics than metaphysical theology, having borrowed an iron vice of a Scotch neighbour who professed much admiration of the new work and its author, proposed that, as Mr. Thompson liked the ' Analogy,' and he liked the vice, they should make an exchange — and, accordingly, the quarto presentation copy which John had received from his uncle, passed into Mr. Thompson's hands. In 1738 Butler was appointed to the See of Bristol, and two years afterwards to the Deanery of St. Paul's, when he resigned the living of Stanhope. There is a tradition at Bristol, that he spent the whole income of his bishopric (no very great one to be sure), on an average of the twelve years he held it, in the repairs and improvements of the palace ; and the examination into the damage occasioned by the late fire led to the belief that he had been greatly imposed upon by the workmen he employed. A trait of his habits here is preserved by Dean Tucker (then his domestic chaplain), in one of his tracts : — ' The late Doctor Butler, Bishop of Bristol, and afterwards of Durham, had a singular notion respecting large communities and public bodies. His custom was, when at Bristol, to walk for hours in his garden in the darkest night which the time of the year could afford, and I had frequently the honour to attend him. After walking some time, he would stop suddenly and ask the question, " What security is there against the insanity of individuals ? The physicians know of none ; and as to divines, • we have no data, either from Scripture or from reason, to go upon relative to this K. K 498 BISHOP BUTLBE. [Essay XIV. affair/' " True, my lord, no man has a lease of his understanding, any more than of his life ; they are both in the hands of the sovereign Disposer of all things." He would then take another turn, and again stop short — " Why might not whole communities and public bodies be seized with fits of insanity, as well as indi- viduals?" " My lord, I have never considered the case, and can give no opinion concerning it.'' " Nothing but this principle, that they are liable to insanity, equally at least with private persons, can account for the major part of those transactions of which we read in history." I thought little,' adds the Dean, ' of that odd conceit of the Bishop at that juncture ; but I own I could not avoid think- ing of it a great deal since, and applying it to many cases.' What an application of it would have suggested itself to Tucker, could he have been again walking in that self- same garden on the 31st October, 1831 ! In 1747 died Archbishop Potter, and the primacy was ofiFered to Butler, but he declined it, saying, as the tradition of his family reports it, that ' It was too late for him to try to support a falling church.' His nephew John, the same who preferred the vice to the 'Analogy,' took a view of his ovm of the archbishopric also ; and only conceiving it possible that his uncle could have refused it from a want of capital, proposed to advance him £20,000, or any other sum he might require to set him up ; and returned to Wantage greatly dissatisfied that he still persisted in his refusal. Three years afterwards the See of Durham became vacant, and it was the wish of the King that Butler should succeed to it ; but the Minister, the Duke of Newcastle, was desirous of conferring the lieutenancy of the county, which had hitherto gone with it, upon Lord Barnard ; and, though it may well be believed that such an office would have few charms for such a man as Butler, he nevertheless would not allow the ancient honours of the palatine see, whether appropriate or otherwise, to take damage through him, and would hold it unimpaired or not at all. The concession was made, and Butler was trans- lated to Durham. His feelings on this occasion will be best seen by the following admirable letter : — Essay XIV.] BISHOP BUffLEK. 499 ' My good Friend, ' I should have been mighty glad of the favour of a visit from you, when you were in town. I thank you for your kind oongratii- lations, though I am not without my doubts and fears how far the occasion of them is a real subject of congratulation to me. Increase of fortune is insignificant to one who thought lie had enough before ; and I foresee many difficulties in the station I am coming into, and no advantage worth thinking of, except some greater power of being serviceable to others ; and whether this be an advantage, entirely depends on the use one shall make of it : I pray God it may be a good one. It would be a melancholy thing, in the close of life, to have no reflections to entertain oneself with, but that one had spent the revenues of the bishopric of Durham in a sumptuous course of living, and enriched one's friends with the promotions of it, instead of having really set oneself to do good and promote worthy men ; yet, this right use of fortune and power is more difficult than the generality of even good people think, and requires both a guard upon oneself, and a, strength of mind to withstand solicitations, greater, I wish I may not find it, than I am master of. I pray God preserve your health, and am always, ' Dear Sir, ' Your affectionate Brother and Servant, ' Joseph Dunelm.' No sooner had Dr. Butler taken possession of his new diocese, than he set about repairing and improving the two episcopal residences at Durham and Auckland. He appointed three days in every week for public hospitalities ; but, though munificent on these occasions, in his private habits no man was more simple and unostentatious. He distributed largely — calling for his house-steward, and bidding him give whatever money he had at hand (£500 it happened to he on one occasion) to a benevolent institution which was recommended to him ; and subscribing his £400 a year to the county hos- pital. In the disposal of his vast patronage he had respect to merit only ; insomuch, that one of his nephews (Jonathan), a man of superior talents too, and supposed to bear a stronger resemblance to the bishop than any other of his family, but ■who did not give himself,. as Butler thought, sufficiently to the work, and was therefore not preferred by him, exclaimed in his 500 BISHOP BUTLEE. [Essat XIV. wrath, ' Methinks, my lord, it is a misfortune to be related to you.' Whilst attending his duties in Parliament, he resided at Hampstead, in a house formerly belonging to Sir Harry Vane, and from which he was taken to the Tower before his execution. Here, also, the Bishop's taste for architecture displayed itself. He decorated his windows with painted glass, and the subjects being scriptural, the incident was afterwards turned to account, and he was said to have received them as a present from the pope. Most of this is now lost : some was 'given by a subse- quent occupier of the house to Oriel College, as a relic of its great alumnus ; and a few panes are still to be seen in their original position. In this retreat, which is described by one of its inmates as ' most enchanting,' Seeker (who had been rising in the Church, pari passu, and was now Bishop of Oxford) and Butler dined together daily. He had not held the See of Durham more than two years when his health began to fail, and he was ordered by his physician to Bath. Here he arrived on the 3rd June, 1 752 ; on the 8th of the same month, his chaplain and friend, Dr. Forster, writes to Seeker, that his symptoms were 'thirst, sickness, dry skin, great feverish heats, chiefly at night, at- tended with weakness of body, and lowness of spirits at inter- vals that is quite shocking.' On the 12th, 'his attention to every one and everything was immediately lost and gone ; ' but bis affection for Seeker was still lively as ever, the image of the latter still mingling with his wandering thoughts ; and, at the last, says his chaplain, ' when for a day or two before his death he had in a great measure been deprived of the use of his faculties, he was perpetually talking about writing to him, though without seeming to have anything which, at least, he was at all capable of communicating.' On the 13th June, Catherine Talbot, the daughter of Butlers early fiiend, dating from the deanery of St. Paul's, where she was residing with Seeker, expresses herself as foUows : — 'The dangerous illness of one of our most dear and valued friends, the excellent Bishop of Durham, gives to every day a most Essay XIV.] BISHOP BUTLEE. 501 painful anxiety for the coming in of the post from Bath. He was my father's friend. I could almost aay my remembrance of him goes back some years before I was born, from the lively imagery which the conversations I used to hear in my earliest years have imprinted on my mind. But from the first of my real remembrance, I have ever known in him the kind affectionate friend, the faithful adviser, which he would condescend to when I was quite a child ; and the most delightful companion, from a delicacy of thinking, an extreme politeness, a vast knowledge of the world, and a something peculiar to be met with in nobody else. And all this in a man whose sanctity of manners, and sublimity of genius, gave him one of the first ranks among men, long before he was raised to that rank in the world, which must still, if what I painfully fear should happen, aggravate such a loss, as one cannot but infinitely regret the good which such a mind in such a station must have done. But this is an idle, a wrong regret. Providence needs not this or that instrument, but whatever Providence orders is best. But you will not wonder that I am affected, that I am very low, because I see mamma low, I see my lord affected. We all live in suspense ; and there is not a room in the house that does not peculiarly re- mind us of him who was so lately its possessor, and who has so often so cheerfully and hospitably received us in it.' On the 16th June, about eleven o'clock in the morning, in the sixty-first year of his age, Butler breathed his last. It is stated, says Mr. Bartlett, upon the authority of the late Kev. Richard Cecil, that during Bishop Butler's last illness, when Dr. Forster was one day reading to him the 3rd chapter of St. John's Gospel, the bishop stopped him at the 16th verse, and requested him to read it a second time. When this was done, after a pause, he said, ' I never before felt those words to be so satisfactory and consolatory.' One of the daughters of Mr. Venn, of Yelling, recollects her father often to have referred to the end of Butler — ' How he looked to Christ as a poor sinner, and said he never had so clear a view of his own ina- bility to save himself as then.' The author of the chapter in the ' Analogy ' on the appointment of a Mediator, and the re- demption of the world by Him, could scarcely have felt other- wise ; especially under the strong conviction which he seems 502 BISHOP BUTLEE. [Essay XIV. ever to have entertained of the degree in which he himself personally had fallen short. ' He was walking with his chap" lain, Dr. Forster,' (the anecdote is Dr. Madan's, Bishop of Peterborough,) 'when he suddenly turned towards him,' (a way which he appears to have had,) 'and with much earnestness said, "I was thinking. Doctor, what an awful thing it is for a human being to stand before the great Moral Governor of the world, to give an account of all his actions in this life ! " ' And it was Butler who had these alarms ! To the few particulars of his character, so tenderly touched in Miss Talbot's letter, we have nothing to add, except that he was extremely fond of music ; and ' when he was not engaged in the evening with his friends and clergy, or in the necessary duties of his sacred office, his under- secretary, Mr. Emm, who had been a chorister in St. Paul's, was in the habit of playing to him on his organ, and this he found to be a grateful relief to his mind after severe application to study.' An engraving from apparently an excellent portrait of But- ler, by Vanderbank, taken of him when he was forty years of age, the period at which he was employed on his ' Analogy,' is prefixed to this volume. It represents him as having an oval face, regular features, and expanded forehead, strong eyebrows, and large full eyes, wearing, in a very remarkable degree, an expression of abstraction, as though the mind was otherwise engaged than in looking through them : ' fa sembiante D' uomo cui altra cura stringa e morda Che quella di colui che gli e davante.' There is added to this volume an abridgment of the 'Ana- logy,' chiefly made in Butler's own words ; and an apocryphal sermon on St. John iii. 8, on which, as we have no others of the like kind to compare it with, we will not pronounce an opinion. On the whole we are most grateful to Mr. Bartlett for the information he has afforded us on this deeply-interesting subject, from the family recollections he has gleaned up, and Essay XIT.] BISHOP BUTLEE. 503 from the various notices of Butler by contemporary writers, which he has drawn to a focus and made tributary to his Memoirs. In a future edition, which we heartily hope may be speedily called for — since nothing but good can come of every fresh impulse given to the circulation of his great relation's works — we would suggest to him, whether his materials might not sometimes be re-arranged to advantage, and the several component parts be made to fall into their places more in ' a concatenation accordingly.' THE END. Woodfall and Kinder, Printers, Anprel Court, Sitinner Street , London . VN m St- wfi