Columbia (Bntoergttp intljeCitpofltogork THE LIBRARIES ■ Zbe J&tebop ipafcoocft Xcciurcs, isce ' OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF THE THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND FROM THE REFORMATION TO THE CLOSE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BY JOHN DOWDEN, D.D. BISHOP OF EDINBURGH. PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE. LONDON : SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C. ; 43, queen victoria street, e.c. Brighton: 129, north street. New York: E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO. 1897. • ... . ... . * * Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay. °l „ To THE DEAN, THE PROFESSORS, AND THE STUDENTS OF Wm (Sttttxtil theological §c-minavv>, NEW YORK, BEFORE WHOM THESE LECTURES WERE ORIGINALLY DELIVERED, THEY ARE NOW INSCRIBED IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF MUCH KINDNESS. OQOI °5 PREFACE THE design of the following Lectures is to present a sketch of the theological literature of the Church of England from the Reformation to the beginning of the present century. Some cfeneral knowledge of the civil and ecclesiastical history of England during the period is assumed ; and the lectures are mainly concerned with tracing the growth and changes in religious opinion, indicating the character of the principal works of the more eminent theologians, and in some degree estimating their value. It has been thought advisable not to extend this sketch beyond the close of the eighteenth century. The writer feels that we are as yet too near the controversies which originated out of the Oxford Movement to be able to judge them dispassionately. Homiletical literature, unless distinctly con- tributing to theological science, and works of practical divinity, together with devotional writ- ings, are not considered ; hence many eminent names, among which may be mentioned Donne, VI TREFACE South, Ken, Atterbury, and Thomas Wilson, are passed over in silence. But even within the limits prescribed to ourselves, there are omis- sions which would be culpable in any extended history. One could have wished to enlarge the scope of these lectures so as to embrace the theologians of the Irish and Scottish Churches. The bear- ings of ethical and metaphysical speculation upon theology, as exhibited in the writings of Archbishop King, Bishop Berkeley, and Bishop Peter Brown, deserve careful study. And it is with particular regret that I omit any notice of the great John Forbes, of Corse ; Bishop William Forbes, first Bishop of Edinburgh, and author of the Considerationes Modestce ; and Archbishop Leighton. The consideration of Ussher's writings to be found in the following pages makes no infringement of the rule laid down ; for, not to speak of the important part he played in English ecclesiastical affairs, England has the honour of being able to claim him as Bishop of Carlisle. It has only to be added that several passages which, for the sake of brevity, were omitted in the delivery of the Lectures, are here inserted in their proper places. - H THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES In the summer of the year 1880, George A. Jarvis, of Brooklyn, N.Y., moved by his sense of the great good which might thereby accrue to the cause of Christ, and to the Church of which he was an ever-grateful member, gave to the General Theological Seminary of the Pro- testant Episcopal Church certain securities, exceeding in value eleven thousand dollars, for the foundation and maintenance of a Lectureship in said seminary. Out of love to a former pastor and enduring friend, the Right Rev. Benjamin Henry Paddock, D.D., Bishop of Massachusetts, he named the foundation "The Bishop Paddock Lectureship." • The deed of trust declares that — " The subjects of the lectures shall be such as appertain to the defence of the religion of Jesus Christ, as revealed in the Holy Bible, and illustrated in the Book of Common Prayer, against the varying errors of the day, whether materialistic, rationalistic, or professedly religious, and also to its defence and confirmation in respect of such central truths as the Trinity, the Atonement, Justification, and the Inspiration of the Word of God; and of such central facts as the Church' 's Divine Order and Sacraments, her historical Reformation, and her rights and powers as a pure and national Church. And other subjects may be chosen if unanimously approved by the Board of Appointment as being both timely and also within the true intent of this Lectureship." Under the appointment of the Board created by the Trust, the Right Reverend John Dowden, D.D., Bishop of Edinburgh, delivered the Lectures for the year 1896-7, contained in this volume, PADDOCK LECTURES LECTURE I The design and scope of these Lectures — The contro- versy with Rome in the sixteenth century — Theological learning of the first reformers — The three most eminent of the anti- Roman controversialists of the sixteenth century : Cranmer, Jewel, Bilson ; their principal writings — Hooker's attitude towards Rome — Contro- versies on the versions of the Scriptures. DURING the three centuries and a half that separate us from the Anglican Reformation of the sixteenth century the scholars and divines of the Church of England have bequeathed to us what has come to be a large and varied literature. This literature ranges over divers fields of thought, theological and ecclesiastical. It is rich in works marked by scholarship, by wide learning, by acuteness of intellectual per- ception, by close and sustained argument, by breadth of speculative power, by practical saga- city, by the spirit of fervent devotion. Indeed, if due allowances be made, it may be fairly questioned whether the learning and piety of B |0 2 PADDOCK LECTURES any Christian Church has, during a like period, produced a larger number of monumental works of human gehftre in its search for, and in its defence of, sacred truth. It is only fair to remember that for a long- period of her history the English Church was in numbers a very small community. And the proportion of men in any community endowed with exceptional aptitude for research, or with exceptional powers of reasoning, or of exposi- tion, is, in truth, a matter of averages. Again, it must not be forgotten that the con- ditions of life in the Church of England have in some important respects been less favourable to the cultivation of sacred learning than those existent elsewhere. The Universities and the Cathedral establishments made but a limited and partial exception to the truth that oppor- tunities for learned leisure have been few in England. The retirement and freedom from secular distractions afforded to individual scholars by some of the monastic orders on the Continent were no longer to be enjoyed in the reformed Church. Nor did she possess any of those religious communities where fellowship in labour and continuity of corporate life made possible such vast undertakings in the fields of historical and patristic research, as we find in the labours of the Bollandists and of the Benedictines of St. Maur. In the reformed Church of England, with rare exceptions, each man stood alone : PADDOCK LECTURES 3 his learning died with him, and there was no one, trained at his side, to take up and carry on his special labours. In certain departments of sacred learning one must frankly acknowledge the limitations, nay, the great void spaces in Anglican literature. Yet any Church in the world might be proud to claim among her sons such scholars and thinkers as Jewel, Hooker, Andrewes, Ussher, Hammond, Cudworth, Taylor, Pearson, Barrow, Bull, Waterland, Beveridge, and Butler — not to enumerate here other great, though lesser, namesi In the present course of lectures little more can be attempted than to trace the outlines and main highways in a wide-spread region of the world of letters, to indicate the road which the student may best follow, and to call attention to the objects along his route that seem more especially deserving of attention. Notwithstanding all the evils attendant upon religious controversy — and they are many — it is impossible not to recognize the fact that it has been under the pressure of controversy that most of the great achievements of theological literature have had their origin. It was so in the age of the early Christian Apologists. It was so in the age of the great Councils. Even in mediaeval times — the so-called " ages of faith " — not only was theology, in its philosophic aspects, 4 PADDOCK LECTURES the actual battle-ground of contending schools, but the chief examples of the systematizing of dogma were built up in the controversial form, and grew out of the controversial method. Thus the Summa of Aquinas exhibits each Article with its thesis followed by a Sed contra (detail- ing objections few or many), followed in turn by the author's Respondeo, in which each objec- tion is successively answered. It was through controversy thought was given clearness of definition, and precision was effected. And, similarly, in the modern epoch it has been the keen stimulant of controversy that has impelled the greatest theologians to their labours of re- search, of critical examination, of reasoned argument. The shelves of great libraries give a resting- place to a vast quantity of printed matter in the form of popular expositions of doctrine, devotional treatises, treatises on practical re- ligion, sermons and homiletical discourses, which have issued from the press from the Reformation to our own day. These, it need scarcely be said, are of varied character and very much varied merit. We possess, for example, sermons such as those of Andrewes, of Sanderson, of Thomas Jackson, of Bull, and of Barrow, which are of real theological importance, and marked by learning, exact thought, and speculative power. Occasionally, too, men of genius have made discourses from the pulpit a vehicle for PADDOCK LECTURES 5 the expression of thought, so clothed with grace and beauty of style, so illuminated with the play of imagination, so fired and coloured by the glow of emotion, that their utterances have been given a permanent place in the general literature of our country. Bossuet and Massillon have scarcely a more honoured position in the litera- ure of France than Donne and Taylor in the literature of England. To be ignorant of these is scarcely less discreditable than to be ignorant of Bacon and Addison. But for our present purpose it is only so far as it has made a con- tribution to theological science that literature of this kind can claim our attention : pulpit oratory, as such, will not occupy us. Those branches of sacred learning which are concerned with pure biblical criticism and exegesis, and with the independent investigation of the history and antiquities of the Church, must doubtless be assigned a place — a very important place — in any adequate estimate of the labours of Anglican Churchmen. But though they are well deserving of a full treat- ment, in the present course of lectures it is impossible to do more than bestow upon them a hurried glance. We shall here be mainly engaged in considering what more properly belongs to dogmatic theology and the defence of the Anglican position. The main lines along which our leading theologians moved and laboured were three in 6 PADDOCK LECTURES number ; and into each of them they were directed and compelled by the exigencies of the hostile attacks against the doctrine and consti- tution of the Church. First, in order of time, and chief, if we consider the long-continued persistence of the assault, was the controversy forced upon the Church of England by Rome. Next, in succession and historical importance, came the large body of literature that was issued in defence of the Church's constitution against the attacks of the Puritan party. Lastly, the Church was called upon to defend the primary and essential fundamentals of the faith against assaults from the side of unbelief. These last- named assaults were put forward in definite shape in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century they became more general and more daring. In our own time unbelief has pushed its attack further, and assailed not only Revelation, but even the belief in a Personal God. Each line of attack and defence has its own separate history, and its own varying fortunes. The controversy with Rome began in its literary form from the moment that the Church of England was called upon to justify her position as now separated from the organization of the most powerful religious community of Christendom. It touched the centre of English politics ; it occupied almost the whole field of religious thought in England during the reigns PADDOCK LECTURES 7 of Edward and Mary, and the greater part of that of Elizabeth. It continued to be active and animated in the years of James I. and Charles I., when every theologian of distinction was more or less engaged in the struggle. It again occupied all thoughts when in the days of James II. Englishmen were roused by the aggressive Romeward movement of the King and his adherents. There was a change in the eighteenth century. When the Revolution of 1688 "had freed England from the dangers that loomed large and threatening in the past, the country gradually settled down to an easy, contented, and yet most dangerous, because unintelligent, Protestantism. Men ceased to thoroughly understand the questions at issue ; and Rome was contemptuously regarded as intellectually bankrupt. The eighteenth century and the earlier years of the present century added nothing of significance to anti-Roman polemics. But by the middle of the present century England was awakened out of her dream ; and since then the old controversy, under somewhat altered conditions, has again come to the front, and is, beyond question, destined to occupy much thought for many years to come. In the sixteenth century the English Reformers had been led by different routes first to question, and then to repudiate the claims of the Papacy 8 PADDOCK LECTURES to ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the realm of England. This movement of thought, which was largely coloured by political considerations, was soon followed by a growing conviction that much of the doctrinal teaching of Rome was no part of the faith once delivered to the saints. Many of the most cherished of the authoritative dogmas of the Church of Rome were deliberately rejected; and English theologians were called upon to justify their action in the face of the Christian world. Among the ecclesiastical leaders of the time were some well qualified for their task. They had received in full measure the best training that the Universities of the day could supply. Several of them had early attained eminence by their abilities and learning. They had been sedulously trained in the system and methods of the Schoolmen, which, however defective in other respects, supplied an admirable discipline for quickening the perception of intellectual distinctions and for exercising the powers of dialectical discussion. They had been made thoroughly familiar with the nice intricacies of scholastic theology, and with the methods of argument on which they were supported. Some of them had, in addition, felt the animating breath of the " New Learning " ; but they were men who from their youth had been versed in the " Old." It is a mistake begotten of ignor- ance to suppose that in their theological pro- PADDOCK LECTURES 9 nouncements they dealt merely, or even chiefly, with popular misconceptions and popular super- stitions. They had full in view the authoritative teaching of the recognized doctors of the then prevailing mediaeval theology. Latimer, whom we are wont to remember chiefly for the vigorous and homely English of his popular sermons, had been a Fellow of Clare Hall, noted more especially for his intimate acquaintance with the system of Duns Scotus, the "Doctor subtilis" of the Schools. His Latin discourses ad clerum were thronged by scholars, even as his English sermons were afterwards thronged by the general public. Ridley, who in 1524 had to make choice between a Fellowship at University College, Oxford, and a Fellowship at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, was so eager in the pursuit of learning that he, soon after, crossed the Channel, and devoted some two or three years to study in Paris at the renowned school of the Sorbonne. Before the breach with Rome his position as a man of learning in the University of Cambridge was well established. Cranmer was from the outset of his career a student of a very thorough kind, " seldom reading without pen in hand," and leaving us note-books which to this day testify to his extensive research and careful observation. He was a student of Hebrew as well as of Greek. When Wolsey desired to plant in his new and splendid foundation at Oxford "the ripest and solidest to PADDOCK LECTURES sort of scholars," Cranmer, a Cambridge man, who had been a Fellow of Jesus College in that University as early as 1 510, was pressed to accept at " Cardinal College " a lucrative and honourable place. At a later time " his library was the storehouse of ecclesiastical writers of all ages " ; as, indeed, is testified by the large number of volumes that can still be traced. 1 These men and others among the leaders of the Reformation movement were, beyond question, men of no ordinary attainments, and exception- ally well versed in the learning of their day. 2 Setting aside the question as to the juris- diction of the Bishop of Rome, which had already received in England a practical solution, no inquiries so largely occupied the minds of English theologians as those which bore upon the doctrine of the Eucharist. This question was made from time to time the subject of public conferences and disputations. It was not merely a matter of scholastic interest ; it 1 See Mr. Burbidge's careful attempt to construct a catalogue of the remaining volumes, in his work on the Liturgies and Offices of the Church. 2 Compare on this subject the words of the late Arch- bishop (Benson) of Canterbury in his Fishers of Men (p. 125), where, after expressing his high estimate of the learning of the Reformers, he adds, with a touch of very- legitimate scorn,— "yet dabbling books, with less taint of learning about them than have ever issued from writers of the English Church, daily assume that the least in the pre-Reformation days were greater than they." PADDOCK LECTUR I IS II touched the religious life of the nation. And to the defence of the Church of England's change of teaching on this subject the most important of Cranmer's writings are devoted. The gradual modifications in the Archbishop's views of the Eucharist are a matter of history. We shall concern ourselves here only with those published works which set forth his matured judgment, and which, as a matter of fact, repre- sent substantially the prevailing doctrine of Anglican theologians down to our own day. In 1550 Cranmer printed a quarto volume, entitled " A defence of the true Catholic doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ ; with a confutation of sundry errors concerning the same ; grounded and established upon God's Holy Word, and ap- proved by the consent of the most ancient doctors of the Church." 1 The very title-page of the book, it will be observed, gave expression to the great principle of the English Reform- ation, that it is to Holy Scripture we must look for the ground of doctrine, while the testimony of the early Church is given a valued place in confirmation of the inferences drawn from Scripture. Worthy, too, of observation is the 1 This will be found embodied (in detached paragraphs) in Cranmer's Answer to Gardiner, and in a continuous form in the Latin translation (1557) generally attributed to Sir John Cheke. Both are given in Cranmer's Works (P. S. edit). 12 PADDOCK LECTURES distinct challenge of the title that the doctrine maintained is the Catholic doctrine. From the outset the reformed Church declined to concede that term to mediaeval superstitions. 1 The principle of the supreme authority of Holy Scripture had already been maintained in a treatise, commonly, though, perhaps, in- correctly, attributed to Cranmer, and entitled A Confutation of " Unwritten Verities" i. e. a confutation of Smith's work, " De veritatibus non scriptis." 2 But, whether the work be Cranmer's or not, the principle is clearly set forth in the fifth of the Articles of Religion of 1553 (which corresponds, with some slight modifications, with the sixth of our XXXIX. Articles), not improbably written by Cranmer's pen. It is scarcely possible to overrate the importance of the great principle of the ultimate authority and sufficiency of Holy Scripture. In the past it lifted from men's minds a heavy burden of folly and superstition. It was, and is, an emanci- pating energy. So long as this principle is not lost sight of, so long as men turn reverently and studiously to examine the teaching of the New 1 " So eager was the demand for the work that in the same year (1550) three impressions of it appeared." — Todd's Life of Archbishop Cranmer, ii. 237. 2 The question as to the authorship will be found dis- cussed in Cranmer's Remains (P. S. edit.). The translation by " E. P.," through which the work is best known, did not appear till Queen Mary's time. PADDOCK LECTURES I 3 Testament, there is little fear of any wide doctrinal aberrations in this direction or in that. The scholarly study of the Scriptures is the source of a potent vis medica that cannot fail to disintegrate and scatter those morbid growths in belief which have a tendency to recur from time to time, and which are not unknown among ourselves. Cranmer's "Defence of the true Catholic doc- trine of the Sacrament " immediately called forth replies from the Roman party, and notably one from Stephen Gardiner. 1 As the work of a man of learning and ability, who had occupied a high station, as Bishop of Winchester, this treatise more especially called for an answer ; and in 1 55 1 appeared Cranmer's elaborate rejoinder — " An answer unto a crafty and sophistical cavil- lation devised by Stephen Gardiner, Doctor of Law, late Bishop of Winchester." 2 This was the most considerable work that had yet come from the pen of any of the English Reformers. It is written in a clear and forcible English style, singularly free from the Latinisms that some- times disfigured the prose of the period. Cran- mer's method is first to print a section of his 1 A?i explicatioii and assertio?i of the true Catholic faith touching the blessed Sacrainent of the Altar, with the con- futation of a book written against the same. This work was printed in France. Gardiner was a prisoner at the time of its appearance. 2 Another edition appeared in 1552. 14 PADDOCK LECTURES earlier work, the Defence, then to give in full in Gardiner's own language his comments on that section, and, lastly, his own reply to those comments ; and so throughout, section after section. This method, though manifestly fair to his opponent, may be felt somewhat wearisome by modern readers. Yet on those who have the patience to read the whole the impression made is deep and lasting. The ability with which Gardiner had conducted his case cannot be questioned. His reputation, it is true, was greater as a canonist than as a theologian ; but in this work he had the advantage of assist- ance from others, and his own skill is manifest throughout. Indeed, in some of the side issues and details of the controversy, Gardiner seems to me to have the best of the argument. But Cran- mer is triumphant in disposing of the attempt to identify the teaching of the English Reformers with the views that were then spoken of as those of the " Sacramentaries," and have since, whether rightly or wrongly, been commonly referred to as " Zwinglian." What seems to me of most importance to observe is that what has been, with few exceptions, the Eucharistic doctrine of the great body of the best Anglican divines is found clearly formulated and fully expounded in the writings of Archbishop Cranmer. There has been, indeed, but little added to the treat- ment of the controversy with Rome upon the Eucharist since the discussion conducted by PADDOCK LECTURES I 5 Gardiner and Cranmer. The sense of the same passages of Scripture, the sense of the same quotations from the Fathers, are still in dispute. The argument took into account all the nice dis- tinctions with which technical theologians delight to adorn their pages. It was a contest between experts. The phraseology, of which much has been made of late, as to a body being " present not locally," as to a body being " present in a spiritual manner," and such like, were all well known to, and discussed by, the disputants of the sixteenth century. Similarly, with regard to the " sacrifice of the mass," Cranmer expressly notices the contention of the Romanists that they never claim to make a new sacrifice or any other than Christ made. Gardiner declared that it was " a mere blasphemy " to presuppose that the sacrifice of Christ "once consummate in per- fection " should be reiterated. These points are noticed here to disabuse the minds of any who may have been led to fancy that the English Re- formers were dealing only with the crude, popular, and unauthorized notions of the vulgar of their day. On the contrary, they were thoroughly familiar with, and thoroughly versed in, the minute and subtle distinctions of the accom- plished theologians of the time. It has been sometimes alleged that Ridley differed from Cranmer's views — I mean his later views — on the Eucharist. After a careful examin- ation of the writings of both, I am unable to 1 6 PADDOCK LECTURES discover any appreciable difference. And it may be advantageous to exhibit here, from an historical view-point, a summary of the doctrine of these two theologians — the master spirits of the Reformation theology. For our purpose the following seven propositions may suffice — 1. The substance of the bread and wine remain after consecration. 2. The consecrated bread and wine are called the Body and Blood of Christ because they are the appointed signs, or sacraments, of that Body and Blood. 3. They are not "bare signs" ; they are "effect- ual signs" {efficacia signd)\ for, through the almighty power of God, on their due reception the worthy receiver is verily and indeed made partaker of the Body and Blood of Christ. 4. The Body and Blood of Christ is to be sought not in the bread and wine, but in the worthy receiver of them. Christ is no more in the bread and wine than the Holy Spirit is in the water of baptism. 1 5. When it is said that the Body and Blood of Christ are in the worthy receiver, what is meant is that " the force, the grace, the virtue and benefit of Christ's Body that was crucified for us, and His Blood that was shed for us, be really and effectually present " in him. 1 The often cited words of Hooker (E. P. V. Ixvii. 6, Keble's edit.) will be found substantially anticipated in Cranmer's Answer (P. S. p. 52). PADDOCK LECTURES 1 7 6. The wicked do not eat and drink the Body and Blood of Christ in any other sense than that they eat and drink the signs, or sacraments, which are called by their names. 7. The sacrament of the Eucharist is called a sacrifice, primarily because it is a representation, commemoration, memorial of the sacrifice of Calvary; and, also, in a secondary sense, as being an offering of our praise and thanks- giving, including the offering unto God of our- selves and all that we have. Having thus briefly exhibited the doctrine of Cranmer and Ridley, I would call attention to the emphasis with which Cranmer asserts that the worthy receiver "truly" and "indeed" eats and drinks Christ's Body and Blood. 1 Ridley, with no less emphasis, employs the phrase vere et realiter of the presence of Christ's Body and Blood to the worthy receiver. 2 Similarly Bishop Hooper, one of the most extreme and determined of the opponents of the Roman dogma, declared — " We do verily and indeed receive His Body and Blood." 3 I do not trouble you to inquire in what sense these terms were used; I would only point out that language to be found in that part of the Church Catechism which was added in 1604 was used by the first Reformers ; and that therefore it 1 See Answer, p. 87 (P. S.). 2 Works, p. 274 (P. S.). 3 Later Writings, p. 49 (P. S.). 1 8 PADDOCK LECTURES is impossible to infer from the use of such language that the Catechism teaches any doc- trine incompatible with the views held by Cranmer, Ridley, and Hooper. Here we may perceive one of the subsidiary gains to be derived from the study of the early writers of the Reformed Church : we are by it saved from putting a construction, not necessarily intended, upon the language of our Church's formularies. The literary history of the controversy be- tween Cranmer and Gardiner does not end with the Answer of the former. Gardiner rejoined in 1552, under the assumed name of Marcus Antonius Constantius, in a Latin treatise which bore the truculent title Confutatio cavillationum quibus Sacrosanctum Eucharistice Sacramcntum ab impiis Capliarnaitis impeti solet. In 1554, when a second edition appeared, the altered circumstances of the realm led Gardiner to discard the pseudonym, and add " Authore Stephano, Winton Episcopo, Angliae Cancel- lario." It is said that Cranmer had made pre- parations for a further reply when he was at once and for ever effectively silenced by a cruel death. Beside his controversial treatises we owe to Cranmer's pen certainly one, and not improbably three, of the discourses which appeared in the First Book of Homilies (1547). In the homily which is universally acknowledged to be his, that entitled " Of the Salvation of Man by only PADDOCK LECTURES 1 9 Christ our Saviour," we have an able attempt to expound the doctrine of justification by faith, and to save it from the imputation of antinomian consequences. 1 The other homilies commonly assigned to the authorship of the Archbishop are those entitled " Of a true, lively, and Christian faith," and " Of good works annexed unto faith." They are certainly written in much the same style as his undoubted discourse, and carry on the same line of thought. 2 1 This homily must be identified with the homily re- ferred to in the Articles of Religion (Article xi.) as " the homily of Justification"; and thus carries not only the general commendation expressed in Article xxxv., but a special commendation of its own. 2 Though it does not come within the strict scope of these Lectures, it may be permitted to ask for recognition of the services rendered to religion by Cranmer's promotion of the study of the Scriptures (see his Preface to the English Bible of 1540), and, still more, by his wisdom and literary skill in rendering and adapting the Latin service-books to the use of the Reformed Church. Ex- cept as regards the Litany, we may be unable to assign his exact personal share in the work, but his superintend- ing eye was over all. Here and there (as, for example, in the cases of the Collect for the Sunday after Ascension Day and the Collect for the Fourth Sunday in Advent) an important point has been missed or perverted ; but, taken as a whole, the English Prayer-book is indeed a priceless heritage. The late Dean Burgon scarcely ex- aggerated the truth when he wrote that " in countless instances they [the Reformers] have transfused the curt- est, baldest, and darkest of the Latin collects into truly harmonious and transparent English." See my article 20 PADDOCK LECTURES The persecution in which Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley suffered death, drove many of their followers from their native land. Among the exiles was John Jewel (1522 — 1571), sometime Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. From his youth Jewel had been an indefatig- able student. It is recorded of him that in his Oxford days his practice was to rise at four of the clock, and to continue his studies with but little intermission till ten at night. His culture was wide in its extent. The Greek and Latin classics, philosophy, and mathematics had each occupied his attention. But at an early period of his life he began a study of St. Augustine, which was in after years followed by an acquaintance with the whole range of patristic literature. On his escape from England Jewel is found at Frankfort, where he took the side of Dr. Cox and the other defenders of the use of the English Prayer-book. From Frankfort he proceeded to Strassburg, and, later on to Zurich, being in both places the guest of Peter Martyr. In these days of banishment it was his practice every afternoon to read aloud to his host the works of the ancient Fathers. During the time of exile he was thus quietly laying up the stores of learning which he afterwards employed with such effect. At the close of 1558 Queen Mary died, and Jewel at once returned to his native land, a on " Literary Aspects of Prayer-book Revision " in the Contemporary Review ^ vol. xviii. pp. 267—283. PADDOCK LECTURES 2 1 strong man well equipped. It was not long before he made his presence felt. On November 2 6, 1559, he preached his famous "Challenge Sermon ' at Paul's Cross. 1 The contention of this remarkable discourse was that the Church of England, in the points on which she differed from the Church of Rome, had Christian antiquity on her side. It avoided theological speculations. Its method was historical. In its amplified form the " Challenge " laid down twenty-seven propositions, relating mostly to the Eucharist and Roman usages in the cele- bration of the mass ; and then the preacher declared — " If any learned man of all our adver- saries, or if all the learned men that be alive, be able to bring one sufficient sentence out of any old catholic Doctor, or Father, or out of any old General Council, or out of the Holy Scrip- tures of God," whereby any one of these twenty- seven propositions " may be clearly and plainly proved," then " I am content to yield unto him and subscribe." 2 It is unnecessary here to re- count the propositions laid down as incapable of support from the testimonies of the ancient 1 After Jewel's consecration as Bishop of Salisbury, this sermon, with the " Challenge" amplified, was repeated before the Court (March 17, 1560), and a fortnight later once again before a general auditory at Paul's Cross. 2 The twenty-seven propositions may be found in Jewel's Works (P. S.), vol. i. pp. 20, 21 (see also p. 103) ; in Collier's Ecclesiastical History, vi. 293 ; Cardwell's Documentary Annals, i. 254. 22 PADDOCK LECTURES Church. It will suffice, if as specimens the two following are given — " That the accidents, or forms, or shews of bread and wine be the sacra- ments of Christ's Body and Blood, and not rather the very bread and wine itself;" and again, "that the sacrament is a sign or token of the Body of Christ that lieth hidden underneath it." The gauntlet flung down by Jewel was taken up first by Henry Cole (who had been Dean of St Paul's in Queen Mary's time), and afterwards by Thomas Harding, a man of considerable learning and much ability, who had formerly been a Fellow of New College, and Professor of Hebrew, in the University of Oxford, and was now at Louvain, where he had the assistance of many capable Roman Catholic theologians. Jewel replied to both antagonists ; and the exhaustive examination of Harding's Atiswer (1564) occupies a considerable part of two large volumes of the Parker Society's edition of Jewel's Works} The title-page of the " Challenge Sermon " bears upon it two mottoes which set forth the central thought — the appeal to antiquity. First stands^the sentence from Tertullian, " Prsejudi- 1 In the reign of Edward VI. Harding had been vio- lent on the side of the Reformers. More particularly he assailed " the paper walls and painted fires of purgatory," and " wished his voice had been equal to the great bell of Osney that he might ring in the dull ears of the deaf Papists." See Overall's "Dedication," prefixed to the folio editions (1609 and 161 1) of Jewel's Works. PADDOCK LECTURES 23 catum est adversus omnes haereses : id est verum quodcunque primum ; id est adulterum quod- cunque posterius ; " and then follows the familiar clause of the Nicene canon, e#>; ap-^aia Kparelro. And, whatever may now be thought of the success of Jewel's challenge as regards every particular of his series of propositions, the general principle of the appeal to antiquity, and (to be consistent with Tertullian's dictum) to the ear/test antiquity, has been commonly adopted and urged by th^ greatest Anglican divines. In the days of Jewel the so-called " theory of development" had not been devised, and Rome was then as eager as England to claim the testimony of an- tiquity on her behalf. But neither in this nor in his subsequent discussions does Jewel ever swerve from the position that the Holy Scrip- tures are the ultimate standard of doctrine. The Fathers may help in guiding us to the sense of Scripture, but it is in that light we must regard them. Non sunt domini sed duces nostri. The " Challenge Sermon " was followed in 1562 by the work of Jewel with which his name and fame are most commonly associated, and which has taken the place of a classic in the literature of English theology — the Apologia Ecclesice Anglicana*. This small treatise, which the author describes as " a little book in the Latin tongue, . . . containing the whole substance of the catholic faith, now professed and freely preached in England," immediately 24 PADDOCK LECTURES attracted general attention. It was translated into English, 1 Italian, Spanish, French, German, Greek, and Welsh, and in its original Latin form it was republished on the Continent. It was the first clear and full statement of the faith of the reformed Church of England ; and the English Church did not hesitate to submit it to the judgment of the world. But no testimony to the importance attached at the time to this work can be so impressive as this, that the Council of Trent is said to have appointed two learned pre- lates to furnish a reply to it — a reply, it may be added, which never saw the light. The first part of the Apology claims that the Church of England "has returned to the Apostles and the old catholic Fathers," in opposition to the Roman contention that she had lapsed into heresy. The second part sets forth the essential faith of the Church of England, following the lines of the Nicene Creed on the subjects of the Trinity and the Incarnation. He goes on to assert the independence of the national Church, denying that the Bishop of Rome hath any more jurisdiction over the Church at large than 1 By Lady Anne Bacon, wife of the Lord Keeper, and mother of Lord Chancellor Bacon. This learned lady sent a copy of her translation to Jewel, accompanied with a letter in Greek. According to Strype {Life and Acts of Matthew Parker, i. 357) an English version had appeared as early as 1562. The translation of Lady Bacon ap- peared in 1564, with a commendatory letter from the pen of Archbishop Parker. PADDOCK LECTURES 25 the Patriarch of Antioch, or the Patriarch of Alexandria. We receive all the canonical Scriptures. They are " the very sure and infal- lible rule whereby may be tried whether the Church doth stagger or err, and whereunto all ecclesiastical doctrines ought to be called to account." It is unnecessary to follow in detail Jewel's further statement of the Anglican posi- tion, and his telling replies to Roman objections. It must suffice here to cite his answer to those who were then urging — even as certain persons have ever since been wont to urge — the evils of religious strife. " To have peace with man we will not be at war with God. ' Sweet indeed is the name of peace,' saith Hilary, ' but peace, ' saith he, ' is one thing, bondage is another.' " And entirely appropriate to some schemes for reunion with Rome, which have been ventilated in our own day, are the words of Jewel, where he declares that the Bishop of Rome will make no other league with us than such as, of old time, Nahash, king of the Ammonites, would make with the men of Jabesh. " On this condition will I make a covenant with you, that I may thrust out all your right eyes." As it had been in the case of the " Challenge Sermon," so now in the case of the " Apology," among several inferior antagonists the able and zealous Harding stands out pre-eminent in his Confutation (1565). Jewel found in Harding a foeman worthy of his steel ; and in the elaborate 26 PADDOCK LECTURES Defence of the Apology we find Jewel at his best. It is a work which displays great powers of argument and an extraordinary wealth of patristic learning. 1 The struggle between the two combatants was carried on with a keenness and persistence to which there is no parallel in recent times. Point after point is fought with a vigour and determination that may well excite wonder. Harding's violent and ferocious invec- tive, touched as it would seem with something of personal animosity, is not in his case a sign of weakness ; but it contrasts unfavourably with the prevailing self-possession and dignity of Jewel, who is but seldom betrayed into return- ing railing for railing, contenting himself with exhibiting, with sarcastic humour, in the forefront of his book, long lists of the choicest specimens of his antagonist's scurrility, which he entitles " Principal Flowers of M. Harding's Modest Speech." 2 It may be frankly admitted that in this pro- longed debate, Jewel, as well as his opponent, misses at times the sense of the authors whom 1 The rather perplexing bibliography of the various stages of the controversy is discussed in the Preface to Dr. Jelf's edition of Jewel, and in the Parker Society's edition, iv., p. xxvii. 2 Such as "thieves," "liars," "apostates," "limbs of Antichrist," " Satan's brood," " Bark until your bellies break, ye hell-hounds of Zuinglius, and Luther's litter," " Rail until your tongues burn in your heads in hell fire," etc., etc. PADDOCK LECTURES 2J he cites, and at times alleges authorities that will not sustain the weight of argument he constructs upon them. Both combatants, again, were exposed to the danger of quoting as genuine, writings which, in the light of more information and a keener criticism, have since been questioned, discredited, or set aside as spurious. Other errors incident to the scholarship of the period can hardly be reckoned as discreditable. Thus, when Jewel rightly refuses to acknowledge the Apostolical Constitutions to be the work of St. Clement of Rome (as Harding had alleged), he puts forward among his reasons for so doing, one that must now be abandoned. " The reader, be he never so simple," writes Jewel, "cannot believe that a Bishop of Rome wrote his books in Greek and not in Latin." 1 Jewel, again, fights hard for the truth of the mediaeval story of " Pope Joan." But whatever may now be thought of this curious legend (and the last word has not yet been said), it was certainly no Protestant invention, but had obtained general credence for many years before the Reformation ; indeed, it would seem that it had never been seriously questioned till the time of Luther. With much less excuse, for the forgery had been amply exposed, Harding accepts as genuine the "Donation of Constantine," and makes much of it in his argument. It was all but inevitable at the time, but it 1 Works (P. S.), i- PP- 108 and in. 28 PADDOCK LECTURES is, nevertheless, a sad feature of these early debates, that both parties sought to widen rather than diminish the breach between them. Every difference is amplified and insisted on. Even on questions where a little mutual explanation would have shown that there was no irreconcil- able contrariety, the desire seems to have been to emphasize every smallest divergence of ex- pression. A better spirit in this respect showed itself, as we shall see, in many of the contro- versialists of the next century ; indeed, before the close of the sixteenth century it is apparent in Hooker. But whatever may be the deficiencies or occasional errors of Jewel in detail, his Defence of the Apology is indeed a great work, and, taken as a whole, is a masterly and triumphant vindication of the Anglican position. 1 Jewel was certainly the most learned theo- logian who had yet appeared in the reformed Church of England ; and from his copious stores later controversialists have freely drawn. It would be wearisome to quote the numerous testimonies to his commanding powers. It may suffice if we recite two — first, the words of a great contemporary, and then those of a capable and judicious critic of recent times. " Jewel," wrote 1 As late as 1610, Archbishop Bancroft directed that every parish should procure a copy of Jewel's collected Works— the folio printed by Norton (1609). See Card- well's Documentary Annals, ii. 127. PADDOCK LECTURES 29 Hooker, " was the worthiest divine that Christen- dom hath bred for some hundreds of years." l Not England only, but Christendom ; it is a bold utterance, but he would be presumptuous who would lightly declare it to be extravagant. From our own century we draw the second testimony. " Jewel," wrote a competent judge," " was a man of matchless learning, which he nevertheless wields, ponderous as it is, like a plaything ; of a most polished wit ; a style, whether Latin or English, the most pure and expressive, such as argues a precision in the character of his ideas, and a lucid order in the arrangement of them, quite his own." Certainly, the writings of no private doctor of the Church of England have so nearly attained the authori- tative position of symbolical books. 3 Jewel died in 1 571, before he had attained the age of fifty. Shortly before his death, the battle between England and Rome, which had previously extended along the whole line of controversy, became suddenly concentrated to a single point, around which the struggle lasted for some years, and which continued to be a 1 E. P. II. vi. 4. 2 J. J. Blunt (afterwards Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge) in his Sketch of t/ie Reformation in England, p. 305. 3 The esteem in which Jewel was held by a long succession of our great divines, of all schools, is exhibited in the Quarterly Review, vol. lxix. 476-7. 3 m his Directions to a Young Divine for his Study of Divi?iity a?id choice of Books (in his Ge?iui?ie Remains, p. 86), writes — " No book I have yet seen has so rational and short an account of almost all popish controversies." The edition in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology is edited by C[hristopher] \Y[ordsworth], afterwards Bishop of Lincoln, a lineal descendant of Crakanthorp. PADDOCK LECTURES 97 These writings as afterwards collected and pre- sented to the world are in truth a large mis- cellany of divinity, abounding in good learning, ingenious argument, and curious speculation. They are marred by a fault common enough in the preceding generation — an inveterate ten- dency to discursiveness. The author is quite unable to restrain himself when his path is crossed by some incidental question of interest ; and he immediately starts in full cry after this new object of the chase. This occurs again and again, and the effect is highly distracting. The outlines of any plan or system are with difficulty discerned, and the embarrassment is increased by the original editor of the collected Works, inserting here and there sermons by the author which he thinks are in some degree allied to the subject in hand. Indeed, as now presented to us, Jackson's twelve Books on the Creed remind one of a set of rambling buildings, con- structed by some amateur architect, one piece added here, and, after an interval, another added there ; a new wing built on one side and a new outhouse appended to the other ; and all devoid of any clear and well-defined plan. To find one's way in such a structure is not easy ; and one often comes on unexpected things in un- likely places. Anti-Roman polemics, scattered here and there, occupy a large space ; and dis- cussions on the Calvinian doctrine of Predesti- nation with the allied topics are dealt with in H 98 PADDOCK LECTURES an able manner. We have beside inquiries into the relations of the Church and the State, the interpretation of prophecy, the authenticity of the Old Testament history, the sources of atheism, the nature of evil, justification by faith, the significance of the Levitical ritual, the heathen oracles, the eternity of punishment, the Christian sacraments, dreams as prognostics of truth, and a vast variety of other questions, some important, and others curious and entertaining. It will be readily admitted that there is much that is valuable and instructive to be found in Jackson's discussions ; but it is difficult to under- stand how one, ordinarily so sane and sober in his bestowment of praise and blame, could use the language applied to our author by Robert Southey when he wrote, " In my judgment the most valuable of all our English divines ... an author with whom, more almost than any other, one might be contented in a prison." It may be that the unregulated discursiveness that I lament was one of the main attractions for such a miscellaneous, or rather omnivorous reader as Southey. Variety certainly there is in rich abundance. In his own day Jackson won the admiration of learned and pious men. Good George Herbert declared with warmth, " I speak it in the presence of God, I have not read so hearty, vigorous a champion against Rome, so convincing and demonstrative, as is Dr. Jackson ; and I bless PADDOCK LECTURES 99 God for the confirmation he hath given me in the Christian religion against the Atheist, Jew, and Socinian." And it was the reputation of Jackson that at length drew from his " cell " Joseph Mead, the recluse of Christ's College, Cambridge, to undertake a journey to the sister University town. 1 During the reign of James I. and Charles I. — ■ indeed one may extend the observation to the whole of the seventeenth century — among the crowd of distinguished ecclesiastical literati, not one for learning reaches the lofty eminence of James Ussher (1580 — 1656). He was indeed "a giant among giants." 2 For erudition, full and exact, in almost every department of ecclesi- astical learning — erudition which he handles with the ease of complete mastery — Ussher 1 In the last century Jones of Nayland, in his Life of Bishop Home, is warm in his commendation of Jackson, and considers that " he deserves to be numbered with the English Fathers of the Church." It may be worth point- ing out that Jackson's view of "the real presence" in the Eucharist is that of "a spiritual influence or virtual presence " (Book xi. chap. 3, IVorks, vol. x. p. 27). He teaches that there is not " any other kind of local presence or compresence with these elements than is in baptism. The orthodoxical ancients use the same language for expressing His [i.e. Christ's] presence in baptism and in the Eucharist ; they stick not to say that Christ is present or latent, in the water, as well as in the elements of bread and wine." Works, vol. ix. p. 595. 2 A. W. Haddan, in his Life of H. TJiomdike. 100 PADDOCK LECTURES stands pre-eminent. The two fascinating volumes of his correspondence 1 show us something of his varied interests in the field of research, and also something of the general admiration in which he was held in the world of letters. Indeed the learning of Europe in the seven- teenth century would not be very inadequately represented by the names of those with whom Ussher carried on a scholarly intercourse. There we find Hebraists, Talmudical scholars, and Orientalists, like the younger Buxtorf, Louis de Dieu, L'Empereur, and Capel ; inquirers into the early history and antiquity of the Christian Church, classical critics and patristic scholars such as Valois (Valesius), 2 Gerard and Isaac Voss, Saumaise (Salmasius), Gataker, Sir Henry Saville, and the French Protestants, Daille and Blondel ; antiquarians and bibliopJiiles, such as Camden, Bodley, Dugdale, Cotton, Spelman, and Selden ; and theologians, such as Andrewes, Mead, John Forbes of Corse, Hammond, Joseph Hall, Bramhall, Cudworth, and Thorndike. The seventeen volumes of Elrington's edition of Ussher's Works exhibit him as a student in many regions of inquiry. But briefly his writ- ings may, for the most part, be grouped in five divisions : — i. Anti-Roman polemics. 2. Early Christian antiquities. 1 Works, Elrington's edit. 2 The editor of the text of Eusebius. PADDOCK LECTURES IOI 3. The ecclesiastical and civil antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland. 4. Chronology. 5. Sermons and other practical and popular treatises. The natural bent of Ussher's mind was from the first towards historical inquiry. The exi- gences of the time and of his country forced upon his attention the controversy with Rome. He determined to investigate the problems in- volved from the historical side. Was the faith of the Papacy the faith of the early Church ? To answer this question he resolved at the age of twenty to read right through the whole works of the Christian Fathers. This was a great and arduous undertaking ; but, despite distractions of many kinds, he persevered in his task, and accomplished it after eighteen years of labour. At an early age Ussher perceived that the slippery scholastic speculations which occupied so large a place in theological controversy were not the safest standing-ground. He would rest on the surer basis of facts, so soon as he could securely ascertain them for himself. What was absent from the faith of the early Church, he concluded, could be none of its essentials. He accepted the maxim of Tertullian, Verum quod- cunque primum ; adulterum quodcunque posterius. And it was on this side he approached the subject of our differences from the modern Romanism of his day. 102 PADDOCK LECTURES Ussher's Answer to a cJiallenge made by a Jesuit in Ireland (1625) aims at delivering truly "the judgment of antiquity in the points ques- tioned," and exhibiting " the novelty of the now Romish doctrine." The student of this and other of his works is soon impressed with the sense that we have here indeed a master, one who ranges with the confidence of sure pos- session over the whole field of patristic and earlier mediaeval literature. His critical acumen, naturally keen, and cultivated by exercise, shows itself in his distinguishing genuine from spurious or doubtful authorities ; and in this respect none of the earlier English theologians were qualified to compare with him. Again, it is not un- common to find among those who immerse themselves in the study of patristic authorities an unsteadiness or feebleness of the individual judgment. But Ussher never totters under the weight of his erudition. In his treatise Of tlie Religion anciently pro- fessed by the Irish and British (1631), Ussher dealt with a subject that was peculiarly his own. While still a young man, he began, conjointly with his patristic studies, to collect every docu- ment that could help to illustrate the early religious history of the British Isles ; and the result of his indefatigable labours took shape in three principal works. There is, first, the treatise named above, written in English, with the view, as he tells us, " to induce my poor countrymen TADDOCK LECTURES 1 03 to consider a little better of the old and true way from whence they have hitherto been mis- led " ( Works, iv. 237). Secondly, we have that invaluable storehouse of historical learning, the Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates (1634), a work which has not been superseded, and which must be constantly in the hands of every student of the Celtic Churches of Great Britain and Ireland. Thirdly, we have the less important Veternm Epistolarum Hibernicarum Sylloge (1632), being an interesting collection of some fifty documents, chiefly letters, relating to the early Irish Church. 1 The most remarkable of Ussher's labours in the field of early Christian antiquity is his con- tribution to the recovery of the genuine text of the Ignatian Epistles. In our own day the late Bishop Lightfoot, who for learning and critical sagacity reminds us of Ussher himself, has established to the satisfaction of almost all com- petent scholars the genuineness of what is known as the middle or shorter Greek recension ; and certainly on this subject no one is entitled to speak with a greater weight of authority. And it is interesting to find how Lightfoot's judgment, generally of a temper cold and severe, catches fire when he comes to speak of Ussher. " By Ussher's labours," writes Lightfoot, " the question between the long and middle recension was, or ought to 1 A new edition of this work, with illustrative notes, would be welcomed by scholars. 104 PADDOCK LECTURES have been, set at rest for ever. Altogether [his work] showed not only marvellous erudition, but also the highest critical genius." 1 After this testimony it would be a sensibly felt descent to cite the eulogies pronounced by men of lesser name ; but that Ussher established his main con- tention to the satisfaction of such critics as Grotius and Voss, Pearson and Bull, Bentley and Waterland, is no small triumph. Before passing from this subject I may be allowed to point out how the extraordinarily wide reach of Ussher's reading served him in this particular branch of research. The inquirer into the earliest relics of Christian literature might well be excused if he did not look to the ecclesias- tical documents of England in the Middle Ages as a quarter from which it was likely that any light would be thrown upon his researches. Yet it was Ussher's acquaintance with the writings of Gros- tete, Bishop of Lincoln in the middle of the thirteenth century, and of such obscure authors as Wycliffe's opponents, Wodeford and Tissing- ton, that set him on the track which led to the recovery of the lost epistles of Ignatius. The man of genius who is full of his subject sees mysterious hints and suggestions where to the ordinary reader all is void, featureless, and jejune. Clues to the object of his search are furnished by intimations as unapparent or unmeaning to others, as the tokens and marks in the forest hunting-grounds 1 St. Ignatius, vol. i., p. 233. PADDOCK LECTURES 1 05 by which the trained senses of the savage tracks his prey. The thrill of pleasure as step by step he is led to success is not disguised by Ussher, and the natural, though restrained, expression of his feelings illumines and brightens with a glow of personal interest the close-knit argument of the great Dissertation. 1 Ussher had been brought up under the influence of Calvinistic teachers of an extreme type. Arch- bishop Loftus, the first Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, was one the complexion of whose church- manship may be gathered from the fact that Cartwright was his chaplain. The second Provost was Walter Travers, Hooker's opponent at the Temple Church. It is not very surprising that young Ussher imbibed the notions of his teachers ; but it is more surprising that in later times he was able to free himself from the convictions of his earlier years. 2 In the same year (1631) in which appeared his work on the Religion of the A ncient Irish and British Churches, there appeared also his history of the Gottskalk controversy of the ninth century, a solid and valuable piece of work, though plainly written with a Calvinistic bias. 3 1 Dissertatio non de Ignatii solum et Poly carpi Scrifttis, sed etiam de Apostolicis Constitutionibus et Canonibus dementi Romano tributis (1644). 2 Bishop Sanderson underwent a similar change of opinion. His earlier treatises are distinctly marked by Calvinism. 3 Gotteschalci et predestinations ' controversitc abeo mot 02 106 PADDOCK LECTURES The ability and vast erudition displayed in Ussher's chronological researches are acknow- ledged equally among continental and English scholars. But any estimate of their value as furnishing ultimate statements must be left to specialists in that difficult department of inquiry. In his Annates Veteris Testamenti we have one of the earliest attempts to reduce to system the chronology of the Old Testament history as represented by the Hebrew text ; and it may be observed that it is substantially the dates as supplied by Ussher that are now to be seen in the margins of nearly all editions of the English Bible. 1 Ussher was nominated by Parliament to be a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines ; but he refused to attend it, and declared further that that gathering was both illegal and in its tendency schismatical. In revenge his library was confiscated by Parliament ; and though, through the generosity of John Selden and others, it was bought back, or in some other way saved, for the Primate, it was found that many of his valued manuscripts had been removed. When we consider the anxieties of Ussher's position, the turbulent times in which historia. In this volume Ussher gave to the world for the first time the original text of Gottskalk's two con- fessions. 1 These chronological notes first appeared in Bishop Lloyd's edition of the Bible, 1701. PADDOCK LECTURES 107 he lived, and the many hardships of his later years, one marvels the more at his unremitting literary labours continued up to the very last. 1 Perhaps it may have been with Ussher, as in instances known to some of us, that the remote, out-of-the-world inquiries of learned research made for him a kind of asylum against the shocks of fate — a haven of refuge where he could forget the tempests and wild waves that raged without. A short tract of Ussher's written as early as 1 641 (but not published till the year after his death) is better known to the general public interested in ecclesiastical affairs than any of his more learned treatises. It is entitled TJie Reduc- tion of Episcopacy unto the form of Sy nodical Government received in tJie Ancient Church? Its original purpose was to suggest a modifica- tion of the then form of episcopal government which he hoped might have averted the approach- ing ecclesiastical revolution. Its interest to us now lies chiefly in its exhibition of practical sagacity combined with sound learning in antici- pating very largely the actual course adopted by every branch of the Anglican communion 1 He was at work on the Chronologia Sacra till the evening twilight failed him on the day before his death. From his study he passed to another room in the house to offer spiritual consolation to a dying person. Before two o'clock the next day (March 21, 1656) he himself had ceased to breathe. His last audible words were, " O Lord, forgive me, especially my sins of omission." 2 Works j xii. pp. 527—536. IOS PADDOCK LECTURES throughout the world, that has, through dis- establishment or otherwise, been freed from the control of the State. And it is plain also that the Church of England is, so far as may be, moving in the same direction. Ussher, as might have been expected from one so thoroughly versed in the literature of primitive Christianity, maintained that the episcopal form of Church government was established by the apostles, and indeed, he added, " confirmed by Christ Himself." 1 But he was evidently convinced of the evils growing from the autocratic power of bishops, and desired a return to the more fraternal relations of bishops and presbyters, as manifested in the early Church. 1 Ussher held that "the angels of the seven churches" to whom Christ is represented in the Apocalypse as sending epistles were bishops ; and it may be questioned whether Bishop Lightfoot has shown any satisfactory reason for questioning that ancient belief. See Works, vii. 43, sea. LECTURE IV Montagu — Laud as a theologian — Chillingworth — Joseph Hall — Jeremy Taylor — Cosin — Bramhall — Hammond — Brian Walton and his colleagues — John Lightfoot — Beveridge — Thorndike — Stillingfleet. Nothing could have been more unfortunate for the interests of the Church of England in the seventeenth century than the association of many of its leading divines with those theories of political government which took shape in the crude assertion of " the divine right of kings " and of the doctrine of " passive obedience." All this was in truth a retrograde movement from the political doctrines of the greater mediaeval Schoolmen and from the moderate teaching of Hooker. It seemed in the popular view to connect the Church with a policy that was arbitrary and tyrannical. In its extreme form it alienated thousands of sober-minded and sensible men. It threw many who would other- wise have been loyal churchmen into the arms of the Puritan party. It rendered men suspicious and hostile towards the teaching of those who 109 HO PADDOCK LECTURES claimed divine authority for action that was harsh and oppressive, if not unconstitutional. By many ecclesiastics the divine right of tithes was urged together with the divine right of the hereditary n;onarchy. When Selden l with in- comparable learning, proceeding cautiously on purely historical evidence, denied that tithes were exacted in the early Christian Church, Richard Montagu (1578 — 1641), afterwards Bishop of Nor- wich, entered the lists on behalf of the clergy. 2 I will not lead you into this outworn controversy : it must suffice to say that this work first called attention to the abilities of a very able con- troversialist whose name afterwards came to figure largely in the politics of the time. The action of Parliament with respect to Montagu's two later treatises — Of Invocation of Saints (1624) and Appello Ccesarem (1625) — is part of the civil history of England. But the contents of the volumes themselves are little known. Nor has Montagu received the con- sideration which these and, more especially, his other learned labours deserve. He had assisted Sir H. Saville in the production of his great (Eton) edition of St. Chrysostom (1610 — 1613), one of the glories of the learning of the period, and had himself edited the Greek text of the Two Invectives of St. Gregory Nazianzcn against 1 The History of Tithes, 161 8. 2 Diatribe on the first part of Selderfs History of Tithes, 1 62 1. I'ADDOCK LECTURES Hi Julian (1610). His Analecta Ecclesiasticarum Exercitationum (1622), written with an eye to the great work of Baronius, proved him to be well versed in the early history of the Church. 1 But from these writings one couid not have inferred his powers as a keen, animated, and witty controversialist, addressing himself to the popular ear. Some Roman priests, who had been attempting to proselytize among the " weaker sex " in his parish (Stamford Rivers in Essex), put out a pamphlet, entitled A new Gag/or an old Gospel, in which they attributed to the Church of England a large number of doctrinal pro- positions which, though they were in truth the opinions of many individuals, had never been authorized by the Church. Among these pro- positions were several Calvinistic and Sabba- tarian pronouncements. Montagu replied 2 by showing that such opinions were not the doctrines of the Church's authentic formularies. In the judgment of the ablest historian who has dealt with this period, Montagu's reply was in its matter " a temperate exposition of the reasons which were leading an increasing body of scholars to reject the doctrines of Rome and 1 At a later period, though an active and faithful bishop, he found time to publish other historical works showing- much research and considerable critical power. 2 A S a SS f or th e new Gospel t No, a new gagg for a?t old goose, 1624. 112 PADDOCK LECTURES of Geneva alike." 1 Montagu puts the matter well in his Appcllo Ccesarem, published the following year (1625). He declares that he had replied " with a firm purpose to leave all private opinions . . . unto their own authors or abettors, either to stand or fall of themselves ; and not to suffer the Church of England to be charged with the maintenance of any doctrine which was none of her own, publicly and universally resolved on." Alluding to the law in force at the time for the maintenance of foundling children, he says that the Puritans had supposed, " as it would seem, that in this case we were all liable to the Statute, that is, bound to keep and foster their conceits as our own doctrines, because they have cast them upon us and upon our Church, like bastards upon the parish where they were born." {Epistle Dedicatory?) The action here attributed to the Puritans was much like attempts on the part of some persons in our own day to father upon the Church of England certain doctrinal enfants trouves whose complexion and features, with the rags in which they are wrapped, strongly suggest an Italian parentage. Our appeal, as was Montagu's, is to the authoritative formu- laries of the Church — the Articles of Religion and the Book of Common Prayer. Montagu, in his Appello Ccesarem, examines the Articles and the Prayer-book, and very effectively makes 1 S. R. Gardiner, The Duke of 'Buckingham, etc., i. 206. PADDOCK LECTURES I 13 good his position that they do not teach, but rather contravene the doctrine of God's " irre- spective decree " and its Calvinistic corollaries ; x and, while speaking with respect of the Synod of Dort, he makes clear that its determinations did not touch the members of the Church of England. When Montagu replies to the charge of Romanizing he has a more difficult task, for though generally making a good defence, he had himself occasionally used indiscreet language, capable of being readily misunderstood. 2 And, as is well known, his book the Appello Ccesarem was eventually called in by order of the King. But how far Montagu is removed from sympathy with Popery (as distinguished from certain doctrinal positions generally though incorrectly associated in men's minds with the Roman Church) may be gathered from all his principal works. For the purpose in hand it is merely a scholastic question whether the Pope is the Antichrist, or only an Antichrist, as Montagu asserts. 3 Montagu may, I think, be taken 1 He anticipates in some measure Archbishop Laurence's Bampton Lectures. 2 For example, his employment of the word " trans- elementation" applied to the change in the Eucharist. {Appello Ccesarem, p. 292.) 3 " I will not deny that the Pope is an Antichrist. I do not deny it : I do believe it." Appello Ccesarem (p. 144). He refers to St. John's statement, "now are many Anti- christs." I 114 PADDOCK LECTURES among theologians of distinction as touching the high-water mark of the movement which in the earlier half of the seventeenth century sought to minimize the doctrinal differences between the Anglican and the Roman Communions. The influences at Court at the time ran in that direction ; and an ambitious man would be under considerable temptations to adopt that line. But it is not here suggested that Montagu's convictions were not genuine. During the later years of the reign of James I. and the early years of that of Charles, the Church of Rome and its claims were kept much in the thoughts of Englishmen. James, despite his early controversial treatises, was strongly sus- pected of Romeward leanings. The proposed " Spanish match " for the prince, and his sub- sequent marriage to Henrietta Maria, were taken as signs. And the known activity of Romish proselytizers among the nobility, followed by several fashionable conversions, increased the anxieties of English churchmen. The Jesuit Percy (better known by his assumed name of Fisher), himself a convert to Rome, and with all a convert's zeal, had influenced, among others, the Countess of Buckingham, mother of George Villiers, the King's favourite. It was arranged that a disputation, in the presence of this lady, or, as it was called, a " conference," should be held (May 1622), between Fisher and some Anglican theologians. Francis White, afterwards l'ADDOCK LECTURES I I 5 Bishop of Ely, has left an account of the earlier stages of the conference ; but, certain important questions having been left unhandled, a third day of debate was appointed, on which occa- sion the Anglican champion was William Laud (1573 — 1645), at that time Bishop of St. Davids. The King, who still heartily enjoyed a contro- versial encounter, and several courtiers of rank were present. The result, with some enlarge- ments, were afterwards given to the world by Laud. Laud's subsequent position as an ecclesiastical statesman and the leading mind in ordering and regulating, whether for good or ill, the policy and administration of the Church of England in troublous times, has tended to obscure his place as a theologian and a man of learning. He had been a diligent student of the Roman contro- versy, as is borne witness to by his copious Latin marginalia to Bellarmine's Disputationes} Laud was armed and ready for the battle. He tells us that he had not " the full time of four-and- twenty hours to bethink himself," for the com- mand of the King had been sudden ; but the labours of the patient student and thinker of earlier days now served him in good stead. The Conference zvitJi Fisher is marked through- out by a reasonableness and masculine good 1 The volumes are now in Archbishop Marsh's Library in Dublin. The notes were transcribed for the A. C. L. edition of Laud's works. Il6 PADDOCK LECTURES sense which might not be expected by those who know Laud only through the partisan pages of certain popular historians. 1 Laud was learned, but he was no mere " bookman," to use a word of his own ; and in this controversy he does not suffer from being a man of the world, accustomed to observe, to consider, and to judge the facts of life and history. But, it seems to me, the chief interest that now attaches to the Conference, is the light that it throws on the general attitude of mind, and particular beliefs, of the most promi- nent high-churchman of his day. No one was ever a more staunch and loyal son of the Church of England. No one ever saw more clearly the hopeless impossibility of approaches towards Rome, while Rome remains what she is. Laud, as is well known, was zealous in pro- moting, by example as well as by injunction, all that might advance the beauty and solemn dignity of the public worship of God. By this many in his own day were misled. But it might have sufficed to show that there is no necessary connection between Romanizing and a sense of the value of ritual and ceremonious observance to find Chillingworth, in his Religion 1 At length students of the history of England have in Mr. S. R. Gardiner's great work a truly scholarly and (as far perhaps as is possible in writing the story of such troublous times) impartial account of the reigns of James and Charles. Mr. Gardiner makes clear that Land, with all his rigour as to obedience to Church rule, was in true sympathy with large doctrinal latitude. PADDOCK LECTURES 11/ of Protestants, defending the desire " to adorn and beautify the places where God's honour dwells, and to make them as heaven-like as they can with earthly ornaments." And Laud's writings leave no doubt as to his anti-Roman convictions. To take a crucial example — in the Eucharist Laud sees no other sacrifice than (i) the " memory " (7. e. memorial) of the sacrifice of Calvary ; (2) the sacrifice of praise and thanks- giving ; and (3) the sacrifice of ourselves, our souls and bodies. And again — " This sacrament is commemora- tive of the Lord's passion (which was a trite sacrifice}, and so it is called a sacrifice." And, once again, in our time, when some would denounce the establishment of an episco- pate holding the doctrine of our reformed Church in places where bishops of the Roman obedience can show an undoubted historical succession, it may be well to call to mind the declaration of this leading high-churchman of the seventeenth century. " Most evident it is," writes Laud, " that the succession which the Fathers meant is not tied to a place or a per- son, but it is tied to the verity of doctrine ; for so Tertullian expressly : ' Beside the order of bishops running down (in succession) from the beginning, there is required consangninitas doc- trine, that the doctrine be allied in blood to that of Christ and His apostles.' So that if the doctrine be no kin to Christ, all the succession becometh 1 1 8 PADDOCK LECTURES strangers, what nearness soever they pretend. . . . If that only be a legitimate succession which holds the unity of the faith entire, then the suc- cession of pastors in the Roman Church is illegitimate." {Against Fisher, § 39.) Fisher, the active and clever Roman proselyt- izer, had been busy not only among people of fashion, from whom converts were made, like Lady Buckingham, Lady Falkland, and Lord Purbeck, but also among young men at the University. In fact the picture of those days is not unlike that which was presented some fifty years ago in the frequent conversions to Rome among similar classes in England. Among the converts at the University was a young Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, a godson of Laud, and one who afterwards became famous as the author of The Religion of Protestants — William Chillingworth (1602 — 1644). Chillingworth, after his conversion, was induced by Fisher to repair to the Romish College at Douai, where his faith might be strengthened and consolidated. But the result did not answer the expectations formed. A further acquaintance with Romanism opened his eyes. It requires more moral courage to retrace one's steps and come back, discredited for haste and inconstancy, than to make the first change. But Chillingworth, like some others in later times, could not but follow where he was led by PADDOCK LECTUKKS I 1 9 what he believed to be truth. He returned to England and the English Church. The title of Chillingworth's famous book, The Religion of Protestants, a Safe Way to Salvation (1638), was suggested by that of a little book by a Jesuit (who wrote under the name of Edward Knott), Charity mistaken, zvitJi a want wherof Catholicks are unjustly charged for affirming, as they do with grief, that Protestancy unrepented destroys salvation (1630). 1 Knott supported his book by a subsequent publication entitled Mercy and Truth, or Charity maintained by CatJwlics (1634). It is more particularly against this second work that Chillingworth's treatise is directed. After the manner more common in a previous age than in Chillingworth's day, he reprinted his opponent's book chapter by chapter, to each chapter adding his own reply. Chillingworth's main contention is that all the truths essential to salvation are taught in Holy Scripture (so far he only stated the authoritative doctrine of the Church of England) ; and, further, that those truths are so clearly taught therein as to be readily discovered by every intelligent and honest inquirer. If they are not clearly taught, they are not essential. Further, "all necessary points of mere belief" are contained in the Apostles' Creed, which creed, we may notice in passing, Chillingworth assumes to have 1 Knott's book was replied to in 1633 by Dr. Christo- pher Potter, Provost of Queen's College, Oxford. 120 PADDOCK LECTURES been composed by the Apostles. Here are certainly questionable propositions, propositions that need very full explanation, propositions that say both too much and too little. When inquiry is made, " What is Holy Scrip- ture ? How are we to know that these books are Holy Scripture, having God's authority ? " Chillingworth replies, and here rightly, that we conclude what is Holy Scripture on grounds of natural reason, reason judging by historical evidence, that evidence being found in the judg- ment of the ancient universal Church. When the Romanist cries in triumph, " This is to make the Church the judge," he answers, " I have told you already that of this controversy we make the Church the judge ; but not the present Church, and less the present Roman Church, but the consent and testimony of the ancient and primitive Church." And, he adds, in words very characteristic of the man, " though it be but an highly probable inducement and no demon- strative enforcement, yet methinks you should not deny but it may be a sufficient ground of faith." : In a similar rational spirit, speaking of " the questioned books " of the New Testament, he writes, " I may believe even those questioned books to have been written by the apostles and to be canonical ; but I cannot in reason believe this of them so undoubtedly as of those books which were never questioned." " Yet," he adds, 1 Works (ed. 1838), i. 385. PADDOCK LECTURES 12 t in words that remind one of passages in New- man's Gravimar of Assent, "all this I say not as if I doubted that the Spirit of God, being im- plored by devout and humble prayer and sincere obedience, may and will by degrees advance His servants higher, and give them a certainty of adherence beyond their certainty of evidence. But what God gives as a reward to believers is one thing, and what He requires in all men as their duty is another." One other characteristic passage may be cited. " For my part, I am certain that God hath given us our reason to discern between truth and false- hood ; and he that makes not this use of it, but believes things he knows not why, I say it is by chance that he believes the truth and not by choice ; and that I cannot but fear that God will not accept of this sacrifice of fools!' 1 The import of Chillingworth's thought is pertinent to controversies that are deeper and more fundamental than that with Rome. From the passages cited one can understand how he was so warmly admired by such a simple and devoted lover of truth for truth's sake, and such a typical English thinker, as John Locke. The whole work is, in effect, a homily on the pro- foundly important theme, the responsibility of the intellect in matters of religion. It seems to me that the chief value of Chil- lingworth for our day is to be found in the 1 Vol. i. p. 237. 122 PADDOCK LECTURES moral impetus given by the study of his writings, in the influence of his transparent love of truth and his ardour in its search, which with honest hearts is infectious. Nor can one fail to admire his resolve to bring himself into a strict relation with facts. If evidence be insufficient, he never will allow his desires to add one grain to the scale. Again, with him, as with Butler, it is a maxim that "probability is the very guide of life." Faith may be weak and imperfect, and yet sufficient to please God. Others "pretend that heavenly things cannot be seen to any purpose but by the midday light ; but God will be satisfied if we receive any degree of light which makes us leave the works of darkness and walk as children of the light : they exact a certainty of faith above that of sense or science ; God desires only that we believe the conclusion as much as the premises deserve ; that the strength of our faith be equal or proportionable to the credibility of the motives to it." 1 The value of the Religion of Protestants as a permanent contribution to the Romish contro- versy seems to me to have been generally over- rated. But the success and popularity of the book can be readily accounted for. It possessed the charm of being apparently " a short and easy method " of dealing with matters of dispute that had been commonly exhibited in huge folios, bristling with quotations from the Greek and 1 Vol. i. p. 115. PADDOCK LECTURES 1 23 Latin Fathers, which few could read and still fewer could appraise at their true value. Its masculine power and logical coherence were im- pressive. It was written in admirable English, always simple and clear, generally forcible, and occasionally rising to real eloquence. And its moral earnestness and wide charity must always attract many. 1 Of the divines of the seventeenth century no one, with the exception perhaps of Jeremy Taylor, has been so successful in gaining the ear of what is called " the religious public " as Joseph Hall (1574 — 1656), Bishop of Norwich; and his deserved success is easily accounted for. His practical and devotional works, such as the Contemplations on the Old and New Testaments, and the Meditations and Vows, will be read so long as sincerity, acumen, and sound sense expressing themselves in luminous English, have attractions for good men. Hall's works are im- pregnated with the most effective antiseptic against the decays of time — the salt of an admir- able style. His merits as a writer of powerful verse are generally acknowledged ; and, as the history of English literature amply demonstrates, it is indeed rare when one who knows how to 1 A highly appreciative and, on the whole, just estimate of Chillingworth will be found in Tulloch's Rational Theology in England (second edition), vol. i. pp. 261 — 343. See also Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen's Horcs Sabbaticce (first series), pp. 187 — 208. 124 PADDOCK LECTURES handle verse is deficient in his mastery of prose. Hall's prose style is simple, forcible, and charm- ingly clear. He is less ornate than Taylor, but he is more concise, more pertinent, more lucid. The exuberant fancy of Taylor is lacking, but Hall is not deficient in a considerable power of imaginative illustration, and his sane judgment rarely offends our sense of fitness. Hall's less known works, including his contro- versial treatises against Rome, such as The Old Religion (a model of systematic arrangement), the Honour of the Married Clergy ; and his numerous courageous tractates in defence of Episcopacy and the Liturgy, and those against Presbyterianism and the extravagances of Pro- testant dissent, are full of good learning and spirited writing. Among the parties in the Church he generally followed the course which gave the name to one of his books, the Via Media. 1 Hence, as in the case of other men of independence, his reputation has had to endure studied attempts at depreciation from party-men of opposite schools. 2 Hall's Latin style does 1 Via media : the way of peace in the Jive busy Articles of Arminius. 2 Hall's little tract, entitled An Explication of Chrisfs presence in the sacrament of His Body and Blood, is worth reading. His wholesome dislike of obscurantism — of deliberate obfuscation of the intellect on the plea of devoutness — expresses itself in the pointed words, "Away with those nice scruplers, who, for some further ends, have endeavoured to keep us in undue suspense with a no)i licet inquirere de modo." PADDOCK LECTURES I 25 not aim at following the Ciceronian model, but it is terse, elegant, and, above all, serviceable. Speaking generally, Hall did not add to the theological learning of England, but served the useful office of one of the middle-men of litera- ture, arranging and popularizing the results of others' labours. 1 So long as the English tongue is spoken the name of Jeremy Taylor (1613 — 1667) must carry with it a great reputation. It may be safely said that none of our divines was so richly endowed with the rare combination of intellectual force, imaginative fertility, and emotional fervour. But here we are not concerned in estimating his genius save in relation to our special subject. And it must be acknowledged, in the first place, that in many instances Taylor's display of won- derful powers is but very imperfectly accom- panied by the sound judicial faculty, which is, after all, a primary essential in theological inquiry. Taylor is a rhetorician, and an advo- cate of a high order of excellence, incomparable in the presentation of his case ; but he accepts from himself his own brief, too often after very immature consideration. None, perhaps, of our accredited divines commits himself so frequently to unsustained, insecure, or highly questionable statements. His reading, as Coleridge observes, was " oceanic ; but he read rather to bring out 1 A notice of Hall's casuistical writings will be found later on. 126 PADDOCK LECTURES the growth of his own fertile and teeming mind than to inform himself respecting the products of those of other men." * Hence the careful student soon learns to be on the alert in examining the authors cited, if he cares to ascertain whether their full sense — their real sense — has been caught and expressed by this great devourer of books. Again, the copiousness of his style leads him to excess, and at times we can hardly acquit him of verbosity, while argu- ments good, bad, and indifferent are piled one upon another. In such a mind as Taylor's exact consistency is scarcely to be looked for ; and as matter of fact we find more than one instance in his works where he seems to contradict himself, and to be unaware of the contradiction. When we remember that Taylor died in his fifty-fifth year the productiveness of his pen is indeed marvellous. He has given the world not only many works, but many which will live. Taylor's wide-spread reputation is, no doubt, largely due to his practical and devotional writings. His Holy Living, his Holy Dying, and (though in a less degree) his Golden Grove have suffered little in general estimation through the lapse of time. The consideration of these and of his Worthy Communicant and his Col- lection of Offices must not occupy us here. Nor 1 Notes o?i Etiglish Divines, i. p. 209. PADDOCK LECTURES I 27 can we delay to speak of his Life of Christ, or his wonderful Sermons, though in both of these works much will be found of interest to students of theology. His magnum opus on which he himself expected that his reputation would chiefly rest — the Ductor Dubitantium — will be briefly noticed in another connection. The Liberty of Prophesying (1647) i- s m many respects Taylor's most remarkable work. 1 It was the immediate outcome of the oppressions (beginning about 1 641) which the Church suffered at the hands of the dominant Puritan party. The subsequent attempt to enforce the Solemn League and Covenant in effect deprived and silenced the great body of the best of the English clergy. In 1645 tne use of the Book of Common Prayer was, by an Ordinance of Parliament, forbidden whether in public or in any private place or family under heavy penalties, and the Presbyterian Directory was substituted in its room. This tyrannous persecution called forth from Taylor, first, his Episcopacy Asserted '(1642), and afterwards, with its bold and aggressive title, An Apology for authorized and set forms of Liturgy against the pretence of the Spirit for ex- tempore prayer, etc. (1646). Indeed Taylor was one of the most fearless of men. His contempt and scorn for the ignorance and hypocrisy of too many of the preachers of the Presbyterian 1 In Bishop Heber's judgment, this is " the most curious, and perhaps the ablest of all his compositions." 128 PADDOCK LECTURES party he never cared to hide j 1 and his successive imprisonments made the reply of his opponents. But Taylor was led by the intolerance of the Puritans, and possibly by the recollection of instances of intolerance when his own party had been in power, to examine the whole question of the rights, civil and ecclesiastical, of restraining the expression of religious opinion. The result was the Liberty of Prophesying. A main contention of this remarkable work is that the interference of the State should be exercised only when doctrines injurious to its own well-being were publicly taught. " Re- ligion," he tell us, "is to meliorate the condition of the people ; and therefore those doctrines that inconvenience the public are no parts of true religion." " Whatsoever is against the founda- tion of faith, or contrary to good life and the laws of obedience, or destructive to human society and just interests of bodies politic, is out of the limits of my question, and does not pretend to compliance or toleration : so that I allow no indifferency, nor any countenance to those religions whose principles destroy govern- ment, nor to those religions (if there be any such) that teach ill life." Thus Taylor would not have the State interfere with those who taught the sinfulness of infant baptism, or those who taught the doctrine of transubstantiation ; 1 See even the preface, " to the pious and devout reader," of the Golden Grove. PADDOCK LECTURES 1 29 but it is different if any taught doctrines sub- versive of civil government, such as that the Pope may absolve subjects from their allegiance to their natural prince, that heretical princes may be slain by their subjects, that the Pope may dispense with all oaths, and that faith is not to be kept with heretics. " These opinions,'' he declares, " are a direct overthrow to all human society and mutual commerce, a destruction of government and of the laws." Yet even here (so great is Taylor's desire for tolerance) he would not have interference if men "held their peace " and entertained these as only speculative opinions. Similarly Anabaptists' notions as to the unlawfulness of a magistrate ministering an oath, or the State using defensive arms, and such like, are not to be treated in the same way as their opinions on baptism. These notions are " as much to be rooted out as anything that is the greatest pest and nuisance to the public interest." Taylor's principle is thoroughly intel- ligible ; and differences will now-a-days arise only in the extent of its application. It is when Taylor passes from the consider- ation of State policy to the terms of ecclesiastical communion that there will be most disposition to demur to his conclusions. He shows indeed that a large variety of teaching on certain sub- jects is allowed in all religious bodies. He would extend this liberty very widely, asking only for agreement in fundamentals ; and these K 130 PADDOCK LECTURES fundamentals he, like Chillingworth, reduces to the doctrines taught in the Apostles' Creed. It is obvious that the question thus raised is too large to be discussed here ; but Taylor's treat- ment of it is well worthy of the closest attention in our own day. How are we to attain such certitude as to the absolute truth of doctrines lying beyond funda- mentals, that we may make bold to impose them on others, as essentials ? Arguments from Scripture, Taylor urges, are difficult and un- certain in questions "not simply necessary." Tradition is insufficient to end controversies ; similarly ecclesiastical councils are insufficient. The Pope is not infallible. The ancient Fathers are an insecure guide. Reason, using all suit- able aids, is the best judge. Reason, indeed, may err. Yet we must remember, " it is not required of us not to be in error, but that we endeavour to avoid it." The discussion on " the nature and measures of heresy" is throughout extremely able, and proceeds upon the principles that reason erring may be inculpable, and that "heresy is not an error of the understanding, but an error of the will" Taylor's charity is a charity that has its basis in natural justice, and in its ardour bursts through all the restraints of mere legal and ecclesiastical technicalities. Taylor's farthest stretch of (so-called) " liberal theology," though it has alarmed many, does not surpass, nay, does not reach the utterance of a I' A I) DOCK LECTURES I 3 I well-known divine of our own time who has never been suspected of dangerous liberalism in theology, the late Dr. Pusey. " Ask any tolerably- instructed Christian person, and his instinct will respond what every teacher of the Church every- where knows to be truth. Ask him, ' Will any soul be lost, heathen, idolater, heretic, or in any form of hereditary unbelief or misbelief, if in good faith he was what he was, living up to that light which he had, whencesoever it came, and repenting him where he did amiss ? ' All Christendom would answer you, God forbid ! " 1 In the course of his argument, Taylor has to deal with the claims made on behalf of papal infallibility ( Works, v. 462, seq.). The discus- sion is comparatively brief, but nothing more effective can be found in any of our earlier writers ; and if he allows some fine flashes of irony to play round the absurdities of the posi- tion (and more particularly round the logical process by which the infallibility of the Popes is deduced from the promises made to St. Peter), it is only for a little while, for he recalls to mind " this is not a business to be merry in." 2 On the whole there is perhaps no work in our Anglican theological literature more sure to arrest and hold attention, more stimulating, 1 The Responsibility of the intellect in matters of Faith. (Oxford, 1873.) See the whole splendid passage, pp. 36—46. 2 See J Forks, v. 462, seq. 132 PADDOCK LECTURES more provocative of thought than the Liberty of Prophesying ; as there is certainly no more brilliant manifestation of Taylor's intellectual powers. 1 In his U mi in Ncccssarium, or the Doctrine and Practice of Repentance (1655), Taylor expressed himself on the nature of original sin and the extent of man's corruption in a manner which it is difficult to reconcile with the teaching of the Church in her Articles of Religion. The Bishop of Rochester (John Warner) and the Bishop of Salisbury (Brian Duppa), to whom he inscribed the volume, each wrote to Taylor letters expressing strong disapprobation of the views set forth ; and it is said that the wise and learned Sanderson was moved even to tears by what he considered Taylor's departure from the scriptural language of the Church. In our own day Coleridge came to the conclusion that Taylor's system was " bond fide Pelagianism," though of course Taylor had denied the imputa- tion. It is impossible in this place to discuss the question raised; but I shall venture to say that Taylor's language, though incautious, seems to me capable of a more favourable construction. In his earlier years Taylor had for a time 1 When the student has mastered the Liberty of Pro- phesying for himself he may consult with advantage S. T. Coleridge'^ Notes on English Divines j Tulloch's Rational Theology j and Sir J. Fitzjames Stephen's Hone Sabbaticcc (First Series). PADDOCK LECTURES 133 been thrown into close contact with Roman Catholics. It is said, indeed, that at one period he lived on terms of intimate friendship with the clever Franciscan, Christopher Davenport (better known as Sancta Clara), one of the chaplains of Queen Henrietta" Maria. 1 And all through Taylor's life the suspicion of Roman- izing tendencies haunted his reputation with the general public. But in truth his capacity for generously appreciating and acknowledging good points in Romanism made him a far more formidable opponent than writers blinded by the bigotry of extravagant Protestantism. In 1654 there appeared the first edition of Taylor's work, entitled, The real and spiritual presence of Christ in I fie blessed Sacrament proved against the doctrine of Transnbstantiation. The phrase "real presence," which had already been occasionally adopted by Anglican writers, but was more commonly appropriated to the Roman doctrine, Taylor now, whether wisely or 1 Sancta Clara was author of many theological works, hut is now remembered chiefly for his Paraphrastica Expos it io Articuloritm Confessionis Anglicance (1646), a hopeless and somewhat ludicrous attempt to interpret the XXXIX. Articles in a sense compatible with the doctrines which they were, in the main, expressly written to condemn. This book, with an English translation, was republished by Dr. F. G. Lee in 1865. The book has been justly described as "a mere trick of proselytizing controversy, and not a wise trick cither." ( The Guardian, March 28, 1866.) . 134 PADDOCK LECTURES unwisely, claims as the expression of the doctrine of the Church of England. Taylor's arguments against transubstantiation need not here engage our attention ; but it may be interesting and serviceable to state his own position, his own positive teaching; 'and this can be done effectively by a few quotations. " We [' sons of the Church of England ' by the real spiritual presence of Christ do under- stand Christ to be present, as the Spirit of God is present in the hearts of the faithful, by blessing and grace ; and this is all which we mean, beside the tropical [i. e. metaphorical] and figurative presence." " By spiritually they [Romanists] mean ' pre- sent after the manner of a spirit ' ; by spiritually we mean ' present to our spirits only,' that is, so as Christ is not present to any other sense but that of faith, or spiritual susception." " The wicked receive not Christ, but the bare symbols only, but yet to their hurt." On what is called a non-local presence of Christ's Body and Blood in or under the species of bread and wine, Taylor remarks, " / wish the words zvere sense, and that I could tell the meaning of being in a place locally and not locally; . . . but so long as it is a distinction it is no matter; it will amuse and make a way to escape, if it will do nothing else." " Take eat and This do are as necessary to the Sacrament as Hoc est corpus maim, and declare PADDOCK LECTURES 1 35 [/'. e. make clear] that it is Christ's Body only in the use and administration." "It is Christ's Body only in the taking and eating." On the phrase " sacramentally present," often used with no definite meaning, Taylor writes, " Christ's Body is sacramentally in more places than one, which is very true, that is, the sacra- ment of Christ's Body is : and so is His Body, figuratively, tropically, representatively ', in being, and really in effect and blessing." Such is Taylor's teaching on the Eucharist. 1 No one who is familiar with Taylor can doubt that he was a man of profoundly reverential temperament. But he thought it no part of reverence to shut the eyes of his intelligence at the bidding of those who would palm off upon him unfounded or unmeaning propositions as " mysteries of the faith." 2 The last work from Bishop Taylor's pen was also on the controversy with Rome. It was undertaken at the united request of his brother prelates in Ireland, and appeared under the title, A dissuasive from Popery. This treatise deals in an effective and popular way with most of 1 It is well to bear this in mind when one peruses the letter printed in Eden's edition of the Works (v. 317, seq.) on the Reverence due to the Attar, which shows how ceremonial observance of a marked kind may be com- patible with a belief that many now-a-days would scorn- fully speak of as " un-catholic." 2 Coleridge's laudation of Taylor's Real Presence will be found in Notes on English Divines, i. 280. 136 PADDOCK LECTURES the points in dispute between England and Rome. 1 The overthrow of the Church establishment in the course of the Great Rebellion scattered the clergy. Some were imprisoned ; some lived in hiding and wandered from place to place ; some, as best they could, continued after their sequestration to minister to the flocks that had been committed to them ; some escaped to France or the Low Countries and only returned at the Restoration ; some managed somehow to reconcile themselves to submitting to the de facto authorities of the day. Despite the many distractions of those evil times the intellectual activity of our ecclesi- astical writers was remarkable. Notable at home were Sanderson, Brian Walton, Hammond, Jeremy Taylor, and one who deserves mention as the first of our Church historians, the wise humourist, Thomas Fuller. Abroad were Bishop Bramhall and Dean John Cosin, afterwards Bishop of Durham. Cosin (1595 — 1672) spent some sixteen years of exile, ministering to the English royalists 1 The Real Presence and the Dissuasive have been published in the convenient form of a single volume (under the editorship of T)r. Cardwell, Principal of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford), which in its last edition (1852) may be commended to those who do not possess the whole Works of Taylor. PADDCN K !-l < i I KI'S I 37 who were numerous in Paris, and labouring assiduously to counteract the unceasing efforts of Roman proselytizers. To the necessities of controversy we owe his Scholastical Jiistory of the Canon of the Holy Scripture (1657), a solid piece of work-, and his Historia Transubstantia- tionis Papalis, published posthumously in 1675. Before the civil war no one had been more vehemently assailed by the Presbyterian party for his alleged Popish tendencies ; and he was forced to suffer many indignities on account of his excellent book of Devotions. Subsequently none of the clergy suffered from more persistent and rancorous persecution at the hands of the Puritan party. He was in his day one of the most distinguished men of the " High Church" school ; but his doctrinal teaching was not what might perhaps be at the present time expected from a " High Churchman." Thus, in his work on Transubstantiation lie asserts " the unanimous consent of all Protestants with the Church of England " in maintaining " a real, that is a true, presence of Christ in the blessed sacrament." 1 He maintains that Christ did not give His Body " to be received by the mouth," and declares that " reservation ' is impossible because Christ is "present only to the communicants." But, like every sound Anglican, he forcibly contends that our faith does not cause the Presence, but only apprehends it. 1 Chap. li. 138 PADDOCK LECTURES Equally surprising to the modern reader, unacquainted with the history of opinion, is this High Churchman's concurrence with Bram- hall x in a certain recognition of the reformed " sister Churches " abroad. Indeed, Cosin's rela- tions towards the French reformed Church were not only altogether friendly, but even reached, in practice, a measure of intercommunion. 2 Bramhall (1593 — 1663), Bishop of Deny, and afterwards Archbishop of Armagh, though not figuring as so prominent an historical personage, has left to our theological literature larger and more valuable bequests. His controversial treatises against Rome were occasioned by the attempts of Romish proselytizers to change the faith of the exiled king. M. de la Milletiere and an Englishman named Smith, titular Bishop of Chalcedon, accused the Church of England of " criminal schism ' from the one and only true Church of Christ. In a succession of able treatises Bramhall not only repelled the charge, but retorted it with telling effect upon the Church of Rome. Jeremy Taylor prophesied truly when he declared that in the learning, judgment, and piety manifested in these writings, Bramhall's " memory will last unto very late succeeding generations." 1 Vindication of Grot ins, p. 614. 2 See Brewer's Memoir (pp. xxviii — xxxii) prefixed to his edition of the History of Popish Transubstantiation^ and, more particularly, Cosin's Letter to Mr. Cordel. PADDOCK LECTURES 139 Bishop Bramhall also deserves notice as being one of the first of our English divines to grapple the false philosophy of unbelief, — more particu- larly the fatalism taught in effect by Hobbes of Malmesbury. Bramhall, said Taylor, "washed off the ceruse and meretricious paintings " from the "new vizor" with which Hobbes had dis- guised the ugliness of " the Manichean doctrine of fatal necessity." 1 Another of the "confessors" under the Puri- tan persecution was Henry Hammond (1605 — 1660), as good, kind, and generous as he was high-principled, learned, and devout. A charm- ing portrait of this excellent man has been lightly sketched for us, by the pen of Dr. Fell, in one of the best short biographies in the English tongue. But we are concerned here with Hammond as an author. 2 His writings embrace Annotations on the whole of the New Testament, on the Psalms, and on a part of the Book of Proverbs, and controversial treatises against Rome, and against the Presbyterians and . Independents of England. 1 Works, viii. 417, 418. In Bramhall, says Taylor, " was visible the great lines of Hooker's judiciousness, of Jewel's learning, of the acuteness of Bishop Andre wes." 2 At an early age Hammond made such extraordinary progress not only in Latin and Greek, but also in Hebrew, that his biographer declares that a knowledge of these tongues "seemed rather infused than acquired." At a later time he added to his attainments a knowledge of Syriac, and this proved helpful to him in his Biblical studies. 140 PADDOCK LECTURES The Annotations arc the work of a true scholar. He was keenly alive to the interest and importance of textual criticism, and had entered on the task of a collation of Greek MSS. of the New Testament. The distractions of the age, and the hardships incurred through his loyalty to the Church and the Crown, pre- vented his pursuing his labours in this direction ; yet his biblical annotations arc even in this day, with its multitude of commentaries, seldom consulted without profit. His primary object throughout is, quite in the modern spirit, to get at the literal sense of Scripture. The Annota- tions deserve special notice for HammondV recognition of the important significance of heresies of a Gnostic character, as bearing on the interpretation of the Epistles. He antici- pates the drift of modern thought in seeing the " Antichrist " of the New Testament in Gnosti- cism rather than in Popery, as many earlier writers of distinction had imagined. And again, as Fell has pointed out, he laboured assiduously at the special study of the " Hellenistic dialect ' ! as distinguished from classical Greek. Here too he tapped a vein of inquiry that has since proved rich in results, and is not yet exhausted. Of Hammond's controversial writings we can refer only to his defence of Lord Falkland's short but cogent discussion, Of the infallibility of the Church of Rome (that "main architectonical controversy/' as it is styled by Bishop Pearson, PADDOCK LECTURES 141 in his appreciative preface to that excellent work) ; his book on Schism and its defence ; his reply to Blondel on the Ignatian Epistles (for which he received the thanks of Archbishop Ussher) ; and his View of tlic new Directory and a vindication of the ancient Liturgy of the Church of England. The last-named discussion has lost but little of its interest, and will be found abounding in useful comments on the Book of Common Prayer. The work of Hammond which attained greatest popularity was his Practical Cateehis///, meant for the instruction of those who had already been taught the Church Catechism. It was much used, and passed through many editions. 1 Its form is cumbrous, abounding in long questions and elaborate answers ; but it is interesting in our day as exhibiting the doctrinal teaching of one of the leading churchmen of the seven- teenth century and (as testified to by its wide acceptance) of a very large number of the Anglican clergy. The student who is interested in the Eucharistic controversies of our own time will find much that is instructive in Hammond's discussion of the Sacraments. Another sufferer for his principles, whose memory will be ever associated with the cause of sacred learning, was Brian Walton (1600 — 1 661), consecrated Bishop of Chester at the Restoration. After the sequestration of his 1 The issue in A. C. L. is said to be the sixteenth. 142 PADDOCK LECTURES ecclesiastical preferments he devoted himself in his retirement to the construction and issue of his great Polyglott, which, after being five years in printing, appeared in its completed form in 1657, in six large folios. It is an imperishable monument of the learning and unflagging energy of this distinguished scholar, and remains to our own day an essential aid to the stud) 7 of the biblical texts. 1 This truly valuable contribution to the critical study of the sacred Scriptures did not pass without the censures of some. John Owen, the eminent leader of the Independents, dreaded that the exhibition of so many variations in the text would lead to Popery or infidelity, 2 and Walton felt constrained to furnish a reply. It was a decisive and complete vindication of his work. 3 In connection with Walton's work the name of Edmund Castell (1606 — 1685) must not be omitted. He was one of the numerous oriental scholars who assisted in the work on the Poly- glott ; but his chief claim for notice is his great Lexicon Heptaglotton, upon which he had laboured 1 Walton's Prolegomena to the Polyglott have been separately printed, at Leipzig (1777), 8vo, under the editorship of J. A. Dathe, and at Cambridge (1828), 2 vols. 8vo, with additional notes by Archdeacon Wrangham. 2 Vhidication of the purity a?id integrity of the Hebrew a?id Greek texts of the Old and New Testaments, in some conside?'ations on the Prolegomena, etc., 1658. 3 The Considerator considered, etc., 1659. PADDOCK LECTURES [43 for eighteen years. 1 This work has lately been described by a competent authority as marking " an epoch in Semitic scholarship." 2 Another eminent orientalist associated with Walton was Edward Pococke (1604 — 1691). As early as 1630 he had discovered the Syriac texts of the second Epistle of St. Peter, the second and third of St. John, and St. Jude, and, en- couraged by Voss, made them known to the learned world. 3 After a long stay in the East he was made (the first) Arabic Professor, and given a canonry at Oxford. Some time after (1649) he was expelled from his canonry by the authority of Parliament. 4 In later and happier days he published learned commentaries on the prophets, Micah and Malachi (1677), Hosea (1685), and Joel (1691). But it remains to notice the English Hebraist of widest repute among the learned of the seven- teenth century — John Lightfoot (1602 — 1675). Like some other good men brought up under 1 2 torn., folio, 1669. The languages included are Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Samaritan Hebrew, Ethiopic Arabic, and Persic. This book ruined the compiler. It cost him more than ,£12,000, involved him in debt for .£1800, and when printed found scarcely any sale. After the Restoration he was made chaplain to the King and Arabic Professor at Cambridge, and given a prebend at Canterbury and some other Church preferment. 2 Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole. 3 Versio et Notes ad IV. Epistolas, Syriace, etc., Lugd. Bat. 1630, 4to. 4 Cromwell's brother-in-law was appointed in his place. 144 PADDOCK LECTURES Puritan influences, he had no such conviction of the primary importance of episcopacy as would prevent his accepting the new ecclesiastical regime. The worthy Strype (whose painstaking researches into the history of the Reformation period are a rich mine of valuable material), in the introduction to his collection of Lightfoot's Remains, attributes his action to his having been deceived by " the smooth and fair pretences " of the Presbyterian party. Strype expresses his conviction that Lightfoot " afterward was con- vinced how he had been trepanned ; " and in proof alleges the fact of his ready compliance with episcopacy as revived at the Restoration. To such conduct doubtless an uglier name than credulity could be given, but we should be grossly ignorant of the time if we did not perceive that there were men of the highest character to whom the question of the form of Church government was very much a matter of indifference. Through the influence of Archbishop Sheldon at the Restoration, Lightfoot was continued in the mastership of Catherine Hall, and also given ecclesiastical preferment. But though he makes ample acknowledgment of the clemency of Charles II. and of the kindness of Sheldon, he makes no confession of guilt. He had served in the Westminster Assembly, and had taken a very independent line upon several occasions. 1 1 See his interesting Journal of the proceedings. Works, vol. xiii. PADDOCK LECTURES 145 On the subject of the lay ruling-elder in the Christian congregations of the early Church, his testimony did not reach the measure that was looked for by his friends of the Presbyterian " platform." l His welcoming back the restoration of episcopal government can be well understood without any imputation of unworthy motives. But we are concerned rather with his works than with his character. Lightfoot's reputation is mainly based on his attempt, largely successful, to illustrate the New Testament from the knowledge of Jewish usages, phraseology, and modes of thought, as they may be gathered from Talmudical literature. This is, without doubt, a vein of inquiry well worth being carefully wrought ; yet in some particular instances its value has been much over-estimated. Other labourers abroad have pursued their studies in this direction ; but in England little has been done since the publication of Lightfoot's Horce Hebraicce et Talrnndicce. His works on The Temple Service, and on The Temple, especially as it stood in the days of our Saviour, also abound in curious lore drawn from Rabbinical sources.' 2 It was in connection with Semitic studies that William Beveridge (1638 — 1708), afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph's, first attracted notice. At the early age of twenty he published in Latin 1 See Works, iii. p. 243. 2 The Harmony of the Four Evangelists and his topographical studies of Palestine are of less importance. 146 PADDOCK LECTURES his treatise on the Importance and use of tJic Oriental languages, especially Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, and Samaritan, together with a Syriac Gramnnzr{\ 658). This work was intended for the benefit of those who desired to profit from Walton's labours. But Beveridge's learning extended in other directions. His greatest work, on the Canons of the ancient Church, 1 is characterized by profound learning ; and its merits have been recognized abroad as well as at home. 2 Beveridge himself published little in the English tongue ; but his Discourse on the XXXIX. Articles (which in its full and correct form did not appear till 1840) is an able defence of" the doctrine of the Church of England as consonant to Scripture, reason, and the Fathers." For piety no less than learning, Beveridge is deservedly one of the most honoured names among English theologians. Among the Semitic scholars who assisted Walton in his great undertaking was Herbert Thorndike (11672), who had been Master of Sidney College, Cambridge. He was versed in Syriac and Arabic as well as in Rabbinical Hebrew, and contributed the various readings of the Syriac to the Polyglott. To him we owe a large body of theological treatises. These works made little impression at the time ; but 1 Synodicon, sivc Pandectce Canonum SS. Apostolorum ct Conciliorum, etc., 1672, 2 torn, folio. 2 As, eg., by Van Espcn. PADDOCK LECTURES 147 they have been reprinted in the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, with an admirable biography by Mr. A. W. Haddan. In most of his writings Thorndike exhibits a desire to reconcile, as far as might be, the contrarian t doctrines of Rome and England ; and among divines of repute he (like Montagu at an earlier time) touches the high- water mark of the conciliatory movement. Indeed, if we trust Bishop Barlow, the wise Sanderson had Thorn- dike in his mind's eye when he wrote of some " children of the Church " who had " over-run their Mother," had used " her name without her leave," and had thus " causelessly brought an evil suspicion upon her." His mature judg- ment on various questions in dispute may be most safely sought for in a work published only just before his death, The Reformation of the Church of England better than that of the Council of Trent. Thorndike indulges in theological speculation to an extent not ventured on by our more sober divines. A peculiar interest attaches to him as being, I think, the first to ventilate views on the Eucharist which with little modifi- cation afterwards took definite shape in the theories of the non-jurors. To appreciate his position in some of his earlier writings we must remember that " the tragedy of the Church of England," and its extinction as a Church estab- lishment, seemed to him to allow his suggesting a more comprehensive doctrinal basis for its 148 PADDOCK LECTURES possible reconstruction hereafter. In judging of the Epilogue to the Tragedy of the Church of England, Mr. Haddan has justly observed — " It is one thing to pull a house to pieces which is standing uninjured, in order to remedy unessen- tial defects ; another to suggest improvements in rebuilding of a house at the time in ruins." Thorndike is defective in the arrangement and presentation of his thoughts, and his style is laboured and difficult. Nevertheless the patient and painstaking reader will find much to repay his labour in the study of his learned and thoughtful discussion of many weighty problems. As in the case of Beveridge, it was at an early age that Edward Stillingfleet (1635 — 1699), afterwards Bishop of Worcester (1689), published the first of a long series of able works. His Irenicum> or Weapon-Salve for the Church's Wounds, appeared in 1659. The time was the critical moment when hopes ran high that the Church of England might when restored be adapted to embrace the many more moderate Presbyterian divines who were not unwilling to accept an episcopal form of government, if " lordly prelacy " were so modified as to allow the second order of the ministry a larger voice in the management of ecclesiastical affairs. Young Stillingfleet, writing with a desire to effect a peace, takes up the position of our earlier theologians, that no particular form of PADDOCK LECTURES I 49 Church government was expressly commanded in Holy Scripture, or could be established on the grounds of natural reason. The arguments in favour of this opinion occupy the main part of the volume, and he concludes by suggesting, as a return to primitive practice — (1) that presbyters should act as " the senate to the bishop " ; (2) that dioceses should not be larger than would permit of the personal inspection of the bishop, and that a bishop should be placed in every great town ; (3) that a provincial synod should be held twice each year ; and (4) that " none should judge in Church matters but the clergy." Whatever may be thought of the arguments as to the form of Church government being " a mere matter of prudence, regulated by the Word of God," some of the practical sug- gestions of Stillingfleet have commended them- selves in our own time to the independent Churches of the Anglican Communion, while the great increase of the episcopate in England shows that he had anticipated in spirit the need of the reduction in the size of dioceses. The Irenicum was certainly a remarkable work for so young a man. Warburton compares it with Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying, and regards it as a masterly plea for toleration. It is more properly a masterly plea for such reforms in the Church as would give less show of justification for the complaints of Protestant dissent. There is nothing inconsistent in this I 50 PADDOCK LECTURES earl)' work with his later treatise, The' Unreason- ableness of Separation from 'the Church of England ( 1 68 1 ). Stillingfleet's Origines sacra?, or a rational account of the grounds of Christian faith as to the truth and Divine authority of the Scriptures and the matters therein contained (1662), reached a third edition by 1666, and has been again and again reprinted. Modern inquiries into the origin of the Pentateuch leave no doubt of the inadequacy of this work to meet the difficulties of our time. But its learning and ability cannot be reasonably questioned. " Let any competent person," says one of the acutest critics of our time, 1 "read the chapters on Ancient History in the first Book of the Origines, and the account of the laws against the Christians in Book II., c. 9, and he will see that those who sneer at that great work are themselves the proper objects of pity or contempt." The anti-Roman treatises of Stillingfleet, his Origines Britannicce, or the antiquities of the British Churches? and his unfortunate contro- versy with Locke, must, with regret, be here passed over in silence. 1 Bishop Fitzgerald in Aids to Faith, p. 45. 2 The best edition is Mr. Pantin's (Oxford, 1842), to which is added Bishop W. Lloyd's Historical account of Church Government as first ?rceived in Great Britain and Ireland. LECTURE V Moral theology in the seventeenth century — The English casuists : Perkins, Ames, Sanderson, Hall, Taylor- Joseph Mead — Hales of Eton — The Cambridge Platonists : Whichcote, Smith, Cudworth, More- Bishop Pearson — Barrow — Bishop Bull — The anti- Roman pamphleteers. In continuing the review of the more eminent divines of the seventeenth century our attention may be transferred for a time from works con- cerned with doctrinal controversies, or biblical learning, to certain important studies in a special field of inquiry where the English Church has been in general gravely deficient — I mean moral theology. The word "casuistry," as generally used, carries with it an evil connotation. It suggests notions of deceit and trickery. Men have come to think of it as the studied art not of ascertaining, but of evading duty. Yet it is obvious that in the course of daily life complex cases are con- stantly occurring where duty is not clear, or where (apparently) two or more duties seem to conflict with one another. Hence, call it by 1 5 J 152 PADDOCK LECTURES what name we will, there arises the necessity of dealing with such cases. To be one's own casuist is not always the course of discretion ; and a good and sensible man will often with advantage ask the aid of one who is well- informed, wise, and practised in the exercise of moral discrimination. Cases, for instance, are frequently arising out of the relations of human law to conscience, and out of the numerous questions that concern the obligations to truth, as between man and man, where duty is by no means .obvious. The regular practice of habitual confession (as in the Roman Church) has, of course, strongly stimulated casuistical studies ; l but, even where the practice is not general, a faithful pastor will be frequently consulted in cases of difficulty ; and experience shows that the rough-and-ready answer of our first thoughts is by no means to be always trusted. It is worthy of notice that it was among divines of the Puritan school that casuistry was first studied with any care in the reformed Church. William Perkins (1558— 1602), who had been a Fellow of Christ's College, Cam- bridge, and attained a considerable repute as a preacher and commentator, gave special atten- 1 Jeremy Taylor observes, " The careless and needless neglect of receiving private confessions hath been too great a cause of our not providing materials apt for so pious and useful a ministration." — Ductor Dubitaniiiiin, Preface. PADDOCK LECTURES I 53 tion to this subject. 1 He was followed by another and more distinguished Cambridge student, William Ames (1576 — 1633), who had studied under Perkins, and came afterwards to be Professor of Divinity at Franeker, in Fries- land. His volume, De conscientia et ejus jure, vel casibus (1630), deals with many problems, some of the inner and spiritual life, some of practical conduct. The solutions of the cases are sometimes affected by the peculiarities of Puritan theology ; and not infrequently a Puri- tan bias is discernible ; yet on the whole the works of both Perkins and Ames are marked by good sense and sound reasoning. Ames points to the serious lack of the discussion of cases of conscience by Protestant divines. To him is due the happy metaphor (which, by the way, the conscience of our eminent casuist, Jeremy Taylor, permitted him to borroiv without acknowledgment) that through this deficiency of sound teaching among ourselves the children of Israel were compelled to go down to the Philistines (id est, nostri studiosi ad Pontijicios authores) to sharpen, every man, his share, his coulter, his axe, and his mattock. 2 Robert Sanderson (1587- 1 662), Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford (1642), and after the Restor- 1 The Whole Treatise of the Cases of Conscience was a posthumous work, appearing in 1606 ; reprinted separately 1 6 14, and in Perkins' collected Works, 2 Prcefatio ad led or em. 154 PADDOCK- LECTURES ation Bishop of Lincoln (1660 — 1662), 1 stands out above the earlier writers by the reason of the thoroughness of his examination of fundamental principles, as well as by his superior intellectual acumen. The seven Lectures (1646) delivered at Oxford, De juramenti promissorii obligatione (suggested by the parliamentary imposition of the Solemn League and Covenant), and the ten lectures (1647), De obligatione conscienticz, are works of solid and permanent value, and abound (especially the latter) in applications pertinent to many questions of our own time. In thoroughness, accuracy, and soundness of judgment, Sanderson seems to me to far surpass his more brilliant contemporary, the author of the Ductor Dubitantium. In these lectures Sanderson, who had as early as 161 5 published a work on Logic, 2 which long held its place as the manual in use at Oxford till it was at length superseded by Aldrich, employs habitually and familiarly terms of the Aristotelian philosophy now little used and imperfectly understood ; but, as Dr. Whewell has justly observed, " in his hands these technicalities become really instruments of an effective and methodical dis- cussion of his subject." 3 " It would be difficult," 1 It is to Sanderson's pen we owe the Preface of our present English Book of Common Prayer; and an admir- able piece of work it is. 2 Logicce Artis Compendium. 3 Preface to Whewell's edition of De Oblig. Consc., 1851. PADDOCK LECTURES 155 writes the same authority, " to discuss most of the moral questions which form the latter part of the work in a more satisfactory manner than is there done." Not only as an intellectual exercise, but as furnishing him with principles constantly applicable to one of the most im- portant duties of a physician of souls, Sander- son's work on Conscience may be strongly com- mended to every student preparing for the ministry of the Church. 1 There have been happily preserved to us a few examples of cases of conscience on which Sanderson was specially consulted, together with his answers. They are well worth studying as instances of sagacity and sound judgment. 2 Sanderson, as a preacher, showed his marked predilection for the discussion of ethical ques- tions of daily interest. His sermons, cleared of the mannerism of the period and the (more than usually frequent) antique forms of phrase- ology and structure, supply a rich treasury to the modern preacher. King Charles I. num- bered Sanderson among his favourite chaplains ; 1 The late Bishop of Lincoln (Christopher Wordsworth) required a knowledge of this work from candidates for Holy Orders. It is to be regretted that the old translation by Lewis (1722) was employed by the Bishop as the basis of the English edition published (1877) by him; for though some corrections have been made, the rendering- is still in many-places faulty. 2 See vol. v. of Jacobson's adnrrable edition of Sander- son's Works. 156 PADDOCK LECTURES and his saying, reported by Izaak Walton, " I take my ears to other preachers, but I take my conscience to Mr. Sanderson," aptly marks the distinguishing characteristic of this great divine. "Of all Divinity," wrote Hall, Bishop of Norwich, " that part is most useful which de- termines cases of conscience." From his pen we have a small body of Resolutions and De- cisions of divers practical cases of conscience, in continual use among men. The cases are forty in number, some connected with questions aris- ing in trade and commerce, some arising out of that fertile source of doubts, the marriage laws, etc. ; all are in the true sense practical, and are dealt with in a thoroughly practical manner, with competent learning and admirable good sense. " I could be easily more voluminous," wrote Hall, " though perhaps not more satis- factory." It could be wished that the writer next to be noticed had been actuated by a like spirit. Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium, begun in earlier years, was completed in his forced retirement at Portmore on the beautiful shores of Lough Neagh, and was published in 1660. It is divided into four books, dealing respectively with (I.) Conscience in general ; (II.) Divine Laws; (III.) Human Laws; and (IV.) The nature and causes of good and evil. In the course of the work a large number of " cases " are treated and resolved. Like everything from PADDOCK LECTURES 157 his pen, it exhibits copious, perhaps over-copious reading, not always pertinent, and a fertile and even luxuriant fancy. But it often lacks that precision of thought which the subject demands. It is tedious and verbose, and is more service- able in illustrating our conclusions than in help- ing us to reach them. Many of its pages will entertain the curious reader with a vast variety of citations drawn from all quarters, the Greek and Latin classics, the Fathers, the Schoolmen, the Canonists, the Civilians, and the later Humanists. Those whose literary taste is formed on Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy will enjoy many parts of the Ductor Dubitantium ; and Taylor, moreover, possesses an imaginative energy of his own which is lacking in " Demo- critus Junior." But one who seeks the solution of some moral problem is tempted to become impatient under this unprofitable and often impertinent display of reading. To what is properly the science of ethics Taylor contributes little or nothing that is of value in his long discussions on the nature of conscience ; but despite his wearisome prolixity, and his occa- sional subservience to human authorities, his large-minded practical judgment generally serves him in good stead when he deals with the reso- lution of "cases." We are bound, however, to say that frequently his decision is more sound than the reasons which he alleges in its support. Few questions reveal the general tone of a 158 PADDOCK LECTURES casuist better than those which relate to truth and its obligations. In the cases proposed, Taylor is not betrayed into the follies of ex- travagant rigorism, and yet maintains a high standard of duty. Occasionally he appears not to know his own way clearly out of the labyrinth which his fertile intellect has constructed. But we may reject as wholly baseless the imputation of Hallam, 1 that on the subject of " a probable conscience " he approaches " the decried theories of the Jesuits." On the contrary, the vicious doctrine of " probabilism " is distinctly con- demned and repudiated. 2 Taken as a whole, this work, upon which Taylor laboured longest, brilliant as it is in many parts, is not the outcome of a precise and accurate mind, and as a contribution to moral theology its value is slight. 3 From the course of the main stream of Anglican divinity moral theology must be counted only as a little bay or by-water, where, notwithstanding its attractions, we cannot afford time to linger. We again push out into the central current. The works upon which chiefly rests the repu- 1 Literature of Europe, iv. p. 154. 2 Duct. Dubit., Book i. chap. 4. :; It was Taylors experiences in hearing confessions that first suggested the Ductor Dubitantium. The ex- cellent John Evelyn was one to whom he acted as "spiritual father.'' PADDOCK LECTURES 159 tation of Joseph Mead 1 (1 586 — 1638), the recluse of Christ's College, Cambridge, arc his Clavis Apo- calyplica, and kindred studies on the Revelation of St. John and the prophet Daniel. On the • merits or demerits of his treatment of these diffi- cult subjects I am quite incompetent to offer an opinion. It must suffice to say that with most of those who have made prophecy a subject of study, the esteem in which Mead is held seems rather to have increased than diminished in the course of time. But there are other writings of his which have made a distinct impression on theological opinion. Of these we may particu- larly refer to his work on The Christian Sacrifice (1635). This brief treatise, scholarly and candid, admirably arranged and lucidly written, deserves the careful study of every one interested in the eucharistic controversies of our own time. The kindred tract, On the name Altar or Qvcnao-TijpLov anciently given to the Holy Table, was written before the acrimonious controversy on the sub- ject had broken out, and forms an interesting contribution to the study of Christian antiquities. 2 The distinctive feature of Mead's treatise is his display of the proofs that the ancient Church offered the bread and wine, first " to agnize " (/. e. acknowledge) God " the Lord of the creature," 1 So he himself spelled his name, though it is more ommonly written " Mede." 2 Some small corrections are made by Bingham (Antiquities, Book VIII. chap. vi. § 12). 160 PADDOCK LECTURES the Giver of the gifts ; and, secondly, as symbols of the broken Body and shed Blood of Christ, "to represent and inculcate His blessed passion to His Father." 1 He guards himself from mis- apprehension by insisting at length on the teaching that this latter sacrifice " was placed in commemoration only ; " or, as he otherwise puts it, " the Christian sacrifice is an oblation of thanksgiving and prayer, through Jesus Christ, commemorated in the creatures of bread and wine." This commemoration is before God the Father, "and is not a bare remembrance or putting ourselves in mind only (as is com- monly supposed), but a putting of God in mind." It is worth observing that some two years after Mead had given expression to these views, the Scottish Prayer-book (1637), as revised by Laud, inserted the rubric in the Communion Office — " The Presbyter shall then offer up and place the bread and wine prepared for the Sacrament upon the Lord's Table ; ' ; and thus was recognized the first oblation of the elements in accordance with primitive usage. And so the rubric stands at this day in the commonly received text of the characteristic Liturgy of the Scottish Episcopal Church. At the time of the revision of the English Prayer-book in 1661 an unsuccessful attempt was made to introduce a 1 Field {Of the Church, appendix to Book III.) had indicated the same line of thought. PADDOCK LECTURES ]6\ similar rubric. 1 It was probably an unreasoning dread of anything which looked like an approach to Rome that prevented any general accept- ance at the time of Mead's teaching 1 ; but so far as concerns the making the memorial of the Sacrifice of Calvary before the Father, it re- appears at a later date in the writings of Arch- bishop Bramhall, of Bishop Patrick, of Thorn- dike, of Bishop Bull, and of all of the non-juring school. 2 A few years later than the publication of Mead's work on The Christian Sacrifice, another Cambridge man, Ralph Cudworth (1617 — 1688), published his True Notion of the Lord's Supper (1642), where the design of the author is to show that the Eucharist " is not a sacrifice, but a feast upon a sacrifice . . . not the offering up of some- thing to God upon an altar, but the eating of something that comes from God's altar, and is set upon our tables." 3 This was Cudworth's first essay in literary work, and was published when he was only twenty- five years of age. Except for its early indication of extensive reading, it 1 The Prayer-book of the American Church in this follows the English Prayer-book. 2 Mead's Discourses, preached in his College Chapel, contain many careful studies of the sense of difficult passages of Scripture, and well deserve, together with his work on The Christian Sacrifice, to be reprinted. 3 Waterland, in his Review of the Doctrine"-- of the Eucharist (chap, xi.), discusses the objections made to Cudworth. M 1 62 PADDOCK LECTURES gave little promise of the powers exhibited in his great work, the Intellectual System of the Cnivcrse. Its radical defect is the total incom- petence of his theory to account for the language of even the very earliest writers of primitive Christian antiquity. Here Mead's superiority is quite overwhelming. It has been stated (and there is nothing im- probable in the statement) that while Chilling- worth was engaged on his Religion of Protestants, he had asked for the views of a friend, who, though then unknown by his writings, had a con- siderable reputation in a learned and cultivated circle. This was " the ever-memorable Mr. John Hales of Eton College." 1 Hales (1584 — 1656) was a man of refined and sensitive nature, an exquisite scholar, and marked by a very wide and varied culture, " as great a master " — to use the words of Bishop Pearson — " of polite, various, and universal learning as ever yet conversed with books." He shrank from controversy, and lived, as far as might be, in retirement, occasionally diversified by the society of poets, wits, and courtiers, rather than of ecclesiastics. His in- fluence during his life-time was due to his familiar conversation in the circle of his culti- vated associates. He had an obstinate dislike to allowing anything of his to be published ; and almost everything of his that we now possess 1 So styled on the title-page of the Golden Remains, PADDOCK LECTURES 163 we owe to the care with which friends cherished his writings. In his early years Hales had been present, though only as a curious spectator, at the Synod of Dort, and it was there probably he acquired the strong repugnance to ecclesiastical bigotry and intolerance which was afterwards a settled feature of his character. At Dort, as he himself expressed it, he "bid John Calvin good-night" ; and it is plain he bid good-night not only to Calvin and the Dutch Calvinism of the Five Articles, but also to the narrow and persecuting spirit that would restrict the communion of Christ's Church to those who symbolized with the triumphant party. It may be that afterwards his comprehensiveness ran too far in the direction of laxity. But, at any rate, the drift of his thought and feeling was quite in accord with the spirit of Chillingworth's treatise. And in Hales we find the germ of Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying. If we may accept the story, his little paper, Concerning Schism and Schismatics (not printed till 1642), was prepared for the use of Chilling- worth (about 1636), and, having been handed about in manuscript, made no small stir. In the tract itself it must have been rather what was suggested than what was asserted, which gave offence. One can hardly read it without feeling that the author had in his mind's eye the hard rigour with which Archbishop Laud (who 1 64 PADDOCK LECTURES was tolerant to doctrinal variations) had been pressing ceremonial uniformity. " If the special guides and fathers of the Church," says Hales, " would be a little sparing of encumbering churches with superfluities, or not over-rigid either in reviving of obsolete customs, or im- posing new, there would be far less cause of schism or superstition ; and all the inconvenience were likely to ensue would be but this, they should in so doing yield a little to the imbecility 1 of their inferiors, a thing which St. Paul would never have refused to do." And in the matter of belief he boldly refutes the notion " that men of different opinions in Christian religion may not hold communion in saeri's." He urges that " opinionum varietas et opinanthun unitas" are not incompatible. All of which, to be sure, is quite true ; but the practical question as to the permissible extent of doctrinal variety he does not seriously attempt to grapple. Elsewhere he is frequent in insisting on the view that errors in doctrine are more pardonable than any falling short of the high standard of the Christian character. The presentation of this side of truth was indeed much needed in his day, and perhaps in our own day it is not without its value. In a spirit that reminds us of Justin Martyr and more than one early writer of the 1 The word is obviously used with a reference to Rom. xv. i, where we find in the Vulgate imbecillitatcs infirtnorum. PADDOCK LECTURES 165 Alexandrian school, he exclaims, "The man of virtuous dispositions, though ignorant of the mystery of Christ, be it Fabricius, or Regulus, or any ancient heathen man, famous for sincerity and uprightness of carriage, hath as sure a claim and interest in the Church of Christ, as the man deepest skilled in, most certainly believing, and openly professing all that is written in the holy Books of God, if he endeavour not to show his faith by his works." 1 The large and generous current of Hales' human sympathy, and his ap- preciation of all that is good wherever it is to be found,are characteristic features of his writings, and make him one of the most delightful, stimu- lating, and wholesome of the divines of the seventeenth century. He appears as quite uncon- nected historically with the School of Cambridge divines who came, at a later time, to be spoken of as the " Latitude-men," though his tone is in many respects similar to theirs. The shameful controversial animus that im- puted Socinian views to Hales had not a shadow of justification. His Confession of the Trinity has been happily preserved, 2 and sets at rest the question, which in truth should never have been raised. And the warm eulogy of the great champion of orthodoxy, Bishop Pearson, prefixed to the Golden Remains, and unqualified by the 1 Sermon, " Of dealing with erring Christians," in Golden Remains (edit. 1673), P- 37- ' 2 Golden Remains, p. 257. 1 66 PADDOCK LECTURES slightest hint at censure, may satisfy any as to the soundness of Hales, while it is entirely creditable to the large-hearted and generous spirit of Pearson himself. Pearson had known Hales personally, and it is quite remarkable how the somewhat cold and judicial temper of the critic warms as he recalls his own " long experience and intimate acquaintance " of Hales. " He really was," he declares, " a most prodigious example of an acute and piercing wit, of a vast and illimited knowledge, of a severe and profound judgment,". and his genuine goodness, Pearson goes on to say, was even more wonderful than his " intellectual perfections." As we approach the period of the Restoration there comes into some prominence a little group of Cambridge men associated together in earlier days by college ties, and, as time went on, by a prevailing community of view in their way of regarding religious questions. They came to be known as the " Latitude-men," and sometimes as the " Cambridge Platonists." The most eminent among them were Benjamin Whichcote (1610 — 1683), John Smith (161 8— 1652), Ralph Cudworth (161 7 — 1688), and Henry More (1614 —1687). To explain satisfactorily the origin of this coterie, or " set," as we should now style it, would demand a minute knowledge of the history of life and thought in the Cambridge colleges during the reign of Charles I., to which I cannot PADDOCK LECTURES 1 67 pretend. 1 The leading figures of this little band, Whichcotc, Smith, and Cudworth, were all mem- bers of Emmanuel College, the Puritan founda- tion of Sir Walter Mildmay ; and the influences by which they had been surrounded were cer- tainly not of a kind to attach them to the royalist and Church party. We find some of them at a later period accepting offices and emoluments in the University from which the royalist divines had been expelled under the usurpation. It is quite impossible to believe they had any real sympathy with the dogmatic system of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. We are scarcely in a position to judge their conduct or pronounce on the moral problems which they were compelled to solve in practice. It is satisfactory to know that Whichcote, when advanced to the Provostship of King's College, not only refused to subscribe the Solemn League and Covenant, but was sufficiently influential to protect from such an intolerable test all the Fellows of that foundation. It is not difficult to imagine how during the miserable distractions, civil and religious, which then embittered English life, thoughtful and quiet-loving men would seek to avoid the con- tentious questions of theology, and turn their attention to the great fundamental truths that 1 Mr. J. B. Mullinger's interesting essay, Cambridge Characteristics in the Seventeenth Century (1867), may be consulted. 1 68 PADDOCK LECTURES lie at the basis of all religion, and to the moral and spiritual aspects of Christianity. On ques- tions of Church government it is likely enough that they were really indifferent. Henry More puts the matter with considerable force when he says, " If the external form of Church government were of such mighty consequence as that this ought to be called antichristian, that reputed jure divinOy and that it were essential to a true Church to have such or such a kind of govern- ment rather than another, Christ would have left more express command and direction con- cerning it." And on the dogmas of Calvinistic theology the Cambridge men were content in general not actively to debate them, but by their positive teaching partly to divert attention from them, and partly to silently undermine them. It is a real and serious defect that the corporate character of the Church was imperfectly realized, and that the sacramental system of the Church had little significance for them. They shrank from acrimonious controversy. They sought to escape from the clouds and storms of our lower airs by living on elevated heights and in the somewhat rarefied atmosphere of philosophical speculation. But both with Whichcote and with Smith a deep religious veneration for conscience, as the immediate voice of God, was a constant check to any tendency to unprofitable vagueness. With them, if with any men, religion was " a practical thing." I'ADDOCK LECTURES 1 69 To speak of the best of these writers as " mystics " is very likely to mislead. They dwelt much, it is true, on the personal relations of the soul to God. But nothing can be more intellectually severe than their resolve to guard against the self-deceptions that come under the guise of immediate revelations. " Intra te, qncere Deum, seek for God within thine own soul." " To seek our divinity merely in books and writings is to seek the living among the dead : we do but in vain seek God many times in these, where His truth too often is not so much enshrined but entombed." " The soul itself hath its sense as well as the body : and therefore David, when he would teach us how to know what the divine goodness is, calls not for speculation but sensation — Taste and see how good the Lord is." " There is an inward beauty, life, and loveliness in Divine Truth which cannot be known but only when it is digested into life and practice!' These words from Smith, greater in every sense than his master Whichcote, will, better than any attempt of mine, put us at the centre of the spirit of the Cambridge school. On the intellectual side, as it is not difficult to understand, the Cambridge Platonists were engaged largely in the statement and defence of the primary truths of natural religion. Thus it was with Whichcote ; and in the few Select Discourses of John Smith that have come down to us we have treatises on " Atheism," " the I/O PADDOCK LECTURES existence and nature of God," " the immortality of the soul," and " superstition " in the sense of " an over-timorous apprehension of the Deity." Aeain on " Atheism ' : and " the immortality of the soul" we have from Henry More two elabor- ate works ; while the greatest product of the Cambridge school, viewed from the side of thought and power of philosophical speculation, Cudworth's unfinished Intellectual System of the Universe, is directed almost wholly against the atheistic and fatalistic tendency of the writings of Hobbes. It is a work marked by profuse erudition and, what was rarer among English divines, by great philosophical insight. While in his day More was much more generally esteemed, and secured a large sale for his works, the reputation of Cudworth has grown with years ; and both the Intellectual System and his little posthumous work on Eternal and Immutable Morality will always have a respected place in the esteem of philo- sophical theologians. It was with such deep fundamental and primary principles of religion, rather than with any parts of developed systems of distinctively Christian dogma, that the Cambridge school were mainly occupied. 1 1 The name "Latitude-men," or " Latitudinarians," points to the line of large tolerance as to varieties in belief, which, notably, these Cambridge men advocated, though, as we have seen, a like spirit was manifested by PADDOCK LECTURES I /I If in a company of well-informed persons the question were asked, " Who were the three greatest among the masters of theology in the Church of England ? " the answers made might probably vary either as to the selected names, or as to the order in which they were placed ; but it would be strange indeed if any of the replies did not include among the three the name of Bishop Pearson. And, beyond all doubt, John Pearson (1612 — 1686) possessed in a high degree a rare combination of great natural gifts, trained and disciplined, with great attainments in learning. In him we find eru- dition, not only wide but minutely exact, and a critical faculty keen and penetrating. In him we find sound reasoning which never builds, as in the case of some who have great reputations, a huge superstructure of top-heavy inference upon an insufficient or rickety base. In him we find a judicial capacity that seems never others of the more " churchly " school ; while the term "Platonists" seems to have been attached to them on account of the prominence given by some of them to the teaching of Platonism, more particularly as it took shape in the writings of the later or Neo-Platonic school, repre- sented by Plotinus and Proclus. Dr. Tulloch in his Rational Theology, etc. (vol. ii.) deals at length with the Cambridge Platonists, and gives some account not only of the leaders but of the minor members of the school, as Culverwel, YVorthington, and others. An interesting- lecture on Benjamin YV hichcote by Bishop Westcott will be found in Masters in English Theology (pp. 147—173). I 72 PADDOCK LECTURES swayed by prepossessions, that looks at the evidence, all the evidence, and only the evidence, before pronouncing judgment. Pearson has left us not more than two works of any considerable length ; but each of these is in its way a masterpiece, — the Exposition of the Creed (1659) 1 and the V indicia Epistolarum S. I gnat ii (1672). Pearson, like so many of the clergy of royalist sympathies, had been deprived of his parochial charge ; yet, unwilling to be idle in his Master's work, he accepted the invitation of the parish- ioners of St. Clement's, Eastcheap, in London, to deliver to them a weekly lecture. These lectures, on the Apostles' Creed, his hearers requested him to publish ; and this he did, after recasting them in the form that we now possess in the Exposition. The plan of this great work is to give in the text an exposition of each article of the Creed, supporting it " upon the written Word of God," and avoiding with rigid strictness " inserting the least sentence or phrase of any learned language." To this determination, systematically carried out, the book owes much of its success. It deals with a complete and definite circle of truth, the essentials of Christianity ; and the result is a self- contained treatise, sufficient for its purpose, and 1 The third folio edition of 1669 was apparently the last that was revised by the author, and it is taken as the basis of our best edition, that of Rev. T. Chevallier, as revised by Rev. R. Sinker, Cambridge, 1882. PADDOCK' LECTURES 173 available to every intelligent person of ordinary education. The solidity of Pearson's reasoning, and his studied care to keep clear of " doubtful disputations," carries the student on from step to step with few occasions for hesitating and de- murring. To those who acknowledge the authority of Holy Scripture (for that is assumed) Pearson on the Creed is a book that nearly everywhere carries conviction. Again, when we turn to the copious notes we have a creat store-house of erudite illustration drawn from all quarters, admirably arranged, and distinguished from too many displays of learning in being thoroughly pertinent. In this as in all his works the most cursory remarks, the merest obiter dicta are precious. As was said of Pearson by one who was himself competent to judge — Richard Bentley — " the very dust of his writings is gold." I would add that even the silence of Pearson, where some would expect him to speak, is often highly suggestive. In his constant reference to Christian antiquity as a guide to the interpretation of Scripture Pearson is a typical Anglican theologian. In his epistle dedicatory to the parishioners of St. Clement's he puts his position briefly — " In Chris- tianity . . . whatsoever is truly new is certainly false." And the same principle is expressed in his Latin Sermon, preached at Cambridge ad clerum, on the text, " Stand ye in the ways and see and ask for the old paths" (Jer. vi. 16), where 1/4 PADDOCK LECTURES the preacher cried aloud, " Shun novelty, inquire what was from the beginning, consult the sources, go to antiquity, go back to the Fathers, look to the Primitive Church." Here he declares is the defence against Rome. Here is the defence against Puritanism. The English style of Pearson is not one of his strong points. His sentences are often long and laboured, and are sometimes disfigured by awk- ward constructions. 1 Still the attentive reader will seldom miss the sense. The Exposition is jndeed a great possession of the English Church. The late Bishop of Brechin (A. P. Forbes) used to say, " The man who has mastered his Pearson on the Creed may be reckoned a considerable theologian." Comparatively few are capable of truly esti- mating the value of the second work of Pearson which we have named ; but it is in truth perhaps an even greater effort of his extraordinary powers. The VindicicE Epistolarnm S. Ignatii 2 was an answer to Daille's attempt to show that the letters attributed to Ignatius were really productions long posterior to his time. " It was," writes Bishop Lightfoot, " incomparably the most valuable con- tribution to the subject which had hitherto ap- 1 The frequent construction commencing with " being that " (though not peculiar to Pearson) is extremely rare in our good writers, and is now entirely obsolete. 2 Editions in 1672, 1698, 1724, and in A.C.L., edited by Archdeacon Churton, 2 vols. 1852. PADDOCK LECTURES 1/5 peared, with the single exception of Ussher's work. Pearson's learning, critic.il ability, clearness of statement, and moderation of tone, nowhere appear to greater advantage than in this work. If here and there an argument is overstrained, this was the almost inevitable consequence of the writer's position as the champion of a cause which had been recklessly and violently assailed on all sides. . . . Compared with Daille's attack, Pear- son's reply was as light to darkness. In England at all events his work seemed to be accepted as closing the controversy." x It is impossible here to notice the minor works of Pearson, though all of them are of interest, and some are of considerable importance, 2 and we will conclude our brief account with the words of a contemporary, by no means always friendly to divines of the school which Pearson represents, Bishop Burnet — Pearson "was in all respects the greatest divine of the age : a man of great learn- ing, strong reason, and of a clear judgment" 3 The great and varied powers of Isaac Barrow (1630 — 1677), mathematician, scholar, and theo- logian, conjoined with his sound and masculine judgment, made him a notable figure among the 1 Apostolic Fathers^ Part II. vol. i. p. 320. 2 The Minor Theological IVorhshave been collected and edited by Archdeacon Churton. Oxford, 1844, 2 vols. 3 Own Times, iii. 142. See also an excellent criticism by Archdeacon Cheetham in Masters in English Theology. 1/6 PADDOCK LECTURES many eminent men that distinguished the reign of Charles II. Barrow's abilities showed themselves early. He was about nineteen years of age when he became a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was then for a time an eager student of the experimental and natural sciences, chemistry, anatomy, and botany, then beginning to gain a footing at that University. Some five years later he would have succeeded to the Professor- ship of Greek but for the forcible abduction, as the story goes, of one of the electors favourable to his claims. The next year (1655) he set out upon his journeyings on the Continent and in the Levant. He was qualified to profit by foreign travel. His mind was already well stored ; and both the present and the past were to him full of interest. At Paris he inquires into the condition of the French Protestants ; and turning to the ancient seats of learning he laments that there were no successors to the power or erudition of Gassendi or Mersenne, of Petavius or Sirmond. The Sorbonne he con- trasts very unfavourably with his own College. At Florence the treasures of the library and the museum engross him. In Turkey he made a study of Mohammedanism which afterwards bore fruit. 1 At Constantinople he read the works of its greatest prelate, St. Chrysostom, his favourite among the Fathers. 1 In his treatise Epitome Fidei et Religions Ti/reicce. PADDOCK l.i:< TURES 1/7 After some four years abroad, returning by Germany and Holland, he reached England, and immediately obtained ordination from Brownrigg, the deprived Bishop of Exeter. At the Restoration the Professorship of Greek at Cambridge fell to his lot, and not long after- wards, as an acknowledged master in a totally different line, he was appointed, first, Professor of Geometry in Gresham College, in London, and two years later Lucasian Professor at Cambridge. Those who are competent to judge assign to Barrow a high place among English mathematicians, some, indeed, a place second only to his illustrious pupil, Isaac Newton. Such was the man who now turned to devote his whole powers to the study of theology. Barrow's best known work is his Treatise of the Popes Supremacy. It had not received his final handling and adjustment when the author's life was brought to an untimely close in his forty- seventh year. But even as it is, it is a masterly and exhaustive discussion, and in its main contention has never been refuted, nor indeed, as we think, is capable of refutation so long as history is history. Later writers have only added further proofs and illustrations to his solid and convincing argument. On Pearson's elevation to the bishopric of Chester (1672) Barrow succeeded him as head of Trinity College, Cambridge. It is interesting to note that the two most able and scholarly N i;8 PADDOCK LECTURES treatises on the Creed, in the English tongue, should have come from the pens of two suc- cessive Masters of Trinity. As distinguished from Pearson's work, Barrow's " Sermons on the Creed," as has been justly remarked, 1 dwell "on the vital and operative, rather than on the formal and scientific side of our faith." And we may add that while Pearson is more minute, and precise in the treatment of details, Barrow's lines are drawn with a bolder hand and have a larger sweep. His mind is more philosophic in its bent, and he is more alive to the movements of thought and speculation in his own time. His arguments are elucidated by a more varied range of illustration, and are from time to time suffused by a glow of genuine emotion. His robust and practical judgment puts on one side many of the scholastic subtleties that occupied Pearson, and he sets himself to grapple with the main and central forces of unbelief.' 2 Pearson's work is better suited for the technical theologian ; Barrow's appeals to the theologian, but also to a wider circle of thoughtful men interested in religion. Barrow's elaborate and exhaustive sermons are mainly concerned with questions of life and morals; and when he deals with dogma, it is 1 Dr. Wace in Classic Preachers of the Church of E?igland (first series), p. 48. 2 This is well illustrated by the different treatment of the first Article of the Creed. PADDOCK LECTURES I/O almost always because of its direct bearing on conduct. An illustration of this remark will be found in his four great sermons on The Doctrine of Universal Redemption. Barrow's temper of mind, at once truly reverent and yet averse from all obscurantism, is exhibited very clearly in his short treatise on The Doctrine of the Sacraments. The questions about which there have been endless wrangdines o o are brushed aside, or, more correctly, are simply disregarded, and the whole energy of the author's powerful understanding is directed to the inter- pretation of the sense of Holy Scripture. George Bull (1634 — 17 10) had been ordained in the days of the Commonwealth by Dr. Skinner, the deprived Bishop of Oxford. 1 He was in his seventy-first year when he was elevated to the bishopric of St. David's. In the parish in which he ministered in his early days, he found that much antinomian teaching was current, and he set himself to study the question of Good Works and their relation to Justification. From an unwillingness to add to the rancour of popular discussion upon this subject he resolved to submit his views to the limited circle of the learned in the Latin tongue; and in 1670 he published his Harmonia Apostolica? 1 He was made deacon and priest in one day at the early age of twenty-one. 2 The full title is Harmonia Apostolica^ scu, Biiuc ISO PADDOCK LECTURES It is difficult to understand in our day how Bull's work was met by such vigorous opposition, and that on the part of some able Churchmen as well as of dissenters. He was accused of departing from the teaching of the Reformers ; but he himself maintained that his views were really in accord with the authentic Confessions of the reformed Churches, which he held had been misunderstood and misapplied. The truth is Bull maintained with all our theologians that (i) the moving cause of man's justification is the mercy of God, and (2) that the meritorious cause is solely the satisfaction (the obedience and sufferings) of our Lord. The only question was as to the condition required on our part for our justification. Was it faith merely, or faith and repentance, and, if opportunity permitted, faith operative of good works ? The discussion is now quite outworn ; and I can adopt the language of the acute Bishop Thirlwall with reference to J. H. Newman's Lectures 011 Justifi- cation (which, in the main, symbolize with Bull). " After the closest attention given to the subject, I view it as one of words, involving no real difference of opinion." Indeed, with, the ex- ception of a few extreme fanatics whose names are now forgotten, those who have been most Dissertationcs quorum in priorc doctrina D. Jacobi de justificationc ex opcribus explanatur ac defenditur : in poster! ore consensus D. Pauli cum Jacobo liqicido demon- stratur. PADDOCK LECTURES [8l eager in contending for "justification by faith alone" have always asserted that "justifying faith ' ; cannot be without repentance, and, if opportunity allows, good works. It is not on the theological side, but on the side of biblical exegesis that the interest now lies. The relations of the writings of St. James and St. Paul remain a curious problem in the study of the New Testament literature. On that side of the question Bull will not satisfy modern criticism ; and I make bold to say much more that is really helpful in the dis- cussion will be found in the short twenty-third lecture of Dr. Salmon's Historical Introduction to the Study of the Books of the New Testament than in the once famous treatise of Bishop Bull. 1 The controversies in which this work involved the author need not here occupy us. His Exam en Censures and Apologia pro Harmonia (1676) are of value chiefly in further elucidating his position. The two other principal works of Bull are concerned with the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. The Defensio Fidei Nicence (1685) is occupied in showing from a careful examin- ation of the anti-Nicene writers that the faith 1 Hallam seems to me to much overrate the importance of the Harmonia Apostolica when he reckons it "the principal work" in our theological literature of the period 1650— 1700. I 82 PADDOCK LECTURES formulated at the Council of Nic?ea was con- sonant with the teaching of the Church in the first three centuries. He had in view through- out admissions of Petavius as to the unorthodox character of teaching to be found in the early Fathers, which had been eagerly seized upon by Arian and Socinian writers. A later work, the Judicium Ecclesice CatJioliccc (1694), was written against those who, professing themselves to believe in the truth of the Nicene doctrine, argued that nevertheless after the example (as they alleged) of the anti-Nicene Church an acceptance of that truth should not be made one of the terms of church communion ; and that consequently the Nicene Council, though right as to the doctrine defined, was unjustified in adding an anathema to the definition. Both of these discussions are conducted by an elabo- rate examination of anti-Nicene history and literature ; and on the interesting and difficult subject of anti-Nicene Christology no student can afford to dispense with the aid to be found in Bull's writings. The value of the first of these two works was recognized by the University of Oxford con- ferring on the author (who had never graduated even in Arts) the degree of Doctor of Divinity. The second obtained a more remarkable dis- tinction, in a message from the great Bossuet conveying to him " the sincere congratulations of the whole of the clergy of France." PADDOCK LECTURES [83 More has perhaps been made of the compli- mentary language of Bossuet (which occurs in an informal letter addressed to the pious lay- man, Robert Nelson 1 ) than it deserves. But, however this may be, the astute author of UHistoire des Variations, while conveying his praises of the Judicium Ecclesia? CatJwlico?, re- quests that Bull would inform him what he meant by the phrase Eglise Catholique. " Estce l'Eglise Romaine," he writes, " et celles qui luy adherent ? Estce l'Eglise Anglicane ? Estce un amas confus de societez separees les unes des autres ? " To these questions of Bossuet Bull replied in his work on TJie corruptions of the CliurcJi of Rome in relation to ecclesiastical government, the rule of fait Ji, and form of divine worship, in answer to the Bishop of Meauxs queries. The death of Bossuet prevented his receiving this reply, but the work remains a powerful indictment of Rome from an acknow- ledged master of the literature of the early Church. Bull expresses some surprise that Bossuet could have for a moment supposed it possible that by " the Catholic Church " he had meant the Church of Rome, when in the Judicium itself, when speaking of her declension from primitive purity, he had exclaimed in the words of the prophet, Quomodo ejfecta est meretrix urbs ft 'delis! And he then gives his definition of "the 1 The letter is printed in Nelson's Life of Bull (pre- fixed to Burton's edition of Bull's Works, p. 329). I 84 PADDOCK LECTURES Catholic Church " as " a collection of all the Churches throughout the world who retain the faith once (aira^) delivered to the saints. . . . All the Churches at this day which hold and profess this faith and religion, however distant in place, or distinguished by different rites and ceremo- nies, yea, or divided in some extra-fundamental points of doctrine, yet agreeing in the essentials of the Christian religion, make up together one Christian Catholic Church under the Lord Christ, the supreme Head thereof." . . . "A union of all the Churches of Christ throughout the world under one visible head, having a jurisdiction over them all, and that head the Bishop of Rome for the time being . . . was never dreamed of amongst Chris- tians for at least the first six hundred years." . . . " My constant judgment of the Church of Rome hath been, that if she may be allowed still to remain a part or member of the Catholic Church (which hath been questioned by some learned men, upon grounds and reasons not very easy to be answered), yet she is certainly a very unsound and corrupted one, and sadly degene- rated from her primitive purity." Bull proceeds to expose in detail what he regards as " corrup- tions." He boldly declares that most of the " superadded articles of the Trent creed " are " manifest untruths, yea, gross and dangerous errors." We need not follow him in detail ; but it may be worth while to indicate the views of this eminent patristic scholar on the Eucharist. PADDOCK LECTURES I