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SEVENTEENTH CENTURY MEN
OF LATITUDE
JOHN HALES
^
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY MEN
OF LATITUDE
FORERUNNERS OF THE NEW THEOLOGY
EDWARD AUGUSTUS GEORGE
WITH PORTRAITS
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1908
Copyright 1908
Charles Scribneb's Sons
Published April, 1908
PREFACE
At intervals during more than ten years it has been the
writer's privilege to refresh his spirit by communion with
these worthies of an earlier time. In their sweet sanity
the violent animosities of their own day are composed,
and peace is made also between past and present. In
every age, perhaps, there are spirits deep and broad
enough both to unify the discordant elements of their
own time and to bind all ages together. It is good for
the soul to cultivate such company. It makes one be-
lieve afresh in ** the communion of saints." While parti-
sanship was rushing over the violent cataracts of a nar-
row torrent, in these spirits there is the placid expanse of
broad and quiet streams. In their company we are led
through green pastures and beside ^'the still waters."
While others were thinking of the Christ who came to
bring not peace but a sword, they were sitting at the
feet of Him who said, ''Blessed are the peacemakers."
It was a chapter in Professor Fisher's ''History of
Christian Doctrine," which first called the writer's
attention to these men. That book referred him to Tul-
loch's classic work, "Rational Theology and Christian
Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century,"
PREFACE
and by this, in turn, he was referred to the writers
themselves. From the time when he opened that Hter-
ary treasure, "The Golden Remains of the Ever-Mem-
orable John Hales," he was won to the study of original
sources. The aim is to present not what some one says
about these men, but what they say themselves. Writ-
ings of the past need to be reinterpreted in each succes-
sive age. It is only in the present that the past can be
appreciated. To-day we may value these catholic,
irenic spirits, as their contemporaries could not. They
were so far in advance of their times that they require
the present for their appreciation, they without us not
being made perfect.
The quaint phrase* of the citations only accentuates
the modern thought, or better, proves that the thought
is less modern than is commonly supposed. The study
of such minds makes for unity, peace, and toleration.
Some of the phraseology and thought is doubtless ob-
solete but continually in the midst of the obsolete is
discovered the pungent and vital, like fresh, sweet arbu-
tus found under dead leaves. These studies aim to be
a spring-time excursion into an earlier age, in quest of
life under winter's death.
The descriptions of the men, their appearance, char-
acteristics, and fortunes, have been gathered for the
most part from contemporaries, who saw them and
knew them, like Aubrey, Anthony Wood, Clarendon,
and Worthington, and often, better still, from friends
who loved them, as Simon Patrick loved John Smith,
and Whitefoot loved Doctor Browne. Many a glimpse
vi
PREFACE
IS given into the universities, homes, and intimate per-
sonal relations of a troubled period. The atmosphere
is the '' better air'' of an earlier time, but without a trace
of mustiness, because these spirits stood out in the open,
refreshed by the ventilation of the pure air and great
winds. They would not be pent in: they were men of
latitude.
The writer is under great obligations for courtesies
received from the libraries of Yale and Cornell univer-
sities, and in particular for the encouragement and aid
of Professor George L. Burr, of the historical depart-
ment in Cornell, and of Professor Lewis O. Brastow, for
many years of the Yale Faculty. In correcting the
proof, Mr. Henry W. Goodrich has given valued assist-
ance.
The Puritan and Anglican of the seventeenth century
are in no danger of oblivion. They should not, how-
ever, monopolize the attention in these days of increas-
ing unity and toleration. A revival of interest in these
broad-minded men of a narrow age is due to them, and
would be ccmgenial to the modern spirit.
E. A. G.
Ithaca, New York,
April, 1908.
vu
CONTENTS
PAGE
MEN OF LATITUDE IN A CENTURY OF NAR-
ROWNESS
Tolerant Spirits in the Seventeenth Century . . 3
Extenuation of Seventeenth Century Intoler-
ance ^
Men of Latitude 6
Partisanship of Age into Which They Were Born 6
Conditions During Their Education 8
Violence of Period at Which Their Work
Began ^
During the Civil War 10
During the Protectorate 12
Afte^ the Restoration 12
JOHN HALES, 1584-1656
I
At the Synod of Dort, 1618 17
Quiet Studies at Oxford, 1597-1636 18
Literary Friends, Jonson, Suckling 20
"Schism and Schismatics," 1636 22
Relations with Laud 23
Canon of Windsor 23
Persecution and Obscurity, 1644-1656 .... 27
II
"Golden Remains op the Ever-Memorable Mr.
John Hales of Eton College," 1659 .... 30
Gentleness in Times of Violence 31
ix
CONTENTS
PAGE
Self-reliant Protestantism 34
Between Anglican and Puritan 36
Unity of Spirit in Diversity op Opinion ... 38
Between Calvinism and Arminianism 39
Views of the Bible 43
Christianity and Social Problems 45
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH, 1602-1644
I
At Oxford as a Student 51
Conversion to Romanism and Return to Angli-
canism 52
Relations with Laud 52
Controversy with Romanism 53
At Great Tew with Falkland 54
"The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way of Sal-
vation," 1638 55
Chancellor of Salisbury 55
In the King's Army with Falkland 57
Controversy with Cheynell 58
Death of Chichester, 1644 59
II
"The Religion op Protestants a Safe Way of Sal-
vation" 60
Trustworthiness of Reason 60
Errors op Truth-seekers not Dangerous ... 61
Unity of Opinion not to be Expected .... 61
Interpretation of the Bible 62
Necessary Truth is Evident, the Obscure is Un-
essential 62
Bible's Authority Internal, not External . . 62
Back to Christ and Biblical Simplicity! ... 64
X
/ CONTENTS
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, 1609-1683
I
PAOE
The Cambridge of 1630 69
Whichcote as Cambridge Tutor 71
The University Preacher 71
Cambridge in the Civil War 72
Provost of King's College, 1644 73
Ameliorating Influence in Violent Times . . 73
At the Restoration 74
Curate of Saint Anne's, 1662 75
His Beneficence 75
Vicar of Saint Lawrence Jewry, 1668 .... 75
Death, 1683 75
Tillotson's and Burnet'is Characterizations . . 76
II
The "Discourses" 77
The Harmony of Reason and Revelation ... 77
Respect for Human Nature 79
The Human Side of Redemption 79
Righteousness Real and Vital Rather than Im-
puted and Artificial 80
Unity of Spirit in Diversity op Opinion ... 81
Correspondence with Tuckney .... . . 83
JOHN SMITH, 1618-1652
At Cambridge under Whichcote 89
Fellow of Queen's College Approved by West-
minster Assembly 90
Scholarship and Geniality 91
xi
CONTENTS
PAGE
Humility and Evangelistic Fervor 92
Gentleness in Times of Violence 92
Death, 1652 93
II
The "Select Discourses," 1660 94
Revival of Greek Theology at Cambridge . . 94
God in His World, the Divine Immanence . . 95
God in Man, the Kinship of the Divine and Human 96
Faith as Participation in the Life of God ... 97
Redemption in Vital Rather than Legal Terms . . 100
The Incarnation Broader than the Atonement . 103
HENRY MORE, 1614-1687
. I
Boyhood in a Puritan Home 109
Student at Cambridge Ill
From Philosophy to Mysticism 113
Influence of "Theologia Germanica" . . . .113
Personal Appearance 114
Mystic Ecstasies 115
II
Philosophical Writings 119
Interest in Physical Phenomena 119
Mediator Between Religion and Science . . . 121
Friend of Descartes 122
Nature Interpreted by Spirit 126
JEREMY TAYLOR, 1613-1667
Personal Appearance 131
First Preaching at Saint Paul's 131
xii
CONTENTS
PAGE
At Caaibridge 132
Relations with Laud 132
Rector of Uppingham, 1636 133
Retirement at Golden Grove During the War . .133
"Liberty of Prophesying," 1647 137
Under the Protectorate 139
After the Restoration 139
Last Years in Ireland 140
II
The "Liberty of Prophesying" 140
Charity in Diversity of Opinion 140
Heresy of the Will Rather than of the Intellect 141
Heresy not to be Persecuted 142
On Simplicity of Creeds 143
On Schism 145
Liberty not License 145
SIR THOMAS BROWNE, 1605-1682
I
Early Life and Education 152
Physician at Norwich 153
Equanimity in Times of Animosity 153
Home Life 155
At the Restoration 156
Whitefoot's and Johnson's Memoirs 157
Personal Appearance and Characteristics . . .157
II
The "Religio Medici," 1642 158
Absence of Antipathies 160
cosmopolit.anism 160
Catholicity 161
Charity in Differences of Doctrine 162
xiii
CONTENTS
PAGE
Mysticism 163
Interest in Natural Science 164
God's Immanence and Mercy 164
The World Within 166
RICHARD BAXTER, 1615-1691
I
Puritan Home 169
Education 172
Early Preaching at Dudley and Bridgenorth . . 173
First Years at Kidderminster 174
Chaplain in Cromwell's Army, 1644-1646 . . . 175
His Impressions of Cromwell 176
The "Saints' Rest^' 179
The Kidderminster Pastorate 180
After the Restoration 181
II
"Reliquiae Baxterianae" 183
Moderation in an Age of Passion 184
Views of Episcopacy 186
Reformation not Separation 187
Comprehension versus Partisanship 189
CONCLUSION
Weakness and Strength of the Latitudinari-
ans 195
Hales, Chillingworth, and Taylor 195
Anticipations of Christian Unity and the Modern
Spirit 196
Views of the Bible 197
The Cambridge Platonists 197
"New Theology" in the Seventeenth Century. 198
Religion and Science 198
xiv
INDEX OF DATES
1584. Hales born.
1597. Hales enters Oxford.
1602. Chillingworth born.
1603. Death of Elizabeth.
Accession of James I.
1605. Browne born.
1608. Pilgrims migrate to Holland.
Whichcote born.
1611. Spanish marriage proposed.
1613. Taylor born.
1614. More born.
1615. Baxter born.
1618. Smith born.
1619. Synod of Dort.
Taylor begins school.
1620. Pilgrim exodus to New England.
1623. Charles and Buckingham in Madrid.
1625. Death of James I.
Accession of Charles I.
1626. Buckingham impeached.
Whichcote enters Cambridge.
Taylor enters Cambridge.
Browne graduated from Oxford.
1628. Petition of Right.
1630. Star Chamber sentences.
Laud enforces conformity to Prayer Book.
Knott's "Charity Mistaken."
Chillingworth converted to Romanism.
XV
INDEX OF DATES
1631. More enters Cambridge,
1633. Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Reading of " Declaration of Sports '' enforced.
Communion tables made altars.
Baxter begins theological studies.
1634. First Ship-Money Writ.
Whichcote tutor at Cambridge.
Taylor preaches at St. Paul's.
Milton's "Comus."
1635. Browne begins practice at Shipden Hall.
1636. Hales' "Schism and Schismatics."
Laud appoints Hales Canon of Windsor.
Laud appoints Taylor Rector of Uppingham.
Whichcote ordained and begins university sermons.
Smith enters Cambridge.
1637. Riot in Scotland over new Prayer Book.
Browne goes to Norwich.
1638. Judgment against Hampden.
Covenant taken in Scotland, and episcopacy abolished.
Chillingworth's "Religion of Protestants."
Chillingworth subscribes to articles.
Baxter ordained, begins preaching.
1639. More takes orders; fellow of Christ's College.
1640. Long Parliament convenes.
Baxter goes to Kidderminster.
1641. Strafford executed,
Browne married at Norwich.
1642. Civil War begins.
King at Nottingham.
Battle of Edgehill.
Hales ejected from Canonry.
Baxter retires to Coventry.
"Religio Medici" appears.
1643. Westminster Assembly convenes.
Solemn League and Covenant.
Chillingworth preaches before King at Oxford.
Chillingworth and Falkland in royal camp before Glouces-
ter.
Death of Falkland in the field.
xvi
INDEX OF DATES
1644. Laud executed.
Death of Chillingworth.
Hales' fellowship sequestered.
Whichcote, Provost of King's College.
Smith, Fellow of Queen's College.
Baxter, chaplain in Cromwell's army.
Taylor's living at Uppingham sequestered.
1645. Battle of Naseby.
Taylor taken captive, released, goes to Golden Grove.
1646. Baxter begins " Saints' Rest " at Rous-Lench.
Baxter returns to Kidderminster.
1647. Taylor's "Liberty of Prophesying" published.
1649. Trial and execution of King.
1650. Taylor's "Holy Living."
Whichcote, Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge.
1652. Smith died.
More's "Antidote against Atheism."
1653. Cromwell's Protectorate begins.
1655. Cromwell consults Whichcote.
1656. Death of Hales.
1658. Death of Cromwell.
Taylor at Portmore.
1659. "The Golden Remains of the Ever-Memorable John
Hales" published.
1660. The Restoration.
Smith's "Select Discourses."
Taylor, Bishop of Down and Connor.
Baxter preaches in London.
1662. Act of Uniformity expels Nonconformists.
Whichcote, curate of St. Anne's.
1664. Conventicle Act.
Baxter begins his "Life and Times."
1665. Great London Fire.
Five-Mile Act.
1667. Death of Taylor.
"Paradise Lost" published
1668. Whichcote, Vicar of St. Lawrence.
1671. Browne knighted.
1682. Death of Browne.
svii
INDEX OF DATES
1683. Death of Whichcote.
1685. Baxter tried and imprisoned.
1687. Death of More.
1688. The Revolution.
William and Mary.
1691. Death of Baxter.
xviii
LIST OF PORTRAITS
John Hales Frontispiece
FACING
PAGE
William Chillingworth 56
Benjamin Whichcote 72
Henry More 112
Jeremy Taylor 132
Thomas Browne 156
Richard Baxter 180
MEN OF LATITUDE
" They loved the constitution of the church and the liturgy,
and could well live under them: but they did not think
it unlawful to live under another form. They wished that
things might have been carried with more moderation.
And they continued to keep a good correspondence with
those who had differed from them in opinion, and al-
lowed a great freedom both in philosophy and in di-
vinity: from whence they were called men of latitude.
And upon this, men of narrower thoughts and fiercer
tempers fastened upon them the name of Latitudinarians."
— Bishop Burnet in his " History of His Oum Time."
" I can come into no company of late, but I find the chief
discourse to be about a certain new sect of men called
Latitude-men. . . . The name of Latitude-men is daily
exagitated amongst us both in taverns and pulpits, and
very tragical representations made of them." — From a
pamphlet of 1662 by S. P. [Simon Patrick f ] of Cambridge.
MEN OF LATITUDE IN A CENTURY OF
NARROWNESS
The men who make names for themselves are often
men of extremes. Souls on fire brand history with their
mark. The man of one idea attracts attention, and
impresses himself upon his age. For this reason there
is danger of misinterpreting a period, if we judge it by
its most eminent characters. Too often in watching
meteors we ignore the fixed stars.
Christian history suffers especially in this regard.
Heretics and ultra-conservatives are familiar figures,
while frequently the Christian of well-balanced views
and sweet reasonableness has sunk into oblivion. His
very moderation has buried him. The bigoted and in-
tolerant make a stir in the world. The liberal and
tolerant, whose strength is in quietness and confidence,
attract little attention.
The seventeenth century is commonly regarded as
bigoted and narrow. Contemplating it, our attention
is monopolized by its glittering lights. The century is
associated with the extreme Anglican and the extreme
Puritan, with Archbishop Laud on the one side, and
Cromwell and the Pilgrims on the other. To see only
these extremes is to wrong the seventeenth century,
3
MEN OF LATITUDE
and to overestimate the twentieth in comparison with
it. There is nothing new under the sun. Liberal, com-
prehensive, sweet-tempered Christianity did not begin
in our day. The seventeenth century had its Hberals as
well as its dogmatists; gentle spirits, whose quiet influ-
ence in subtle ways has flowed into the present, greeting
us from afar, without us not made perfect. Liberalism
as well as bigotry has a pedigree.
In the time of Charles I and Laud and Cromwell
and the Westminster divines, when ceremonialism was
active on the one side, and dogmatism on the other,
when Romanist and Protestant, Anglican and Puritan,
Calvinist and Arminian were having their bitter con-
troversies and the air was charged with maledictions,
even then there were well-poised Christians who held
a middle course, repelled from all extremes alike.
A word may be said in extenuation of seventeenth-
century intolerance. If it may not be excused, it should
not be unduly condemned. It was not so much a lack of
toleration of the opposite party as a fear of its oppres-
sion, a mutual distrust. The Puritan feared, and with
good cause, that the ceremonialism of the Anglican
party would crush him out of existence. The Ceremo-
riialist feared that Puritanism unfettered would run riot,
and destroy all the decency and order of worship, to-
gether with the foundations of civil law and order.
Neither side could trust the other to be free. Each
must oppose the other to the death for its own self-
preservation. The Puritan was not so much unwilling
that the Ceremonialist should exist as unwilling that
4
IN A CENTURY OF NARROWNESS
the Ceremonialist should annihilate him, and con-
versely. Each side gave the other ample ground for
such fear.
Seventeenth-century intolerance, again, was not
merely rehgious, but political also. Church and State
were indissolubly united, to prosper or suffer together.
The Puritan conventicles, to the Anglican mind, were
not only spreading heresy, but also inculcating sedi-
tion. They were dangerous to State as well as to
Church. Neither party had any idea of an established
order, which should make room for both. The hated
innovations of ceremonialism and the excited meetings
of the Puritans were each in turn regarded as danger-
ous to the public welfare. Each party claimed to be
defending society from the other.
The violent struggle over religious questions, more-
over, was not as vicious a thing as we are disposed to
think. There were good elements in it. It stood at
least for a vital devotion to the things of the spirit. It
is to the honor of England, that, when on constitutional
questions there was little division, men were not satis-
fied to ignore the danger threatening spiritual princi-
ples to them most precious, on the one side the love for an
ordered and beautiful form of worship, on the other the
rights of the individual conscience. The seventeenth-
century Englishman was not satisfied, when the ques-
tion of ship-money and political privilege had been
settled. The rights of property and person assured, he
must be assured also of the rights of the soul. He con-
sidered spiritual questions worth fighting over. Intol-
5
MEN OF LATITUDE
erance is often the expression of an ardor of devotion,
which toleration often lacks.
If seventeenth-century intolerance may be thus ex-
tenuated, all the more precious becomes any spirit of
toleration, which in such a century manifests itself.
The times were all for partisanship. The alternative
offered at the point of the sword was an ecclesiastical
tyranny, allowing a certain liberty of belief, or a doc-
trinal tyranny, allowing a certain liberty of worship; a
sad choice. It is, then, to the everlasting honor of the
century, that, in the midst of its clashing extremes, men
appeared with heads unbowed, who denounced both
tyrannies and championed both liberties. Under
Laudian supremacy, they rejoiced in the latitude al-
lowed to belief, but condemned the uniformity imposed
upon worship. Under Puritan supremacy, they re-
joiced in the latitude allowed to worship, but con-
demned the uniformity imposed upon belief. These
*' men of latitude," as Burnet called some of them, in a
cramped age felt pent in alike by narrowness of ritual
and by narrowness of creed, and they cried out for
room and air. Ecclesiastically and doctrinally they
stood in the open. To these expansive souls the at-
mosphere both of triumphant Puritanism and of tri-
umphant Anglicanism was stifling.
A rapid review of the age of partisanship and pas-
sion in which they were involved untainted, reveals a
background, against which their moderation and lati-
tude loom up large and blessed. They were all born in
the first two decades of the century, with the exception
6
IN A CENTURY OF NARROWNESS
of Hales, who was sixteen years old at the century's
opening. It was the period when James I was alienat-
ing his people by new and oppressive imposts, and
offending religious sentiment by proposing a marriage
for Prince Charles with Catholic Spain. Chillingworth
was born the year before James came to the throne,
Browne the second year of his reign, Whichcote the
year after the first pilgrimage of the Pilgrims to Hol-
land in disgust and despair, Taylor two years after the
proposal of the exasperating Spanish marriage. More
the next year, and Baxter the next, John Smith, the last
to be born and the first to die, in 1618. All were thus
born in ample time to imbibe with their first impressions
the animosities of the age in their full strength, and to
have partisanship and prejudice bred in their bones, if
they had not been strangely immune from such infu-
sions through natures sane and gracious. Browne and
Whichcote were born in homes of wealth and privilege,
and as far as their environment was concerned might
easily have developed into pompous cavaliers. Baxter
and More were sons of Puritans, and might as easily
have become rampant roundheads. Chillingworth had
Laud for his godfather, and might have been expected
to develop into uncompromising churchmanship. Tay-
lor, son of a Cambridge barber, did not begin life with
much promise of the favor of Laud and the aristocracy.
The influence of heredity and environment, however,
was powerless before the native graciousness and cath-
olicity of these unbiassed souls. It was bad soil, but
good wheat.
7
MEN OF LATITUDE
As students these men received their education in the
midst of Anghcan oppression and Puritan resistance,
pursuing their studies in a period unfavorable to the
culture of catholicity. Everything made for partisan-
ship, narrowness, animosity, extremes. Taylor began
school the year that Calvinism gave a quietus to Ar-
minianism at the one-sided Synod of Dort. He was
seven years old. More six, and Baxter five, when in
1620 the Pilgrims made their exodus to New England,
in despair of liberty of conscience at home. Whichcote
and Taylor entered Cambridge, and Browne was grad-
uated from Oxford, at the time when the notorious
Buckingham, the hated favorite of James and Charles,
and a principal instrument in their destruction, was
being impeached by an indignant parliament. They
were still pursuing their studies, when two years later,
Buckingham was assassinated, and the great "Petition
of Right," a better protest against tyranny, was stirring
the hearts of Englishmen with its appeal for elemental
liberties. More entered Cambridge, when the country
was in uproar over the infamous "Star Chaniber" sen-
tences of a tyrannical government, and the enforce-
ment of rigid conformity to Prayer Book by an equally
tyrannical church. Baxter decided upon the ministry
and began his theological studies in the same year that
Laud, made Archbishop of Canterbury, was outraging
Puritan sentiment by insisting that the "Declaration of
Sports," encouraging recreation on the Sabbath, be
read in the churches, and that the communion tables be
set in the east end of the churches as altars. It was a
8
IN A CENTURY OF NARROWNESS
period prolific of partisans and bigots, a period per-
chance when men of one idea could alone be effective:
but these men were not of them, and would not pur-
chase influence at so dear a price. In the conservative
and royalist sentiment of the universities, they learned
neither to hate Puritanism nor to condone oppressive
Anglicanism, and as little in reaction did they espouse
iconoclasm and Calvinism.
Being graduated from the universities, they took up
their work between 1634 and 1640, during those six
dreadful years, when collision of extreme with extreme
was inflaming the passions of Englishmen beyond all
bounds of charity and even sanity, and cleaving a great
nation into the two factions of a civil war. It was,
perhaps, the worst time in all history to enter the min-
istry in England, especially for men who would not take
sides. In 1634, Whichcote was appointed tutor at
Cambridge, and Taylor preached those sermons at
Saint Paul's, which raised him to immediate eminence:
it was the year when the first ship-money writ was
served, and when the despotism of Charles I was be-
ginning to work its own destruction. The following
year, Browne quietly began his practice of medicine at
Shipden Hall, and began also to jot down those amiable
reflections, which were to develop into the "Religio
Medici." In 1636, a notable year for these novitiates,
Hales' "Schism and Schismatics" was published, and
the author was appointed Canon of Windsor by Laud:
in the same year the archbishop appointed Taylor rec-
tor of Uppingham, and Whichcote being ordained be-
9
MEN OF LATITUDE
gan his famous university sermons. All three were
loyal to King and Church, but not so blindly as to be
unconscious of grave errors in both Church and State.
In this year also, Smith, the youngest of the group,
came to Cambridge. The following year Browne
peacefully settled at Norwich, when Scotland was in
riot over the introduction of the new Prayer Book. In
1638 Chillingworth published "The Religion of Prot-
estants," one of the sanest works in the literature of the-
ology, and, appointed Chancellor of Salisbury, sub-
scribed to the thirty-nine articles with the understanding
that they were *' articles of peace." In the same year
Baxter was ordained and began preaching at Dudley:
and this was the year when the Covenant was taken and
episcopacy was abolished in Scotland, and when in
England judgment was rendered against the valiant
Hampden for resisting payment of the hated and un-
constitutional ship-money. The following year More
took orders and became fellow of Christ's College,
Cambridge, as serene as if he had been living in Persia.
In 1640, Baxter entered upon his wonderful ministry at
Kidderminster, the year when the Long Parliament con-
vened, not to adjourn till monarchy had been overthrown
and, after the Protectorate, restored again. If ever na-
tive charity triumphed over the biassing influence of an
environment of passion and hate, it did so in these men.
In 1642, the great Civil War began, the King set up
his standard at Nottingham, and the battle of Edgehill
was fought, while Baxter was quietly preaching at Al-
cester, within sound of the cannon. In this year Hales
10
IN A CENTURY OF NARROWNESS
was ejected from the Canonry of Windsor, Baxter re-
tired from Kidderminster to Coventry, and at this time
(of all others!) appeared the gentle "Religio Medici."
In 1643, Chillingworth preached before the King at
Oxford, as unsparing toward the vices of royalty and
court as toward the rebellion of the Puritans, the ** Sol-
emn League and Covenant " was issued as the palladium
of militant Puritanism, the Westminster Assembly con-
vened, and in the royal camp before Gloucester Chil-
lingworth and Falkland agonized over the evil of the
times, the latter soon to rush into a fusillade terminat-
ing a life become unendurable. "The distant future
was his, the future of compromise and moderation.
The present was Pym's and CromwelFs." In 1644, the
year of Laud's execution in the triumph of Puritan in-
dignation, Chillingworth died a captive at Chichester,
badgered by the bigoted Cheynell, Hales lost the Eton
fellowship by sequestration, and Taylor the living at
Uppingham, Baxter became a chaplain in Cromwell's
army in spite of his disapproval of the army's disloy-
alty, and Whichcote and Smith, feeling less the severity
of the times, were appointed the one provost of King's
College, the other fellow of Queen's College, Cam-
bridge. From those who suffered, however, there was no
note of bitterness, as from those who were favored there
was no note of elation. All were sad, but without ani-
mosity. None of them approved the times, even in
their own advancement.
The Battle of Naseby was fought in 1645, and Taylor
taken captive in the royal army, retired to Golden
11
MEN OF LATITUDE
Grove. The following year Baxter retired from Crom-
well's army to Rous-Lench. Then it was, in 1646 and
1647, 'mid the life and death struggle between Puritan
and Anglican, that were written those two immortal
messages of peace, "The Saints' Everlasting Rest" and
** Liberty of Prophesying," the one by a Puritan fresh
from his chaplaincy in Cromwell's army, the other
by a royalist taken captive in the army of the King.
Taylor's "Holy Living" was published in 1650, the
year after the trial and execution of the King to whom
he was devoted. In the same year Whichcote, enjoying
the confidence of the Puritans though far from Puritan,
was made Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University.
During the Protectorate, 1653-1658, Hales died in
penury at Eton, Taylor was in distress and want. Doc-
tor Browne was calmly pursuing his practice at Nor-
wich, Whichcote was preaching his wonderful sermons,
and More writing his voluminous books, at Cambridge,
and Richard Baxter was doing his immortal work in the
Kidderminster parish. Rare John Smith had died pre-
maturely in 1652. Hales' "Golden Remains" were
published in 1659, and Smith's "Select Discourses"
the following year, both posthumous.
The first year of the Restoration, 1660, gave happy
promise of toleration and irenic counsels. Baxter, the
Puritan royalist, was in favor, and full of hope was la-
boring mightily with tongue and pen for a policy of
comprehension, under which all parties might thrive.
The author of "Liberty of Prophesying" was made
Bishop of Down and Connor, and Whichcote in 1662
12
IN A CENTURY OF NARROWNESS
came to London as curate of Saint Anne's. The suf-
ferings, however, of royaUsts and AngHcans during the
wars could not be forgotten, and a spirit of retahation
and vengeance upon Puritanism soon ensued. The Act
of Uniformity in 1662 required such allegiance to Angli-
canism as Puritans with difficulty could give, and under
its enforcement more than two thousand non-conform-
ist ministers were ejected from their livings. In 1664,
the "Conventicle" Act made all informal religious
meetings seditious, and the following year the shameful
Five Mile Act sent the dispossessed into practical exile.
During these shiftings of administration from extreme to
extreme, Whichcote was well poised enough to maintain
a continuous position of influence, sailing storm-swept
seas, strewn with wrecks, for fifty years without disaster.
Browne, Whichcote and More died between 1682
and 1687, all over seventy years of age, having finished
their course, and having kept the faith. Baxter alone
lived to behold in his last years, after the Revolution of
1688, the dawn of that day of toleration, for which their
life long all these catholic souls had prayed.
" These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but
having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and em-
braced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pil-
grims on the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report
through faith, received not the promise: God having provided
some better thing for us, that they without us should not be
made perfect."
The militant spirit always appeals to the popular
heart. Men love a fight, and lionize fighters. But
13
MEN OF LATITUDE
fighting is primitive and barbarous. It was natural for
the Puritans in power to dispossess and persecute the
AngHcans who had persecuted them. It was natural
for the Anglicans, recovering supremacy, to retaliate
upon the Puritans in like spirit and measure. It was
natural: it was not spiritual. It was eye for eye and
tooth for tooth. It was Mosaic, not Christian. Christ
may at times bring not peace but a sword, possibly there
may be religious wars, but Chillingworth seems to in-
terpret the prevailing spirit of the Master, when he says,
"War is not the way of Jesus Christ," for it is undeni-
able that the general teaching of Jesus is that policy of
meekness and non-resistance, which shall inherit the
earth. In very truth, it is that blessed spirit alone that
does inherit the earth securely. It was that spirit alone
that inherited England in the end. Militant Anglican-
ism and rampant Puritanism, mutually exclusive, in
turn won great victories, but neither prevailed through
the years. Only a policy of comprehension and gentle-
ness, capable of affirming the truth and denying the
error of each, could persist. Only sanity endures.
These men of blessed meekness failed to sway their
own times, but the coming age was securely and endur-
ingly theirs, for it is the scaffold of non-resisting truth,
not the throne of militant wrong, that sways the future,
" — and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own."
14
JOHN HALES
JOHN HALES
1584-1656
At the Synod of Dort in the winter of 1618-1619, there
sat in the gallery as a sagacious spectator a small, quiet
man of cheerful face and gentle bearing, John Hales,
chaplain to Sir Dudley Carleton, British Ambassador
to The Hague. He was commissioned to report to the
ambassador the proceedings of the synod, and per-
formed the office with impartiality. The Calvinism
which was there formally victorious won victory at too
dear a cost, and over the mind of the reporter, at least,
lost influence by abuse of its control of the synod. His
friend Anthony Farindon was accustomed to say that
Hales went to the synod a Calvinist, but that he often
said in later life, acknowledging the influence of an
exposition of the verse, " For God so loved the world,"
by Episcopius, the broad-minded leader of the Remon-
strants, "There I bade John Calvin good-night!" The
immediate effect of the synod upon him was not great,
as his somewhat perfunctory reports show, but it was
doubtless to the retired student a period of education
in the evils of controversy and bigotry, and left a last-
ing impression, which developed with reflection. An
17
JOHN HALES
account of John Hales may properly introduce him on
his appearance at Dort, as that was almost the only
occasion during forty years on which he emerged from
the "still air of delightful studies" into pubHc view.
He was not in the public eye. The nineteen years
before his mission to Holland had been spent at Oxford,
as student at Corpus Christi College, and after gradua-
tion as Fellow of Merton and later of Eton. He had
shown rare proficiency in Greek. He had taken orders.
His preaching was brilliant, sparkling with metaphors,
but a weak voice detracted from its effectiveness. An-
thony Wood, a contemporary, in a record of notable
Oxford graduates entitled "Athense Oxonienses," thus
suggests his university reputation: "Through the
whole course of his bachelorship there was never
any one in the memory of man (so I have been in-
formed by certain seniors of that college, Merton, at
my first coming thereunto) that ever went beyond him
for subtle disputations in philosophy, for his eloquent
declamations and orations, as also for his exact knowl-
edge in the Greek tongue. . . . His profound learning
and natural endowments (not that I shall take notice of
his affability, sweetness of nature and complaisance,
which seldom accompany hard students and critics)
made him beloved of all good men."
His rare intellectual abilities and social charm were
coupled with a modesty and love of studious retirement
which prevented his light from shining conspicuously,
although it was by no means hid under a bushel. " His
chamber was a church, and his chair a pulpit." "He
18
JOHN HALES
was as communicative of his knowledge, as the celestial
bodies of their light and influences." He was obstinate,
however, against publishing his views in the press, and
never raised his voice in the streets. The manuscripts
of some of the sermons which have been preserved were
snatched from his hand by interested friends as he
descended from the pulpit. Throughout his life he was
a retiring student. His two years as chaplain to the
Dutch Embassy did not wean him from his studious
habits, nor launch him upon a public career, influential
as were the friends whose patronage he might have
enjoyed. On his return from Holland he buried him-
self in his books at Eton again, content for twenty years
with no higher office than his Fellowship. Clarendon,
the contemporary historian, thus describes the even
tenor of this period. *' Being a person of the greatest
eminency for learning and other abilities, from which
he might have promised himself any preferment in the
church, he withdrew himself from all pursuits of that
kind into a private fellowship in the College of Eton,
where he lived amongst his books and the most sep-
arated from the world of any man then living: though
he was not in the least degree inclined to melancholy,
but on the contrary of a very open and pleasant con-
versation." Clarendon adds that he delighted to have
his friends resort to him, and about once a year would
visit London, "to enjoy their chearful conversation."
His wants were simple, so that with a meagre income
he was able to indulge his two luxuries, generosity to
others, and books for himself. As bursar of his college
19
JOHN HALES
he insisted on replacing from his own funds bad money
received, and would sometimes throw into the river
from twenty to thirty pounds at a time. Aubrey, the
antiquary, in his garrulous and lively reminiscences,
in part happily preserved, draws a charming sketch
belonging to this period. " 'Twas pretty to see, as he
walked to Windsor, how his godchildren asked him
blessing. When he was bursar, he still gave away
all his groates for the acquittances to his godchildren:
and by that time he came to Windsor bridge, he would
have never a groate left."
Of his books Clarendon says that Hales' was the best
private library he had seen; that he "had read more and
carried more about him in his excellent memory than
any man I ever knew, my Lord Falkland only excepted."
Wood calls him "a walking library." He digested his
reading with much reflection, and had it ever at com-
mand.
Among his books, he was also among his friends.
His rare social charm and brilliant conversation com-
mended him to that choice circle of literary lights
which centred in Ben Jonson, including Chilling-
worth, Falkland, Dryden, Suckling and kindred spirits.
Suckling gives him a place in the "Session of the
Poets," a poem in which Apollo is represented as seeking
one to crown among the brilliant coterie.
Hales, set by himself, most gravely did smile
To see them about nothing keep such a coile.
Apollo had spied him, but knowing his mind,
Passed by, and called Falkland that sat just behind.
20
JOHN HALES
Similar modesty appears in the characterization by
Wood, "Though a person of wonderful knowledge, yet
he was so modest, as to be patiently contented to hear
the disputes of persons at table, and those of small
abilities, without interposing or speaking a word,
till desired." When Hales did speak, however, some-
thing was always said. Retiring as the man was,
when once his sword was unsheathed, it was keen,
flashing and dextrous. In a rencontre with Jonson,
who had charged Shakespere with ignorance of the
ancient poets, he undertakes to match their best with
better from Shakespere, and shrewdly adds as a part-
ing thrust to Jonson, that if Shakespere was ignorant of
the ancient poets, he at least stole nothing from them.
A vast store of learning thus as always at command,
with a flavor of humor and an atmosphere of constant
good feeling, made him delightful company. In court
society at Windsor he was also in demand on account
of his "polite discourses, stories and poetry." The
genial fellowship of the London coterie, in which Hales
was always welcome, is delightfully reflected in the
lines, in which Suckling bids him come to town :
Whether these lines do find you out,
Putting or clearing of a doubt;
Whether predestination,
Or reconciling three in one;
Or the unriddling how men die,
And live at once eternally. . . .
'Tis fit you show
Yourself abroad, that men may know
21
JOHN HALES
(Whate'er some learned men have guessed)
That oracles are not yet ceased:
There you shall find the wit and wine
Flowing alike, and both divine: . . .
News in one day, as much we've here
As serves all Windsor for a year,
And which the carrier brings to you,
After 't has here been found not true.
Then think what company's designed
To meet you here: . . .
Where no disputes, nor forc'd defence
Of a man's person for his sense,
Take up the time; all strive to be
Masters of truth, as victory:
And where you come, I'd boldly swear
A synod might as easily err.
This retired life of the Oxford scholar, interrupted
only by the mission to Holland, and enlivened by occa-
sional visits to his literary friends in London, Hales pur-
sued for forty years, from his entrance as a student of
Corpus Christi College in 1597 at the age of thirteen to
1636. In that year he wrote a short paper on "Schism
and Schismatics," probably at the instance of his friend
Chillingworth, who at that time was writing his great
work, **The Religion of Protestants," and had re-
quested Hales' views on schism. The manuscript of
this paper was circulated from hand to hand, so much
did it impress each reader, and finally came under the
eye of Archbishop Laud, who at once recognized its
ability and invited Hales to an interview. Laud had
been acquainted with Hales in undergraduate days, but
22
JOHN HALES
such was the latter's retiring modesty, that Laud, as he
told him at their meeting, had thought him long since
dead, and chided him for keeping in the background.
An interview followed which ended with an offer to
Hales to become one of Laud's chaplains; and a year
later he was persuaded, but with difficulty, to accept a
Canonry at Windsor. Wood thus describes the inter-
view. Laud *' sifted and ferreted him about from one
hole to another, in certain matters of religion that he
partly then, but more in his younger days, maintained.
And finding him an absolute master of learning, made
him, upon his compliance, one of his chaplains and
procured a Canonry of Windsor for him, which with his
Fellowship was all that this most incomparable person,
whom I may justly style a walking library, enjoyed."
The manuscript, which thus contrary to his own de-
sires brought Hales into prominence, is thoroughly char-
acteristic, and on account of its influence upon his ca-
reer may be here examined. It opens with that native
humor, which enlivened all his writings and discourse:
Heresy and schism, as they are commonly used, are two theo-
logical scare-crows, with which they who use to uphold a party
in religion use to fright away such, as making inquiry into it, are
ready to relinquish and oppose it if it appear either erroneous or
suspicious; for, as Plutarch reports of a painter, who having un-
skilfully painted a cock, chased away all cocks and hens, that so
the imperfection of his art might not appear by comparison with
nature; so men willing for ends to admit of no fancy but their
own endeavor to hinder an inquiry into it by way of comparison
of somewhat with it, peradventure truer, that so the deformity
23
JOHN HALES
of their own might not appear: but howsoever, in the common
manage, heresy and schism are but ridiculous terms, yet the things
in themselves are of very considerable moment, the one offending
against truth, the other against charity, and therefore both deadly,
when they are not by imputation, but in deed.
Heresy is defined as "an act of the will, not of the rea-
son, and indeed is a lie, and not a mistake," not a mis-
taken position but a wrong disposition. Variety of
opinions should not prevent those who hold them from
worshipping together. ** Why might it not be lawful to
go to church with the Donatist, or celebrate Easter with
the Quartodeciman, if occasion so require?" The cen-
tral and striking theme is, "Where cause of schism is
necessary, there not he that separates, but he that is the
cause of the separation, is the schismatic." A fruitful
source of schism has been deplorable emphasis upon
non-essentials.
It hath been the common disease of Christians from the begin-
ning not to content themselves with that measure of faith, which
God and Scriptures have expressly afforded us, but out of a vain
desire to know more than is revealed, they have attempted to
devise things, of which we have no light, neither from reason nor
revelation; neither have they rested here, but upon pretence of
church authority (which is none), or tradition (which for the
most part is feigned), they have peremptorily concluded and con-
fidently imposed upon others a necessity of entertaining conclu-
sions of that nature; and to strengthen themselves have broken
out into divisions and factions, opposing man to man, synod to
synod, till the peace of the church vanished without all possi-
bility of recall.
24
JOHN HALES
These are sane words for any time, but certainly re-
markable for the year 1636. The authority of tradition
Hales considers overestimated, and says that by the
ancients "many are more affrighted than hurt." The
illegitimate introduction into liturgy of controverted
ideas has, to his mind, united with insistence upon uni-
formity of opinion in fomenting schism.
Were liturgies so framed as that they admitted not of particular
and private fancies, but contained only such things as in which
all Christians agree, schisms on opinion were utterly vanished.
Whereas to load our public forms with the private fancies upon
which we differ is the most sovereign way to perpetuate schism
unto the world's end; prayer, confession, thanksgiving, reading
of Scriptures, administration of sacraments in the plainest and
simplest manner were matter enough to furnish out a sufficient
liturgy, though nothing either of private opinion, or of church
pomp, of garments, or prescribed gestures, of imagery, of music,
of matter concerning the dead, of many superfluities which creep
into the church, under the name of order and decency did in-
terpose itself.
This sharp thrust at the Laudian insistence upon uni-
formity of obnoxious ceremonial, and the fact that Laud
made a man of such views one of his chaplains and
recommended him for further preferment, show that
Laud could receive blows as well as give them, and
should be counted to the credit of one who has been
unsparingly condemned. To give him his due. Laud
with his ceremonial narrowness exercised much tolera-
tion in matters of doctrine, and was patient of Hales',
as also of Chillingworth's, breadth. As at the begin-
25
JOHN HALES
ning, so toward the close of this paper, is one of those
humorous and pithy metaphors, in which Hales' writ-
ings abound:
'''For private and indifferent persons, they may be
spectators of these contentions as securely in regard of
any peril of conscience (for of danger in purse or person,
I keep no account) as at a cock-fight where serpents
fight, who cares who hath the better ? The best wish is
that both may perish in the fight."
This remarkable tract, it is to be noted, was written
not for publication, but as a private letter to a friend.
For its publicity the author was no more responsible
than he was desirous of the notice into which it brought
him. According to Clarendon, "He would often say,
his opinions, he was sure, did him no harm, but he was
far from being confident that they might not do others
harm, who entertained them, and might entertain other
results from them than he did: and therefore he was
very reserved in communicating what he thought him-
self in those points, in which he differed from what was
received. . . . Nothing troubled him more than the
brawls which were grown from religion."
At the time of Hales' appointment to the Canonry of
Windsor, the long years of his studious retirement and
cheerful association with his brilliant friends were fast
drawing to a close, to be succeeded by critical and aw-
ful times, demanding men of a different calibre, men of
strenuous action rather than of scholarly meditation,
fighters rather than thinkers. Laud had set Hales'
light into a candlestick, but its gentle radiance was not
26
JOHN HALES
long to give illumination, for the candlestick was soon
overturned, and the light itself almost snuffed out. In
1640, but a year after his appointment as Canon of
Windsor, the Long Parliament met, with its life-and-
death struggle between Commons and King. In 1642
the Civil War began. In the following year Falkland,
Hales' friend and host of many years, met a sad death
in the field. In 1644 his friend Chillingworth died a
captive of the Parliamentary forces, and in the same
year his patron Laud was executed in the triumph of
Puritan rebellion.
Little as Hales sympathized with Laud's ceremonial-
ism, Puritan dogmatism was even more distasteful to
him. Choosing between two evils, he chose what seemed
to him the less, and sided with the royal party. In 1642
his tract on schism was published without his consent,
and the same year he was ejected from his canonry by
a parliamentary committee, jealous of all royal sympa-
thizers. Puritan dogmatism could not tolerate such
latitude to varying opinion, in spite of the stout defence
of untrammelled worship. Now uniformity of doctrine
was to be pressed as violently as had been uniformity
of ceremonial. In both systems, Anglican and Puritan,
was a tyranny, which in both alike Hales denounced.
He loved the good and hated the evil in each. In 1644,
by a sequestration of college rents, he lost the Eton Fel-
lowship, on which for years he had subsisted in his sim-
ple life. For nine weeks he was in hiding at Eton. In
1649 he refused to sign the Solemn League and Cove-
nant, the palladium of triumphant Presbyterianism,
27
JOHN HALES
and was formally dispossessed of the Eton Fellowship.
He became tutor to William Salter, nephew of the
Bishop of Salisbury, at Riching's Lodge in Bucking-
hamshire, where in cooperation with Henry King,
Bishop of Chichester, a kind of college was established,
with Hales as chaplain. No peace, however, was to be
granted to quiet students: it was a time of action and
of the strenuous rather than the simple life. Hounded
in his retirement by the order against harboring malig-
nants, this man, of all men benignant, was obliged to
leave Riching's Lodge, and sought refuge at Eton with
the widow of an old servant, grateful to him for his
generosities toward her in the past. Here he was to
end his days in obscurity and penury.
Prohibited from teaching or preaching, this man of
peace in times of war could still let his light shine in
lovely deeds of charity. A star of the first magnitude,
his sky was clouded, but although his brilliance was
obscured in the smoke of battle, gentle influences from
his benignity made themselves felt, like the ultra-violet
rays of the spectrum, actinic though invisible. He sold
a large part of his precious library, which had cost
twenty-five hundred pounds, for seven hundred, and in
the midst of his own straits gave liberal assistance to
clergy and scholars "deprived" like himself. If he
could no longer preach, he would still practise the heart
of the Gospel. With qualms of conscience at dis-
possessing such a man, Penwarden, who had been
installed in the Eton Fellowship in his place, mag-
nanimously offered to resign it to him, but without
28
JOHN HALES
success. Aubrey thus sketches him the year before
his death:
At Eton he lodged (after his sequestration), at the next house
to the Christopher Inne, where I sawe him, a prettie Httle man,
sanguine, of a cheerful countenance, very gentile and courteous.
I was received by him with much humanity: he was in a kind of
violet-colourd cloath gowne, with buttons and loopes (he wore
not a black gown), and was reading "Thomas a Kempis: " it
was within a year before he deceased. He loved Canarie; but
moderately, to refresh his spirits. . . . He had a bountifull
mind.
A sweet picture, certainly, of one who knew *'how to be
abased." If he used "Canarie" moderately, he also
was accustomed to fast from Thursday's dinner till
Saturday. In the sale of his books, "Thomas a Kem-
pis" had been spared. Of his personal appearance in
addition to Aubrey's description is that of Wood :
Those that remember and were well acquainted with Mr. Hales
have said that he had the most ingenuous countenance that they
ever saw, that it was sanguine, cheerful, and full of air: also that
his stature was little and well proportioned, and his motion
quick and nimble.
At Eton in the house of his old servant he died in
1656, weary of "the black and dismal times," "one of
the least men in the kingdom; and one of the greatest
scholars in Europe"; "one of the clearest heads and
best prepared breasts in Christendom." He was buried
in Eton College churchyard without public honors.
A monument was erected over his grave by his admirer,
29
JOHN HALES
Peter Curwen, with a Latin inscription, which trans-
lated, runs thus:
*' Beloved of the Muses and the Graces, John Hales
(name not so much of a man as of a philosophy) lies
not here, but the clay which he assumed is placed be-
low, for surely he shone above other mortals in polish
of manners, subtlety of genius, fulness of heart. He was
wise with a wisdom higher than the wisdom of this
world, and so is more fit for the Choir Invisible."
II
Hales' unwillingness to publish his writings has been
noted, so that during his life but little from his pen
reached the press. The tract on schism was published
without his consent. Three years after his death. Bishop
Pearson edited and published a collection of sermons,
letters and miscellanies, "such as he could not but
write, and such as when written were out of his power
to destro»y. . . . The sermons preached on several emi-
nent occasions were snatched from him by his friends,
and in their hands the copies were continued, or by
transcription dispersed." The collection contains the
Letters from Dort, a valuable contemporary report of
that important synod. The title of the book, to modern
taste somewhat florid, was congenial to the literary at-
mosphere of the period, and was, we may be sure, a
sincere and affectionate tribute to distinguished worth :
**The Golden Remains of the Ever Memorable Mr.
John Hales of Eton College."
30
JOHN HALES
These writings of Hales are as crowded with interest
as his life is barren in incident. He lived within. His
meditation was the deeper for his inaction. All his
force was free to expend itself within. It was a life of
the soul. His history is a history of mind. He was not
a practical leader, a man of affairs, like Laud or Crom-
well. He had neither political nor ecclesiastical nor
doctrinal plan to offer as a panacea for the ills of his
day. He had no faith in accomplishing things by force.
Christ's kingdom is maintained, he says, **not by the
sword but the Spirit: not by violence but by love: not
by striving but by yielding: not by fighting but by dy-
ing." There was nothing in him of the belligerent.
The Spirit was his sole reliance; and his contribution
to that sanity, reason, and toleration, which alone in the
end could prevail, was great. It is the "still small
voice," after wind, earthquake and fire.
As we turn from his life to his writings, it is the same
man who appears, only revealed the more fully, with
reserve broken. The same spirit of gentleness that gave
charm to his manner pervades his writings. His ser-
mon at St. Paul's Cross, for example, is a refuge from
the theological storms of the day, with its atmosphere
of serenity in the midst of conflict. He begins by saying
that his object in coming is to exhort them "to a gra-
cious interpreting of each other's imperfections," and
the text is " Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but
not to doubtful disputations." Among the much-dis-
cussed notes of the church there should be a place, he
thinks, for benignity. Theological writers need self-
31
JOHN HALES
control: "If it be the cause of God which we handle in
our writings, then let us handle it like the prophets of
God, with quietness and moderation, and not in the
violence of passion, as if we were possessed rather than
inspired." It was characteristic of the man to begin
his sermon on " Christian Omnipotency," a subject sug-
gesting vigorous action, with a preface on that "omni-
potent patience" which "beareth all things." Hales
advocates in golden words gentleness of reproof: "The
wisdom and gentleness of a Christian is never better
seen than in reproving. The young and tender branches
of a vine are not to be pruned with a knife, but gently
pulled away by hand." It is in this connection that he
introduces the striking figure of the knife and the sponge,
long remembered:
As a skilful physician of whom we read, finding the sick person
to be afraid of lancing, privily wrapped up his knife in a sponge,
with which, whilst he gently smoothed the place, he lanced it:
so, beloved, when we encounter our offending brother, we must
wrap our knife in our sponge, and lance him whilst we smooth
him, and with all sweetness and gentleness of behavior cure him,
as Isaiah cured Hezekiah by laying upon him a plaster of figs.
To Hales' mind gentleness is due even to souls in tor-
ment, and dwelling upon Abraham's manner of address-
ing Dives, "Son, remember," he exclaims; "Son! a word
of mercy and gentleness, used to teach us that in all cases,
how desperate soever, unto all persons, though never so
forlorn, unto the greatest delinquent, how sinful soever,
yet still we must open some window, at least some small
32
JOHN HALES
crevice, to let our goodness shine through." In similar
vein he notices that "the master of the feast, when he
came in to his guests and saw one there without a wed-
ding garment, though he saw he was constrained to
pronounce a sharp and severe doom, yet he useth
Abraham's method, * Friend,' saith he, *how comest
thou hither?' Son! Friend! here is the true art of
chiding, this is the proper style wherein we ought to
reprove."
It hath been observed of the ancient Cornish language, that it
afforded no forms of oaths, no phrases to swear in. I should never
think our language the poorer, if it were utterly destitute of all
forms and phrases of reviling and opprobrious speech.
"Gracious language is so cheap a virtue good words
are afforded at the same price that evil are." How
far such a spirit as this rises above the partisan
and controversial atmosphere of the times, in which
Protestant and Romanist, Anglican and Puritan, Cal-
vinist and Arminian were vilifying each other, it is
needless to remark. Bishop Pearson in the introduction
to "The Golden Remains," after alluding to Hales'
intellectual attainments speaks of his gentleness thus
quaintly and sweetly:
Had he never understood a letter, he had other ornaments
sufficient to endear him. For he was of a nature so kind, so
sweet, so courting all mankind, of an affability so prompt, so
ready to receive all conditions of men, that I conceive it near as
easy a task for any one to become so knowing as so obliging.
Hales was a true Protestant, not hesitating to assume
33
JOHN HALES
the personal responsibility incurred by abandoning the
Church's infallibility. He saw clearly that Protestant-
ism must be self-reliant, that every man must use his
own reason, "working out his own salvation with fear
and trembling." These are his brave words on per-
sonal infallibility:
We see many times a kind of ridiculous forgetfulness of many
men, seeking for that which they have in their hands; so fares it
with men who seek for infalHbiHty in others, which either is or
ought to be in themselves. . . . For, beloved, infalHbility is
not a favor impropriated to any one man, it is a duty aUke ex-
pected at the hands of all, all must have it. . . . There is no
other means not to be deceived, but to know things yourselves.
. . . Wherefore hath God given me the light of reason and con-
science, if I must sufiFer myself to be led and governed by the
reason and conscience of another man ?
Hales did not quail before the unrest and dispute
which might result from freedom of religious inquiry,
feeling that peace purchased at the price of intellectual
stagnation was too dear. He charges the clergy with
cowardice in discouraging inquiry, as ^'the Sybarites to
procure their ease banished the smiths, because their
trade was full of noise." Religion by proxy he com-
pares, with keen wit, to the methods of the Roman
gentleman, who being ignorant himself, yet desirous
of seeming learned, procured educated servants, with
the fancy that all their learning thus became his own.
Being weak in body, he procured wrestlers and runners,
and exulted in their exploits as his own.
Beloved, you are this man, when you neglect to try the spirits,
34
JOHN HALES
to study the means of salvation yourselves, but content yourselves
to take them upon trust, and repose yourselves altogether on the
wit and knowledge of us that are your teachers.
The Christian must cease to lean upon others, and
must be content to rely upon God and his own reason.
Antiquity is not reliable, for "what is it else but man's
authority born some ages before us?" In regard to
antiquity Hales speaks with delicious incisiveness :
Those things which we reverence for antiquity, what were they
at their first birth ? Were they false ? Time cannot make them
true. Were they true? Time cannot make them more true.
Universality is as unreliable as antiquity, for uni-
versality is only an appeal to the multitude, and the
multitude is usually wrong. " It will never go so well
with mankind that the most shall be the best." Truth
is not established by synods, but is often endangered,
for as the special garments of the Roman slaves called
attention to their number, and thus became a menace
to their masters, so councils endanger the truth by
revealing the numerical strength of those in error, for
"there are more which run against the truth than with
it." His opinion of synods evidently had not improved
since the days at Dort. Such is Hales' brave Protes-
tantism, "Neither to adore all things for Gospel which
our betters tell us, but to bring all things to the true
test; to know the reasons, try the authorities, and never
rest ourselves, till we can take up that conclusion of the
Psalmist, 'As we have heard, so have we seen in the
city of our God.'"
35
JOHN HALES
With this thorough-going Protestantism Hales min-
gled a wholesome respect for authority. He deplored
the indiscriminate discussion of profound questions by
the unskilled, and the great breed of writers, which if
they sowed not tares, yet filled the Lord's floor with
chaff. ]\Iaturity of judgment was all-important in his
eyes, and "greenness of scholarship" is roundly cen-
sured. Protestant that he was, he was far from indulg-
ing in Puritan vituperation of the Roman Church, from
which he acknowledges the ceremonies and ritual of
the English Church to have been derived, and with
which there is a common ground of faith when supersti-
tions are pruned away.
The perfect balance of Hales' mind and taste pre-
vented him from finding rest in any of the extremes of
his day. A true Protestant, he was at home neither
among the rampant Puritans nor the pompous Angli-
cans. He was in favor of the simplest form of wor-
ship, and opposed, as we have seen in the Tract on
Schism, all that pomp which, under the plea of '* decency
and order", Laud and his followers were bent on intro-
ducing. He deplored the exaltation of the bishopric, as
making Christianity *' lackey to ambition." Worship
must not be identified with ceremonies, the danger of
which is illustrated in the following characteristic way,
with another quotation from classic lore:
Our books tell us of a poor Spartan that travelling in another
country and seeing the beams and posts of the houses squared and
carved, asked if the trees grew so in those countries. Beloved,
many men that have been long acquainted with a form of worship
36
JOHN HALES
squared and carved, tricked and set out with shew and ceremony,
fall upon this Spartan's conceit, think the trees grow so, and think
that there is no natural shape and face of God's service but that.
Most trenchantly does Hales decry the Anglican
tendency to exaggerate the visible notes of the church.
Vigorous, caustic and beautiful is his contention for the
invisibility of Christ's kingdom.
It is but Popish madness to send men up and down the world to
find the church. . . . The Lord only knoweth who are his.
. . . When Saul went out to seek his father's asses, he found
a kingdom : let us take heed lest the contrary befall us, lest while
we seek our Father's kingdom thus, we find but asses. . . .
The church hath no other note but to be. . . . The church is
not a thing that can be pointed out. The Devil could shew
our Saviour Christ all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory
of them: I hope the church was none of these! It is the glory
of it not to be seen, and the note of it to be invisible. . . .
Will you know where to find the kingdom of Christ? Our
Saviour directs you in the Gospel; The kingdom of heaven,
saith he, cometh not by observation, neither shall ye say, Lo
here, or Lo there, for the kingdom of heaven is within you. Let
every man therefore retire into himself, and see if he can find this
kingdom in his heart; for if he find it not there, in vain shall he
find it in all the world besides.
Vigorous as is this protest against Anglican ritualism
and ecclesiasticism, Hales found little comfort among the
Puritans. At one with them in asserting the invisibility
and spirituality of Christ's kingdom, and in advocating
simplicity of worship, he is repelled by Puritan emphasis
upon uniformity of doctrine no less than by Anglican
37
JOHN HALES
emphasis upon uniformity of ceremony. Hales' tolera-
tion stands out glorified against the intolerance of his
times. He deplores that *' exceeding affection and love
unto our own conceits, through which we cannot with
patience either admit of other men's opinions or endure
that our own should be withstood." *' Scarcely can
there be found a thing more harmful to religion than to
vent thus our own conceits, and obtrude them upon the
world for necessary and absolute." Hales would seek
Christian unity neither in uniformity of ceremonial with
the Anglican, nor in uniformity of opinion with the
Puritan, but in unity of spirit, with the Christians that
were still to be, of whom he is the forerunner. It is an
inspiration to find words like these in sermons nearly
three hundred years old:
It is not the variety of opinions, but our own perverse wills,
who think it meet that all should be conceited as ourselves are,
which hath so inconvenienced the church: were we not ready to
anathematize each other, where we concur not in opinion, we
might in hearts be united though in tongues we were divided, and
that with singular profit to all sides. It is the unity of the Spirit
in the bond of peace, and not identity of conceit, which the Holy
Ghost requires at the hands of Christians. Since it is impossible
where Scripture is ambiguous that all conceits should run alike,
it remains that we should seek out a way not so much to establish
an unity of opinion in the minds of all, which I take to be a thing
likewise impossible, as to provide that multiplicity of conceit
trouble not the church's peace.
Here is the apostle of a new day, and in lines like
these John Hales ''being dead yet speaketh."
38
JOHN HALES
Between the Calvinism and Arminianism of the times
Hales occupies a mediating position. In bidding John
Calvin good-night at the Synod of Dort, he did not, as
has been well said by Tulloch, bid Arminius good-
morning. In these times of controversy it is reassuring
to behold a man broad enough to appreciate the truth
of both Calvinism and Arminianism. In the matter
of " Predestination " Hales feels that both teach impor-
tant truths.
Were we not ambitiously minded every one to be lord of a
sect, each of these tenets might be profitably taught and heard,
and matter of singular exhortation drawn from either; for on the
one part doubtless it is a pious intent to endeavor to free God
from all imputation of unnecessary rigor; and on the other side,
it is a noble resolution to humble ourselves under the hand of
Almighty God.
Likewise in regard to "Perseverance" he sees truth
in both the Calvinistic and Arminian positions. The
purposes of God are regarded in the same broad way.
God's purposes are not to be defeated, as the one side
contends, and yet with the other they do not nullify
ordinary means nor infringe upon personal liberty;
indeed these are the very means by which God's decrees
are brought about. And with what sanity does he
close the section:
I may not stand longer upon this, I will draw but one short
admonition; Let no man presume to look into the third heaven^
to open the books of life and death, to pronounce over peremptor-
ily of God's purpose concerning himself or any other man.
39
JOHN HALES
The same balance appears in his treatment of " Orig-
inal Sin." He will not allow that doctrine to cause
despair, nor to cloud for a moment the sense of personal
responsibility. "Man indeed is a creature of great
strength, and if at any time he find himself weak, it is
through his fault, not through his nature." Original
sin is not responsible for the full extent of personal
wickedness :
As for original sin of what strength it is I will not discuss; only
thus much will I say, there is none of us all but is much more
wicked than the strength of any primitive corruption can constrain.
There is no resisting such incisiveness. At a time
when it was sadly misinterpreted. Hales read truly the
inspiring fifth chapter of Romans, that locus classicus of
Calvinism, realizing that the sin of Adam, however
disastrous, is more than counterbalanced in the right-
eousness of Christ.
Let us sorrow no more for our loss in Adam; for is not Christ
tenfold better unto us than all the good of Paradise ? The loss of
that portion of strength wherewith our nature was originally
endued is made up with fulness of power in Christ. ... It
hurts not us that Adam fell ; nay our strength and glory is much
improved that by Christ we are redeemed. . . . Yea but the
Devil inspires into us evil thoughts: well, and cannot good
angels inspire good?
It was a lofty soul that could rise thus far enough
above Calvinism and Arminianism to appreciate the
good of each and so beautifully to blend the two systems.
Such sympathetic appreciation of both sides of a great
40
JOHN HALES
controversy reflects glory upon John Hales, and makes
one think better of the seventeenth century. Such a
spirit is as incense rising in the midst of battle smoke.
Hales' attitude toward the Christian of unworthy
life is as gentle as toward the Christian with doubts and
intellectual diflBculties. The austere Puritan was as
far from him in the treatment of offending Christians
as in the treatment of heretics. Hales believed in the
friendly and sympathetic association of the good with
the bad.
No man so ill but hath some good in him. . . . We must take
heed that we do not mistake in thinking that there is nothing else
but evil, where we often see it. We must therefore entertain even
near friendship with such a one to discover him. No man is per-
fectly understood but by his inward acquaintance. . . . For as
they that work in gold and costly matter, diligently save every
little piece that falls away, so goodness wheresoever it be is a
thing so precious that every little spark of it deserves our care in
cherishing. . . . Nothing profits evil men more than the company
of the good. . . . No cause therefore why the true professors,
though notorious sinners, should not be partakers of our Christian
courtesies. . . . Only let me add St. Paul's words in another
place. Ye that are strong receive such a one!
Such a spirit could not affiliate with Puritanism and
its rigorous discipline. Hales had learned to blend
with the injunction, *' Come out from among them, and
be ye separate," the prayer of Christ *'I pray not that
thou shouldest take them out of the world."
If Hales was out of sympathy with the Puritan in his
attitude toward the heretic and the offending Christian,
41
JOHN HALES
still wider was the gap between his attitude and theirs
toward humanity as a whole. His splendid catholic-
ity is perhaps the most remarkable and admirable of
his mental qualities. Words like these in the seven-
teenth century are rare enough to be cherished in all
honor:
The goodness of a Christian man may be like the widow's oil,
that never ceased running so long as there was a vessel to receive
it. There is no kind of man, of what life, of what profession, of
what estate and calling soever, though he be an heathen and
idolater, unto whom the skirts of Christian compassion do not
reach. ... As therefore our religion is, so must our compassion
be, catholic. ... In some things we agree as we are men, and
thus far the heathen themselves are to be received.
Augustine's words, Hales reminds us, are to be re-
membered, *'It is easy to hate the wicked, because they
are wicked; but to love them, because they are men,
this is the rare and pious thing!"
We read of a nice Athenian being entertained in a place by
one given to hospitality, finding anon that another was received
with the like courtesy, and then a third, growing very angry; I
thought, said he, that I had found here a friend's house, but I am
fallen into an inn to entertain all comers, rather than a lodging
for some private and especial friends. Let it not offend any that
I have made Christianity rather an inn to receive all than a
private house to receive some few. . . . Beloved, a Christian
must be like Julian's fig tree, so universally compassionate, that
so all sorts of grafts by a kind of Christian inoculation may be
brought to draw life and nourishment from his root.
He would give the crown of martyrdom to Regulus
42
JOHN HALES
and Fabricius, in a time when the virtues of the heathen
were declared to be glittering vices:
For the crown of martyrdom fits not only the heads of those who
have lost their lives rather than they would cease to profess the
name of Christ, but on the head of every one that suffers for the
testimony of a good conscience and for righteousness' sake.
Hales' views of the Bible and its interpretation are
especially interesting and noteworthy. He regards
revelation through books as not the highest, but only
a secondary form of revelation. God spoke directly to
the Patriarchs. It would be better if we had "no need
of writing, no other teacher but the Spirit, no other
books but our hearts." His sermon on "Wresting
the Scriptures" might well be preached to-day. He
speaks vigorously against forcing our own private ideas
into Scripture: we should receive from it its natural
sense, not press into it our own. We should not debase
the Prince's coin by stamping the name of God upon
base brazen stuff of our own. We should not approach
the Bible with prepossessions, bent on finding precon-
ceived ideas.
As Antipheron in Aristotle thought that everywhere he saw
his own shape and picture going afore him: so in divers parts of
Scripture where these men walk, they will easily persuade them-
selves that they see the image of their own conceits.
Two excellent rules of interpretation are given. The
first is the rule of the literal sense:
The literal, plain and uncontroversable meaning of Scripture
without any addition or supply by way of interpretation, is that
43
JOHN HALES
alone which for ground of faith we are necessarily bound to accept,
except it be where the Holy Ghost himself treads us out another
way.
By setting up our own glosses in place of Rome's, we
do but run around and meet the Church of Rome again
in the same point in which at first we left her. **This
doctrine of the literal sense," says Hales with incisive-
ness, "was never grievous or prejudicial to any but only
to those who were inwardly conscious that their posi-
tions were not sufficiently grounded." "A wrested
proof is like unto a suborned witness."
The second rule is equally sound :
In places of ambiguous and doubtful, or dark and intricate
meaning, it is sufficient if we religiously admire and acknowledge
and confess, neither affirming nor denying either side.
Here is that moderation and caution which is a
cheering contrast to the precise dogmatism of the times.
In some directions he advocates a reverent Christian
agnosticism, content not to know. "I have, I confess,
the same disease that my first parents in paradise had,
a desire to know more than I need." "It shall well
befit our Christian modesty to participate somewhat of
the sceptic." There must be in regard to some things
suspension of belief. The church has made a mistake in
expressing through councils and creeds decided opinions
as the solution of all problems that have arisen: it
would have been better to have left many problems un-
settled, than to have inundated theology with opinions,
some of which cannot be maintained, especially as
44
JOHN HALES
these unnecessary definitions have been a fruitful cause
of schism. The Christian must be content to wait
patiently with confession of ignorance before obscure
texts.
The Jewish rabbis so oft as they met with hard texts were
wont to shut up their discourse with this, Elias shall answer this
doubt when he comes. Not the Jews only, but the learned
Christians of all ages have found many things in Scripture, which
yet expect Elias.
Toward a Biblical interpretation that was to be
realized in our day Hales* face was set in hope.
This prophetic soul anticipated not only the Biblical
interpretation but also the social Christianity of our
times. He felt the pressing of social problems. He
discusses the Christian use of wealth, deploring the ten-
dency to mass riches, and emphasizing the responsi-
bility of large means. One needs a thorough training
for the use of wealth, to his mind, as much as for a
profession. He has a notable sermon on *'The Profit
of Godliness," quite in the modern spirit:
Godliness it is therefore that makes even profit itself profitable.
... It is a greater part of wisdom wisely to dispense profits
when we have them, than to get them at the first. ... So many
there are in the world who know how to gather, but few that
know how to use. . . . Many there are that can be content to
hear that godliness is profitable unto them, but that godliness
should make them profitable to others, that it should cost them
anything, that they cannot endure to hear.
Laying out is more important than laying up.
45
JOHN HALES
Powerful and searching is the sermon on "The Rich
Man's Recepisti; or The Danger of Receiving our
Good Things in This Life."
Thou sittest at thy full table, whilst Lazarus starves at thy gate,
Recepisti! (Thou hast received thy good things!); thou cladst
thyself with superfluous and gaudy apparel, whilst thy naked
brother freezes in the street, Recepisti! Thou refreshest thyself
with dainty restoring physic, whilst the sick perisheth for want of
care, Recepisti! Take heed, every vanity, every superfluity,
every penny that thou hast misspent to the prejudice of him that
wants, when the time comes, shall cry out unto thee, Recepisti!
Here is the clear note of the modern social reformer!
Only abuse takes things from God, to whom all
belongs. "So much as thou needest is thine, the rest
thou art entrusted withal for others' good." "In debt
thou art for all thou hast: and wilt thou know who are
thy creditors? Even every man that needs thee!"
The man who preached these high truths, practised
them also. As we read these rare applications of
Christianity to social problems, the vision rises before
us of the benignant bursar scattering his groats among
his godchildren, as he gave them his benediction; and
then of the booklover who sold his precious library, and
distributed to the necessity of saints, his fellow sufferers,
in evil times.
The prayer with which Hales closes his sermon on
"Peace I leave unto you" breathes the inmost spirit
of the man, and may well conclude a study of him :
Look down, O Lord, upon thy poor dismembered church, rent
and torn with discord, and even ready to sink. . . . We will
46
JOHN HALES
hope, O Lord, that notwithstanding all supposed impossibilities,
thou wilt one day in mercy look down upon thy Sion, and grant a
gracious interview of friends so long divided. Thou that wrought-
est that great reconciliation between God and man, is thine arm
waxen shorter? Was it possible to reconcile God to man? To
reconcile man to man, is it impossible? Be with those, we be-
seech thee, to whom the prosecution of church controversies is
committed, and like a good Lazarus drop one cooling drop into
their tongues and pens, too much exasperated against each other.
. . . Direct thy church, O Lord, in all her petitions for peace,
teach her wherein her peace consists, and warn her from the
world, and bring her home to thee: that all those that love thy
peace, may at last have the reward of the sons of peace, and reign
with thee in thy kingdom of peace for ever!
In such a prayer we seem to hear in the midst of
theological storms Christ's own *'Pax vobiscum."
47
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH
1602-1644
While John Hales was sitting in the gallery at the
Synod of Dort, there was walking in the lanes of Oxford
a student of sixteen, "a little man, blackish hair, of a
saturnine complexion," like Hales, of small stature and
large mind. *'Mr. Chillingworth," says the historian
Clarendon, "was of a stature little superior to Mr.
Hales; and it was an age in which there were many
great and wonderful men of that size." While Hales
was a spectator of the controversy between Calvinist
and Arminian, Chillingworth at Oxford was in the
midst of the controversy between Romanist and Angli-
can. In college debates he was whetting his wits for
valiant service in clear-cut discrimination. In charac-
teristic style Aubrey thus pictures him:
He did walke much in the college grove, and there contemplate,
and meet with some cod's head or other, and dispute with him
and baffle him. He thus prepared himself beforehand. He
would alwayes be disputing; so would my tutor. I thinke it was
an epidemick evill of that time, which I thinke now is growne out
of fashion, as unmannerly and boyish. He was the readiest and
51
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH
nimblest disputant of his time in the university, perhaps none
haz equalled him since.
The Lord Falkland and he had such extraordinary clear
reasons, that they were wont to say at Oxon that if the great
Turk were to be converted by natural reason, these two were the
persons to convert him.
In these college debates the Roman controversy was
uppermost. Chillingworth felt the force of Rome's
ecclesiastical argument, unsatisfied by Laud's theories
of order and authority, although Laud was his god-
father. Under the influence of the Jesuit John Fisher
he sought infallibility, continuity and authority in the
Church of Rome, to which he became a convert in 1630.
During his residence at the College of Douai, he was
followed by letters from Laud, then Bishop of London,
who with admirable tact abandoned insistence on the
argument of order and authority, dear to his heart, and
diverted his godson's mind to fresh lines of inquiry.
Chillingworth now began to study religion from the
intellectual rather than the ecclesiastical point of view,
to seek truth rather than authority, and in the shifting
of his ground he found himself returning to Anglican-
ism. He had been introduced to the field where his
acumen was to be of the greatest service. It was rare
tolerance through which Laud saved Chillingworth to
the English Church, for through the arguments impor-
tant to Laud he had gone over to Rome. In a conversa-
tion upon this period, Morley reports Gladstone as
saying, "Do you know whom I find the most tolerant
churchman of that time ? Laud ! Laud got Davenant
52
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH
made Bishop of Salisbury, and he zealously befriended
Chillingworth and Hales." This conversion and re-
conversion naturally brought upon Chillingworth
charges of inconstancy, but he maintained that he was
constant to the leading of truth. "He is constant in
nothing," says his biographer, Des Maizeaux, *'butin
following that way to heaven which for the present
seems to him the most probable." Whichever way
he faced, he was ever seeking the north.
While Chillingworth was developing under these
experiences, his work was preparing for him, the task
commensurate to the power. In 1630, the year of
Chillingworth*s conversion to Rome, the Jesuit Edward
Knott published a controversial tract with the self-
explanatory title, "Charity Mistaken, with the Want
Whereof Catholics are Unjustly Charged for Affirming,
as They do with Grief, that Protestancy Unrepented
Destroys Salvation." Three years later Dr. Potter, pro-
vost of Queen's College, Oxford, replied with a tract,
"Want of Charity Justly Charged on all Such Romanists
as Dare (Without Truth or Modesty) Affirm that Protes-
tancy Destroyeth Salvation." This was answered in
turn by Knott's "Mercy and Truth, or Charity Main-
tained by Catholics." It was at this point that Chil-
lingworth entered a controversy which from its nature
was bound to excite the interest of one who had had his
experience. He undertook a reply to Knott's " Charity
Maintained," finding herein a worthy field for the
exercise of his long discipline. At the house of his
friend Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland, at Great Tew, he
53
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH
found a congenial environment for the preparation of
his great work. It is a dehghtful picture of Falkland's
hospitality that Clarendon and Aubrey sketch, and in
the turmoil of the times it is good to find retreat in the
atmosphere of the manor house at Great Tew.
His lordship was acquainted with the best wits of that uni-
versity (Oxford), and his house was like a college, full of learned
men. . . . Mr. Chillingworth of Trinity College in Oxford (after-
wards D.D.) was his most intimate and beloved favourite, and
was most commonly with my Lord.
And truly his whole conversation was one continued convivium
philosophicum or convivium theologicum, enlivened and re-
freshed with all the facetiousness of wit and good humor and
pleasantness of discourse, which made the gravity of the argument
itself (whatever it was) very delectable. His house where he
usually resided, Tew or Burford in Oxfordshire, being within ten
or twelve miles of the university, looked like the university itself
by the company that was always found there. There was Dr.
Sheldon, Dr. Morley, Dr. Hammond, Dr. Earles, Mr. Chilling-
worth, and indeed all men of eminent parts and faculties in Ox-
ford, besides those who resorted thither from London, who all
found their lodgings there as ready as in the colleges: nor did the
lord of the house know of their coming or going, nor who was in his
house, till he came to dinner or supper, where all still met: other-
wise there was no troublesome ceremony or constraint to forbid
men to come to the house, or to make them weary of staying there,
so that many came thither to study in a better air, finding all the
books they could desire in his library, and all the persons to-
gether whose company they could wish, and not find in any other
society. ...
Here Mr. Chillingworth wrote and formed and modelled his
54
WILLIAM CHILLING WORTH
excellent book against the learned Jesuit Mr. Knott, after frequent
debates upon the most important particulars: in many of which
he suffered himself to be overruled by the judgment of his friends,
though in others he still adhered to his own fancy, which was
sceptical enough, even in the highest points.
In such an atmosphere, Chillingworth wrote his great
work, "The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way of
Salvation," which breathes indeed "a better air" than
the prevailing atmosphere of the seventeenth century.
Published at Oxford in 1638, the first edition is said to
have been exhausted in five weeks. In less than five
months two editions had been sold. Fifty years after
its first appearance it was still regarded as a bulwark of
Protestantism, a condensed edition being published by
John Patrick in fear of a Romanist revival. Up to 1719
seven editions had appeared. In 1742, more than a
hundred years after its publication, it appeared in still
another edition. So much was it prized, and so endur-
ing was its sane argument.
In 1638 in recognition of his eminent service to Prot-
estantism Chillingworth was presented to the Chancel-
lorship of Salisbury by Charles I, with the Prebend of
Brixworth and the Mastership of Wigston's Hospital
annexed. In the subscription book of Salisbury his
subscription to the Articles appears. The sense in
which he subscribed he made plain, as to articles of
*' peace and union." His subscription was only after
much hesitation, largely due to the damnatory clauses,
which were repulsive to him. Such was his charity that,
however clearly he was convinced of his own beliefs, he
55
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH
could not put all dissent from them under the ban.
He defines the sense in which he accepts the Articles in
characteristic words:
I belong to the Church of England. I have not only no wish
to renounce her communion, but I am willing to be her minister,
supposing that it is enough that I approve generally of her doc-
trine. This approval is what I design by subscribing the Articles.
In these Articles good men of former times have done what they
could to express their highest Christian thought against the
perversions of heretical curiosity. They would have succeeded
better if they in their turn had been less curious, if they had re-
frained from defining where Scripture itself has refrained; but,
upon the whole, I acknowledge their doctrine, or at least I have
no wish to dispute it. I accept the Articles as articles of peace.
As in the case of Hales, hardly was Chillingworth
settled in a position of authority with his powers recog-
nized, when the outbreak of the great struggle destroyed
the conditions in which his brilliant but non-militant
genius could have been most effective. Forced to
choose between two evils, he espoused the cause of the
King, although acknowledging the piety of the Parlia-
mentary army, and condemning the godlessness of the
court. Reforms he felt necessary, but he could not
approve the Parliament's method. In a conversation
on his death-bed he said to Cheynell, "Sir, I must
acknowledge that I do verily believe that the intentions
of the Parliament are better than the intentions of the
Court or of that army which I have followed : but I con-
ceive that the Parliament takes a wrong course to prose-
cute and accomplish their good intentions, for war is not
56
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WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH
the way of Jesus Christ." In a sermon before the King
at Oxford in 1643 on the occasion of the PubHc Fast,
he recognized the King as the Lord's anointed whose
authority must be maintained, but in the spirit of the
Hebrew Prophets condemned the sins of the King's
supporters. Conversely, the piety of the Parliamentary
cause could not excuse its violence and anarchy.
Publicans and sinners on one side, scribes and Pharisees on
the other. On the one side hypocrisy, on the other profaneness.
No honesty nor justice on the one side, and very little piety on the
other. On the one side horrible oaths, curses and blasphemies;
on the other pestilent lies, calumnies and perjuries. When I
see among them the pretence of reformation, if not the desire,
pursued by anti-Christian, Mahometan, devilish means; and
amongst us little or no zeal for reformation of what is indeed
amiss; little or no care to remove the cause of God's anger to-
wards us by just, lawful and Christian means, I profess plainly
that I cannot without trembling consider what is likely to be the
event of these distractions.
In 1643 Chillingworth and Falkland were together in
the royal camp before Gloucester, two high souls aghast
at the horror of their times. After a deep silence
and frequent sighs, Falkland, says Clarendon, ''would
with a shrill and sad accent ingeminate the word,
Peace! Peace! and would passionately profess that
the very agony of the war and the view of the cal-
amities and desolation which the kingdom did and
must endure, took his sleep from him, and would
shortly break his heart." The blessed days of calm,
far-seeing discussion in the library at Great Tew were
57
WILLIAM CIIILLINGWORTH
over, but when the battle smoke at length cleared,
the sanity of those discussions made itself felt resur-
gent. By the Civil War the influence of Chillingworth
was only interrupted : it was not ended.
At the surrender of Arundel Castle to Waller, Chill-
ingworth became a captive of the Parliamentary army,
and, unable on account of sickness from the severe cold
to go to London with the garrison, was taken to the
Bishop's palace at Chichester. It was here that the
dying man was subjected to the inquisition of Francis
Cheynell, who doubtless in his bigotry was performing
a conscientious office. Cheynell is a typical figure of the
party then ascendant, "a rigid, zealous Presbyterian,
exactly orthodox, very unwilling that any should be
suffered to go to heaven but in the right way." He was
a member of the Westminster Assembly, and author
of a book entitled, "The Rise, Growth and Danger
of Socinianism, together with a plain discovery of a
desperate design of corrupting the Protestant Religion,
whereby it appears that the Religion which hath been so
violently contended for by the Archbishop of Canterbury
and his adherents is not the true, pure Protestant Relig-
ion, but an Hotchpotch of Arminianism, Socinianism
and Popery." Cheynell set himself to correct what he
considered the heresies of the dying man. The abso-
lute cruelty of his interviews might be considered highly
colored, were he not himself the reporter. "When I
found him pretty hearty one day, I desired him to tell
me whether he conceived that a man living and dying
a Turk, Papist, or Socinian could be saved. All the
58
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH
answer I could gain from him was that he did not ab-
solve them and would not condemn." The dying man
besought an interest in the charity of his disputant, for,
said he, '' I was ever a charitable man."
My answer was somewhat tart, and therefore more charitable,
considering his condition and the counsel of the apostle, Rebuke
them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith. And I desire
not to conceal my tartness. It was to this effect. Sir, it is con-
fessed that you have been very excessive in your charity. You
have lavished so much charity upon Turks, Socinians, Papists,
that I am afraid you have very little to spare for a truly reformed
Protestant.
Nothing, perhaps, shows the true charity of Chilling-
worth in more beautiful light than an incident told by
Cheynell himself among these reminiscences. "I told
him that I did use to pray for him in private, and asked
him whether it was his desire that I should pray for him
in public. He answered, 'Yes, with all my heart'; and
he said withal that he hoped he should fare the better
for my prayers." Here one sees Chillingworth at the
depths of his tender charity and graciousness : and
Cheynell, too, at his best.
Chillingworth died at Chichester in January of 1644.
Standing by his open grave, Cheynell sought to bury his
book with his body in the following words:
If they please to undertake the burial of his corpse, I shall
undertake to bury his errors, which are published in this so much
admired yet unworthy book: and happy would it be for the king-
dom, if this book and all its fellows could be so buried. Get
thee gone, thou cursed book, which has seduced so many precious
59
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH
souls I Get thee gone, thou corrupt, rotten book! Earth to earth,
and dust to dust! Get thee gone into the place of rottenness,
that thou mayest rot with thy author, and see corruption.
But Cheyne I could not bury Chillingworth. His
work was to survive and assert its power in better days,
and the name of Cheynell would hardly have been pre-
served except for his connection with the man whom he
sentenced to forgetfulness.
II
"The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way of Salva-
tion^' contains a genuine and refreshing Protestantism.
Chillingworth has the courage to stand on Protestant-
ism's logical ground. In answer to the Roman argu-
ment that truth must have an infallible interpreter, be-
cause otherwise every individual is given over to his own
"wit and discourse," Chillingworth asserts the trust-
worthiness of one's own wit and discourse, of "right
reason grounded on divine revelation and common
notions written by God in the hearts of all men."
Reason is in some sort God's word. To the objection
that reliance upon one's own reason is liable to lead to
error, he frankly replies that infallibility in every direc-
tion is not required.
But this I am sure of, as sure as that God is good, that he will
require no impossibilities of us: not an infallible, nor a certainly
unerring belief, unless he hath given us certain means to avoid
error; and if we use those which we have, he will never require
of us that we use that which we have not.
60
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH
Intellectual errors of conscientious truth-seekers are
possible, but are not dangerous. Personal responsi-
bility is so precious that it is to be maintained at the
expense of possible error: this is Chillingworth's brave
and truly Protestant position.
Personal responsibility involves also variations of
creed, and these are not to be feared. "That may be
fundamental and necessary to one, which to another
is not so." There are worse things than divisions of
opinion. "If all men would submit themselves to the
chief mufti of the Turks, it is apparent there would be
no divisions; yet unity is not to be purchased at so dear
a rate." "Christians have and shall have means
suflBcient (though not always effectual) to determine,
not all controversies, but all necessary to be determined.
There are some controversies which will end when the
world ends, and that is time enough."
The necessary result of such views is toleration.
Conscientious men may differ, and are therefore to
respect each other.
And therefore, though we wish heartily that all controversies
were ended, as we do that all sin were abolished, yet have we Httle
hopes of the one or the other until the world be ended; and in the
meantime think it best to content ourselves with, and to persuade
others unto, an unity of charity and mutual toleration; seeing God
hath authorized no man to force all men to unity of opinion.
Toleration is required by the very essence of Prot-
estantism, and while too often it has not appeared, it is
refreshing to behold it in such large measure in one of
the earliest Protestant controversialists.
61
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH
The heart of Chillingworth's book is the definition of
the place of the Bible in Christianity. Protestantism
was fortunate in having at the outset its attitude toward
the Bible so clearly and satisfactorily stated. The
Roman position is familiar — that the Bible needs an
interpreter in order that its saving truth may be cer-
tainly known, and in order that disputes as to its mean-
ing may be avoided. The Romanist, with apparent
ground, pointed to the widely varying interpretations
of disputing Protestants as evidence of the necessity of
an infallible interpreter. How luminous is Chilling-
worth's reply!
All things necessary to salvation are evidently contained in
Scripture, there being no more certain sign that a point is not
evident than that honest men differ about it. Those truths are
fundamental which are evidently delivered in Scripture, those not
fundamental which are obscure. Nothing that is obscure can be
necessary to be understood.
Truths which are necessary to salvation are evident;
truths which are obscure are by their very obscurity
proved to be unnecessary. Here are the flashes of
truth, which, like lightning, struck the Roman doctrine
at its core, and cleared the atmosphere. The whole
controversy is compressed into a single sentence: '*The
difference between a Papist and a Protestant is this,
that the one judges his guide to be infallible, the other
his way to be manifest." Faith in the divineness of
the Bible is established not by external authority, but by
internal evidence. The Scriptures shine with their own
inherent light, one believes in them as he believes in the
62
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH
sunshine. Chillingworth was far from being a Bibliola-
ter. Belief, not in a theory about the Bible, but in its
subject-matter, is the all-important thing.
If a man should believe Christian religion wholly and entirely,
and live according to it, such a man, though he should not know
or not believe the Scripture to be a rule of faith, no, nor to be the
word of God, my opinion is, he may be saved; and my reason is,
because he performs the entire condition of the new covenant,
which is, that we believe the matter of the Gospel, and not that it
is contained in these or these books. So that the books of Script-
ure are not so much the objects of our faith as the instruments of
conveying it to our understanding.
These are certainly notable words. It is difficult to
repress enthusiasm as we read Chillingworth's climax,
it is so lucid, luminous, and liberal.
By the religion of Protestants, I do not understand the doctrine
of Luther, or Calvin, or Melanchthon; nor the confession of
Augusta or Geneva, nor the catechism of Heidelberg, nor the
Articles of the Church of England; no, nor the harmony of
Protestant confessions; but that wherein they all agree, and which
they all subscribe with a greater harmony as a perfect rule of their
faith and actions — that is, the Bible. The Bible, I say, the Bible
only, is the religion of Protestants! ... I am fully assured that
God does not, and therefore that men ought not to require any
more of any man than this, to believe the Scriptures to be God's
word, to endeavor to find the true sense of it, and to live according
to it.
Chillingworth's advocacy of Christian unity is so
remarkable that it is difficult to realize that it comes
from the seventeenth century : a difficulty which plainly
63
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH
shows that in ouivcurrent views we have ascribed to that
century too great a narrowness. Let the century have
the credit of ChiUingworth and his cathohcity ! We hear
him insisting quite in the modern spirit that the way to
heaven is no narrower now than Christ left it, that His
yoke is no heavier than He made it. He thinks that
strife among Christians would soon end, "if, instead of
being zealous Papists, earnest Calvinists, rigid Luther-
ans, they would become themselves, and be content that
others should be, plain and honest Christians." *'The
greatest schismatics are those who make the way to
heaven narrower, the yoke of Christ heavier, the differ-
ences of faith greater, the conditions of ecclesiastical
communion harder and stricter than they were made
at the beginning by Christ and his Apostles." " Chris-
tians must be taught to set a higher value upon these
high points of faith and obedience wherein they agree
than upon these matters of less moment wherein they
differ; and understand that agreement in those ought
to be more effectual to join them in one communion,
than their difference in other things of less moment to
divide them."
The finest passage in the whole book is perhaps this,
in which ChiUingworth rises above the plane of calm
lucidity into that of holy zeal:
This presumptuous imposing of the senses of men upon the
words of God, the special senses of men upon the general words
of God, and laying them upon men's consciences together, under
the equal penalty of death and damnation; this vain conceit that
we can speak the things of God better than in the words of God;
64
WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH
this deifpng our own interpretations, and tyrannous enforcing
them upon others; this restraining the word of God from that
latitude and generality, and the understandings of men from that
liberty, wherein Christ and the Apostles left them, is and hath been
the only fountain of all the schisms of the church, the common
incendiary of Christendom. Take away these walls of separation,
and all will be quickly one. Take away this persecuting, burning,
damning of men for not subscribing to the words of men as the
words of God; require of Christians only to beheve Christ, and
to call no man master but Him only ; let these leave claiming in-
fallibility that have no title to it, and let them that in their words
disclaim it, disclaim it likewise in their actions. In a word,
take away tyranny, which is the devil's instrument to support
errors and superstitions and impieties in the several parts of the
world, which could not otherwise long withstand the power of
truth; I say, take away tyranny, and restore Christians to their
just and full liberty of captivating their understanding to Script-
ure only; and as rivers, when they have a free passage, run all
to the ocean, so it may well be hoped, by God's blessing, that
universal liberty, thus moderated, may quickly reduce Christen-
dom to truth and unity. These thoughts of peace (I am per-
suaded) may come from the God of peace, and to His blessing I
commend them.
The words sound indeed like an inspiration.
So did this man, who lived in the heat of conflict,
who sought refuge in the royal camp, who died the cap-
tive of the Puritan army, rise to a plane in which all
differences between Anglican, Puritan and Romanist
disappeared, the prophet of a larger spirit to come.
65
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
1609-1683
As in Hales, Chillingworth and Falkland we have
glimpses into the Oxford of their time, so in another
group of like spirit we are introduced to the Cam-
bridge of the seventeenth century. A distinguished
company it was that congregated in the Cambridge of
1630, for in that year one might have met there within
a single day John Milton, Thomas Fuller, Henry More,
Ralph Cudworth, Jeremy Taylor and Benjamin Which-
cote, and all with their talents still in the green blade, a
spring-time indeed. Before the harvest the field was
to be devastated by the flames of war, but a harvest
still there was, for the plants were sturdy and able to
adapt themselves to severe conditions. The partisan-
ship which crowds out all foreign growths, or is itself
choked by them, was no part of their spirit. They
were sound wheat, but could grow together with the
tares.
Benjamin Whichcote was entered at Emmanuel Col-
lege, Cambridge, in 1626 at the age of seventeen. He
69
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
had as tutor Anthony Tuckney, whose teaching stimu-
lated him by reaction rather than assent. In 1634
Whichcote was himself appointed college tutor, and
soon became famous for the number, rank and character
of his pupils, John Smith among them, destined even
to surpass his master. In the "Life of Joseph Mede,"
a contemporary, is a sketch of the tutorial system at its
best in the Cambridge of the time.
After he had by daily lectures well grounded his pupils in
Humanity, Logic and Philosophy, and by frequent conversation
understood to what particular studies their parts might be most
profitably applied, he gave them his advice accordingly; and when
they were able to go alone, he chose rather to set every one his
daily task than constantly to confine himself and them to precise
hours for lectures. In the evening they all came to his chamber, to
satisfy him that they had performed the task he had set them.
The first question which he used then to propound to every one in
his order was "Quid dubitasf" (for he supposed that to doubt
nothing and to understand nothing were verifiable alike). Their
doubts being propounded, he resolved their queries, and so set
them on clear ground to proceed more distinctly; and then, having
by prayer commended them and their studies to God's protection
and blessing, he dismissed them to their lodgings.
The Cambridge tutors were thus guide, philosopher
and friend to their pupils, and had special influence
over their religious opinions. It is said that the younger
Pitt, a century and a half later, was rarely out of his
tutor's company. Anxious parents unburdened their
hearts to their sons' tutors. When Nicholas Ferrar's
tutor commended his self-denial, Ferrar reminded him
70
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
of the lives of holy men which he had read at the tu-
tor ^s suggestion. Such an oflSce Whichcote magnified.
''Being disgusted," says Burnet in his "History of
His Own Time," "with the dry, systematical way of
those times, he studied to raise those who conversed
with him to a noble set of thoughts and to consider
religion as a seed of a deiform nature (to use one
of his own phrases): in order to this he set young
students much on reading the ancient philosophers,
chiefly Plato, Tully and Plotin, and on considering
the Christian religion as a doctrine sent from God,
both to elevate and sweeten human nature, in which
he was a great example, as well as a wise and kind in-
structor." Here at its source is the movement which
was to be known as Cambridge Platonism.
As a tutor, however, Whichcote had less influence
than as a preacher. In 1636 he was ordained and ap-
pointed Sunday afternoon lecturer at Trinity College,
a position which he filled with distinction for nearly
twenty years. His discourses during this period in this
pulpit constituted a large part of his life work. It was
his aim, says Tulloch, "to turn men's minds away from
polemical argumentation to the great moral and spirit-
ual realities lying at the base of all religion — from the
'forms of words \ as he himself says, to the 'inwards
of things' and the reason of them." Tillotson thus
estimates the influence of his university sermons,
" Every Lord's Day in the afternoon for almost twenty
years together he preached in Trinity Church, where
he had a great number not only of the young scholars,
71
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
but of those of greater standing and best repute for
learning in the university, his constant and attentive
auditors: and in those wild and unsettled times con-
tributed more to the forming of the students of that
university to a sober sense of religion than any man in
that age." While, then, Chillingworth w^as writing the
"Rehgion of Protestants" in the Oxford atmosphere of
Great Tew, and Hales at the university was aiding him
with his paper on "Schism and Schismatics," Which-
cote as preacher and tutor was inspiring Cambridge
students with the same ample spirit.
In the maelstrom of the Civil War, Whichcote was
still able to swim. The university by no means escaped
the general confusion, for Cambridge became a garrison
for Cromwell's troops, libraries were rifled, chapels were
abused, and a stately university was converted into
soldiers' barracks. The ^^ Querela Cantahrigiensis"
complains in hysterical note:
The Knipperdollings of the age reduced a glorious and re-
nowned University almost to a mere Miinster; and did more in
less than three years than the apostate Julian could effect in all his
reign, viz.: broke the heart-strings of learning and all learned
men, and thereby luxated all the joints of Christianity in the
kingdom, insomuch that they feared not to appeal to any impartial
judge, whether, if the Goths and Vandals, or even the Turks them-
selves, had overrun this nation, they would have more inhumanly
abused a flourishing University than these pretended advancers of
religion had done; having, as the complaint is continued, thrust
out one of the eyes of this kingdom; made eloquence dumb;
philosophy sottish; widowed the arts; drove the muses from their
72
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
habitation; plucked the reverend and orthodox professors out of
the chairs, and silenced them in prison or their graves: turned
religion into rebellion; changed the apostolical chair into a desk
for blasphemy; tore the garland from ofiF the head of learning, to
place it on the dull brows of disloyal ignorance; made those an-
cient and beautiful chapels, the sweet remembrancers and monu-
ments of our forefathers' charity, and kind fomentors of their
children's devotion, to become ruinous heaps of dust and stones;
and unhived those swarms of labouring bees which used to drop
honey dews over all this kingdom, to place in their room swarms
of senseless drones.
But Whichcote still survived, and even prospered
In 1644 he was appointed Provost of King's College in
place of the learned Dr. Samuel Collins, ejected as
obnoxious to the reigning Puritanism. Whichcote re-
luctantly supplanted him, but insisted that Dr. Collins
should still receive half the income of the office, and
in his will bequeathed a hundred pounds to John
Collins, his son. Whichcote maintained his position
under Puritan domination, but without sacrifice of
principle, for he refused himself to take the Covenant,
and "prevailed to have the greatest part of the fellows
of King's College exempted from that imposition and
preserved in their places." As Provost he had the
salaries of ejected professors paid in full to the end of
the year of their ejection. The spectacle of such inde-
pendence surviving such a storm of partisanship is re-
markable. Whichcote had a stouter heart than Hales
or Chillingworth, who were disabled by the violence of
the times. Under Puritan domination he maintained
73
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
both his independence and his position, and was sym-
pathetic toward the persecuted. **So that I hope," says
Tillotson, "none will be hard upon him, that he was
contented upon such terms to be in a capacity to do good
in bad times." He belonged to that group of rare men,
who, according to Bishop Burnet, "declared against
superstition on the one hand, and enthusiasm on the
other. They loved the constitution of the church and
the liturgy, and could well live under them: but they
did not think it unlawful to live under another form.
They wished that things might have been carried with
more moderation. And they continued to keep a good
correspondence with those who had differed from them
in opinion, and allowed a great freedom both in philoso-
phy and in divinity: from whence they were called men
of latitude. And upon this, men of narrower thoughts
and fiercer tempers fastened upon them the name of
Latitudinarians."
In 1649 Wliichcote was presented to the Rectory of
Milton in Cambridgeshire, which he held till his death.
In the following year he became Vice-Chancellor of the
university. In 1655 Cromwell invited his advice in the
matter of toleration toward the Jews. So steadily did
he proceed in evil times.
At the Restoration, Whichcote was ejected from the
Provostship, but on compliance with the Act of Uniform-
ity in 1662 was restored to court favor. With the re-
versal of conditions, in the restoration of royalty and
Anglicanism, Whichcote's influence still persisted. He
was above partisanship, and untouched by its changing
74
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
fortunes. In 1G62 he was appointed curate of Saint
Anne's, Blackfriars, London, but on the burning of the
church in the great fire of 1665, retired to his Hving at
Milton, where he "preached constantly, relieved the
poor, had their children taught to read at his own
charge, and made up differences among the neigh-
bors," gracious occupation indeed for one who knew
how to be abased as well as to abound. Whichcote had
a plentiful estate, and like Hales and Chillingworth was
frugal in personal expenditures, but lavish in benevo-
lence. He particularly directed his charities toward the
aid of poor housekeepers disabled by age or sickness.
On the appointment of his friend John Wilkins to the
Bishopric of Chester in 1668, he became in his place
vicar of Saint Lawrence Jewry. During seven years,
while the church was being rebuilt, he preached regu-
larly at Guildhall Chapel before the mayor and cor-
poration of the city.
For nearly fifty years, and under three civil rdgimes,
this remarkable man preached without molestation.
He was silenced neither by the Puritans and army
in the day of their power, nor by the Anglicans and
King in the day of theirs. His light shone steady,
while others were flickering and snuffed. While on a
visit in the house of his old friend Dr. Cudworth at
Cambridge, he died in 1683. "And God knows,"
feelingly exclaims a friend, "we could very ill at
this time have spared such a man, and have lost
from among us as it were so much balm for the
healing of the nation, which is now so miserably
75
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
rent and torn by these wounds which we madly give
ourselves."
Bishop Tillotson in his funeral sermon gives sketches
of Whichcote*s character and manners, which in part
explain his power to survive the revolutions through
which he passed.
His conversation was exceeding kind and affable, grave and
winning, prudent and profitable. He was slow in declaring his
opinions, never passionate, he heard others patiently, was ready
to be convinced, willing to learn to the last, and never had his
opinions set. He was wont to say " If I provoke a man, he is the
worse for my company: and if I suffer myself to be provoked by
him, I shall be the worse for his." He very seldom reproved any
person in company otherwise than by silence or some sign of
uneasiness, or some very soft and gentle word, which yet from the
respect men generally bore him. did often prove effectual. For
he understood human nature very well, and how to apply himself
to it in the most easy and effectual ways. Particularly he ex-
celled in the virtues of conversation, humanity and gentleness and
humility, a prudent and peaceable and reconciling temper.
In similar vein is Burnet's characterization :
Dr. Whichcote was a man of a rare temper, very mild and
obliging. He had great credit with some that had been eminent
in the late times, but made all the use he could of it, to protect
good men of all persuasions. He was much for liberty of con-
science.
Here was one who gave his goods to feed the poor, who
had knowledge and faith, who spoke with the tongues
of men and of angels, and had chanty.
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BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
II
Four volumes of Whichcote's sermons give us an
insight into the charm and power of his preaching. It
is difficult to realize that the sermons are nearly three
hundred years old.
It would be hard to find in our own time a more vigor-
ous advocate of reason in religion, of a rational Chris-
tianity. Instead of making revelation and reason foes,
after the fashion of his times, he insisted that they were
friends. Truth is not foreign, but natural to the mind.
"Truth is the soul's health and strength," is "akin to
man's mind." "The mind makes no more resistance
to truth than the air does to light; both are thereby
beautified and adorned." "No sooner doth the truth
of God come into the soul's sight, but the soul knows
her to be her first and old acquaintance; which though
they have been by some accident unhappily parted a
great while, yet having now through the divine provi-
dence happily met, they greet one another and renew
acquaintance as those that were first and ancient
friends." With truth and man's mind in such corre-
spondence, it is only an abnormal, unnatural state of
mind that can separate them.
There is light enough of God in the world, if the eye of our
minds were but fitted to receive it and let it in. It is the in-
capacity of the subject, where God is not; for nothing in the
world is more knowable than God. God only is absent to them
that are indisposed and disaffected. For a man cannot open his
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BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
eye, nor lend his ear, but everything will declare more or less of
God. It is our fault that we are estranged from Him: for God
doth not withdraw Himself from us, unless we first leave Him: the
distance is occasioned through our unnatural use of ourselves.
Religion in this view is natural and vital to man.
"The seat of religion is the inward man; it is the first
sense of his soul, the temper of his mind, the pulse of his
heart." "We are as capable of religion as we are of
reason.* Revelation and reason do not contradict each
other, for "there is nothing of after-light of God in
Christ reconciling subject to reproof of the former light
of God creating." "Man is not at all settled or con-
firmed in his religion until his religion is the self-same
with the reason of his mind; so that when he thinks he
speaks reason, he speaks religion; or when he speaks
religiously, he speaks reasonably; and his religion and
reason are mingled together; they pass into one princi-
ple; they are no more two, but one; just as the light
in the air makes one illuminated sphere, so reason and
religion in the subject are one principle." "I receive
the truth of Christian religion in a way of illumination,
affection and choice: I retain it as a welcome guest;
it is not forced into me, but I let it in." "The soul of
man to God is as the flower to the sun; it opens at its
approach, and shuts when it withdraws. . . . The good
man is an instrument in tune: excite a good man, give
him an occasion, you shall have from him savory
speeches out of his mouth, and good actions in his
life." In answer to the criticism that his preaching is
too philosophical, he replies. "I have always found
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BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
in myself that such preaching of others hath most
commanded my heart which hath most illuminated
my head."
With this high appreciation of reason in religion is
associated a profound respect for human nature as a
whole, for "the grandeur of our being/' in striking
contrast with the prevailing views of human depravity.
One characteristic aphorism deals with original sin,
"Men are more what they are used to than what they
are born to." In times when men were being dis-
paraged as "worthless worms," it is refreshing to find
estimates of another sort. "Nothing of the natural
state is base or vile. . . . For our Saviour himself took
flesh and blood, and that is the meaner part of human
nature. . . . That which is vile, base, and filthy is un-
natural, and depends upon unnatural use and degen-
erate practice." "There is nothing in the world hath
more of God in it than man hath." "Have a rever-
ence to thyself, for God is in thee!"
The trustworthiness of reason and the nobility of
human nature point toward man's redemption through
the use of "resident forces," stimulated by the divine
grace. Two beautiful phrases express his theology of
redemption; "A divine nature in us, a divine assistance
over us." With those who saw only the vile in human
nature, salvation of necessity became a heavenly trans-
action of a legal type, through which Christ's righteous-
ness was imputed to the Christian in something of an
artificial way. Whichcote's interest is in the human
side of redemption; to him reconciliation with God is
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BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
not legal but vital, righteousness is not imputed but real,
salvation is not a heavenly award but an earthly fact.
It is not enough for Christ to do something for us with
God, unless He does something for us with ourselves.
** Christ doth not save us by only doing for us without
us: yea, we come at that which Christ hath done for
us with God by what He hath done for us within us."
Christ is to be acknowledged as a principle of grace in
us as well as an advocate for us. "They therefore de-
ceive and flatter themselves extremely who think of
reconciliation with God by means of a Saviour acting
upon God in their behalf, and not also working in or
upon them, to make them Godlike." "Some look at
salvation as at a thing a distance from them : the bene-
fit of some convenient place to be in; exemption from
punishment; freedom from enemies abroad: but it is
the mending of our natures, and the safety of our per-
sons, our health and strength within ourselves." Christ
is a principle of divine life within us, as well as a Saviour
without us. It is not enough that Christ is sacrificed
for us, unless Christ be formed in us. The beauty and
inspiration of such a thoroughly vital Christianity over
against the current legal type require no commendation.
Such a Christianity is being preached far and wide
to-day we welcome its appearance under the eaves of
the Westminster Assembly. With all the set judicial
phrases of the Westminster divines there were mingled
in the preaching of the day the living sentences of
Benjamin Whichcote, as fresh and full of meaning now
as when first uttered — such sentences as these: "Re-
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BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
ligion is the introduction of the divine life into the soul
of man," ''Regeneration is nativity from above," **Had
we a man that was really gospelized, were the Gospel a
life, a soul, a spirit to him, he would be the most lovely,
useful person under heaven." Over against the phrases
of a formal theology are those fine expressions which
Whichcote loved, ''heartsease," "spirituality," "heav-
enly mindedness," "participation in the divine nature":
and has conscience ever been given a name more beau-
tiful than his name for it — the "Home-God"?
With Hales and Chillingworth, Whichcote was always
advocating Christian unity in his words and in his life.
This unity was a unity, not of opinion, but of spirit.
Unity of opinion was not to be expected. Different
tempers, constitutions of mind, environments, education
and habitual modes of thought produce differences of
opinion. "Some men's apprehensions cannot possibly
hit in anything: they are, as it were, cast in different
moulds; and they can no more help this than they can
make their faces alike." "We may maintain the unity
of verity in point of faith, and the unity of charity in
point of communion, notwithstanding all difference in
point of apprehension." The introduction to his ser-
mon on Philippians iii : 15, 16 deals with this subject in
a masterly way, and is a good example of Whichcote's
lucid exegesis:
1. There is that in religion which is necessary and determined,
fixt and immutable, clear and perspicuous; about which good
men, they who are of growth and proficiency in religion, do not
differ. "As many as are perfect are thus minded."
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BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
2. There is also in religion that which is not so necessary and
immutable, clear and plain, in which good men may happen to
be otherwise minded one than another; or otherwise than ought
to be. "If any be otherwise minded."
3. There is reason to think that God will bring out of particular
mistake him that is right in the main. "God shall reveal even
this unto you."
4. They who agree in the main, but differ in other particulars,
ought nevertheless to hold together as if they were in all things
agreed. "To walk by the same rule, to mind the same things."
There may be even a positive advantage in minor
differences.
Why should not they who meet in the regenerate nature, who
agree in the great articles of faith and principles of good life, over-
look subordinate differences? If there be love and good-will,
we come to be more rational, better grounded in our resolutions,
from our different apprehensions. Discourse is as soon ended as
begun where all say the same; whereas he that speaks after, and
says a new thing, searcheth the former.
The closing words of the sermon must be added; it
is difficult to believe that they belong to the seventeenth
century:
Give a fair allowance of patience to those who mean well; be
ready to shew them, since there is ground of expectation that in a
little time they will come out of their error. . . . Nothing is
desperate in the condition of good men; they will not live and
die in any dangerous error. They have a right principle within
them, and God's superintendency, conduct and guidance. The
devil is thrown out of his stronorhold where there is holiness of
heart; and being dispossessed of his main fort he will lose all his
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BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
holds, one after another; all errors and mistakes will be discovered
successively. The sun, having broken through the thickest cloud,
will after that scatter the less; and the day will clear up.
With differences of opinion thus frankly acknowledged
and not altogether deplored, Christians are to unite in
spirit, for religion demands unity. "Religion is a bond
of union between God and man, and between man
and man; and therefore cannot be an occasion of dis-
tance or separation." " If it be a difference concerning
religion, it must be so upon account of religion; and
religion requires concord. We cannot pretend to do
that for religion itself, which is unnatural to religion,
which is contrary to religion, and which religion for-
bids."
In his correspondence with Tuckney, Whichcote gave
a splendid example of his principles in practice. Tuck-
ney, who had been one of his tutors in Cambridge,
wrote him a letter remonstrating with him for his views
from the Puritan stand-point. To Tuckney's mind his
preaching was too philosophical, being addressed to the
mind and understanding rather than to the heart and
will. The emphasis on inherent righteousness, he
feared, was clouding the divine side of redemption.
The difference of opinion between the two men was
great, but throughout their controversial letters there
breathes a spirit of personal regard and affection too
deep for any debate to disturb. Tuckney beseeches
God that *'both you and I may be kept in the faith,
and may follow the truth in love," and the prayer
was answered. The eight letters which passed between
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BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
these Christian gentlemen of the seventeenth century
deserve wider recognition. They sweeten the history of
theology. *'I aver that it is everybody's right to be
fairly used and handsomely treated/' was one of Which-
cote's maxims, and in this correspondence he practised
what he preached. Irreconcilable as their intellectual
positions were, the men remained friends, and it is
pleasant to know that a few years after their controversy
Whichcote joined with the six other electors in raising
Tuckney to the Divinity Professorship. Whichcote's
quotation from a great schoolman ought to be added to
his own words on Christian unity, as showing the atmos-
phere in which he differed from others: **For men to
differ about matters of particular persuasion and opin-
ion, it is not inconsistent with that imperfect state which
we are in, while in the way to heaven; when we come
thither, we shall be consummated, and more fully har-
monize: but to differ in opinion is not repugnant to
peace in the way, though the difference shall be taken
away when we come home."
We are fortunate in having preserved to us the prayer
with which this noble preacher usually opened the ser-
vice of worship. A few selections from it give a beauti-
ful summary of his theology, with all its faith in the
grandeur of human nature and the reality of the in-
dwelling divine life:
O naturalize us to heaven! May we bear the image of Christ's
resurrection by spirituality and heavenly-mindedness. O Lord,
communicate thy light to our minds, thy life to our souls: as thou
art original to us by thy creation of us, so be thou also final by
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BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
our intention of thee. Go over the workmanship of thy creation
in us again: to mend all the defects we have contracted, and to
destroy out of us, by the working of thy grace and spirit, whatso-
ever we have acquired unnatural to thy creation of us. Trans-
form us into the image of thy Son, conform us to His likeness,
make us body and soul an habitation for thyself by thy Holy
Spirit.
85
JOHN SMITH
JOHN SMITH
1618-1652
John Smith was born in Achurch near Oundle in
Northamptonshire in 1618 of parents who were aged
and had been long childless. "I shall speak nothing of
his earthly parentage save only this," says Simon Patrick,
the preacher at his funeral, "that he was like to John
the Baptist, the last Elias, in that he was born after
his parents had been long childless and were grown
aged. Some have observed that such have proved
very famous; for they seem to be sent on purpose by
God into the world to do good, and to be scarce be-
gotten by their parents. Such are something like
Isaac, who had a great blessing in him, and seem to
be intended by God for some great service and work
in the world."
To Cambridge, the Cambridge of Whichcote, Smith
came in 1636, being entered at Emmanuel College,
taking his Bachelor's degree in 1640 and his Mas-
ter's in 1644. Whichcote early discovered the abil-
ities and promise of the young student, whom he
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JOHN SMITH
bounteously aided from his own resources, perhaps his
most fruitful benefaction. Worthington writes of this
period :
I considered him as a friend, one whom I knew for many years,
not only when he was Fellow of Queen's College, but when a
student in Emmanuel College, where his early piety, and the re-
membering of his Creator in those days of his youth, as also his
excellent improvements in the choicest parts of learning, endeared
him to many, particularly to his careful tutor, then Fellow of
Emmanuel College, afterwards Provost of King's College, Dr.
Whichcote; to whom, for his directions and encouragements of
him in his studies, his seasonable provision fcr his support and
maintenance when he was a young scholar, as also upon other
obliging considerations, our author did ever express a great and
singular regard.
In 1644, with seven other members of Emmanuel,
Smith was transferred to Queen's College, "they having
bine examined and approved by the Assembly of Divines
sitting in Westminster as fitt to be fellowes." Although
thus acceptable to the Westminster Assembly, Smith
was far from being Puritan or Calvinistic. It is to the
credit of the Assembly that it tolerated Whichcote and
Smith, as it is to their credit that they could preach with
independence and at such variance from the Westmin-
ster theology, without becoming obnoxious. As fellow
and tutor Smith did eminent service at Queen's College.
*'He was read in law and physic, well versed in history,
philosophy and mathematics, and critically skilled in the
learned languages." His lectures on mathematics were
especially commended by contemporaries. His ac-
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JOHN SMITH
complishments were varied, but it was as a preacher that
his greatest influence was felt. Simon Patrick, v/hose
funeral sermon with Worthington's preface to the
*' Discourses" constitutes almost our entire source of
information, refers to "his great industry and inde-
fatigable pains, his Herculean labors day and night
from his first coming to the university till the time
of his long sickness." Hard study combined with
much meditation and abstraction of the mind from
sensible things served to unite in Smith's wisdom the
subjective and objective. He was not a book worm,
but "a living library," a "walking study," and com-
municated his knowledge with the charm of a rare
conversationalist. Patrick gratefully alludes to the
benefits received from intercourse with him :
I never got so much good among all my books by a whole
day's plodding in a study, as by an hour's discourse I have got
with him. For he was not a library locked up, nor a book clasped,
but stood open for any to converse withal that had a mind to
learn. Yea, he was a fountain running over, labouring to do
good to those who perhaps had no mind to receive it. None more
free and communicative than he was to such as desired to dis-
course with him; nor would he grudge to be taken off from his
studies upon such an occasion. It may be truly said of him, that
a man might always come better from him; and his mouth could
drop sentences as easily as an ordinary man's could speak sense.
And he was no less happy in expressing his mind than in conceiv-
ing. ... He had such a copia verborum, a plenty of words, and
those so full, pregnant and significant, joined with such an active
fancy, as is very rarely to be found in the company of such a deep
understanding and judgment as dwelt in him.
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JOHN SMITH
With his rare abilities, Smith was not ambitious of
preferment.
From his first admission into the University, he sought not great
things for himself, but was contented in the condition wherein he
was. He made not haste to rise and climb, as youths are apt to
do, which we in these late times too much experience, wherein
youths scarce fledged have soared to the highest preferments, but
proceeded leisurely by orderly steps, not to what he could get, but
to what he was fit to undertake. He staid God's time of advance-
ment, with all industry and pains following his studies; as if he
rather desired to deserve honour than to be honoured.
Profound scholarship and intellectuality did not quell
in Smith evangelistic fervor. Patrick informs us that
"he was resolved very much to lay aside other studies,
and to travel in the salvation of men's souls, after whose
good he most ardently thirsted." When preaching in
country churches, as at his native place, he adapted his
expression, Worthington says, to vulgar capacities, and
desired to be understood rather than wondered at for
ostentatious exhibitions of learning: and before a uni-
versity audience his style was no less suitable.
Although of a temper "naturally hot and choleric,"
betrayed at times in a sudden flushing of the face,
Smith had no sympathy with the violent animosities of
his times.
He was far from that spirit of devouring zeal that now too
much rages. He would rather have been consumed in the ser-
vice of men, than have called for fire down from heaven, as Elijah
did, to consume them. And therefore though Elijah excelled
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JOHN SMITH
him in this, that he ascended up to heaven in a fiery chariot; yet
herein I may say he was above the spirit of EUjah, that he called
for no fire to descend from heaven upon men, but the fire of
divine love that might burn up all their hatreds, roughness and
cruelty to each 'other. ... K he was at any time moved unto
anger, it was but a sudden flushing in his face, and it did as soon
vanish as arise; and it used to arise upon no such occasions as
I now speak of. No, whensoever he looked upon the fierce and
consuming fires that were in men's souls, it made him sad, not
angry; and it was his constant endeavour to inspire men's souls
with more benign and kindly heats, that they might warm, but
not scorch their brethren. And from this spirit, together with the
rest of Christian graces that were in him, there did result a great
serenity, quiet, and tranquillity in his soul, which dwelt so much
above, that it was not shaken with any of those tempests and
storms which use to unsettle low and abject minds. He lived in
a continued sweet enjoyment of God.
After a tedious illness, patiently borne, Smith died of
consumption in 1652 at the age of thirty-five. No
wonder that his friend's sermon at his funeral seems
punctuated with sobs, in which through many quotations
from Greek, Latin and Hebrew and not a little scholastic
exegesis in the manner of the time we feel a heart beat-
ing with genuine affection and grief.
It pleased the only wise God, in whose hand our breath is,
to call for him home to the spirits of just men made perfect,
after He had lent him to this unworthy world for about five and
thirty years. A short life it was, if we measure it by so many
years; but if we consider the great ends of life, his life was not
to be accounted short, but long. "Honourable age is not that
which standeth in length of time, nor that which is measured by
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JOHN SMITH
number of years: but wisdom is the gray hair unto men, and an
unspotted life is old age."
II
The "Select Discourses" were edited by Worthington
and published in 1660. In the midst of an arid desert
of dogmatic controversy and definition, these discourses
are as "a well of water springing up into everlasting
life." A pity it is that so few who traverse the desert
turn aside to the well : but it is there !
One of the marked features of present Christian
thinking is the refreshing and new expression which it
is finding in the revival of the Greek theology over
against the Latin: and of this movement John Smith
was a notable forerunner. Theology has descended
through the Latin branch of the church and in some
directions had become so Latinized, Augustinized, and
Calvinized, that it was in sore need of being re-Chris-
tianized. It is just this that Smith did nearly three
centuries ago ; correcting the Latin theology of his time
with the Greek thought with which he was imbued, he
re-Christianized Christian truth in living ways. His
theology did not come to him by way of Augustine and
Calvin. Plotinus and the neo-Platonists were being
studied much at Cambridge in his day and they helped
him to understand Christ and Paul. It is interesting to
know that at the very time when the Westminster
Assembly was casting Augustine's and Calvin's Latin
theology into iron moulds, the hardness and chill of
which are still felt, there was a young man at Cam-
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JOHN SMITH
bridge, with the seal of the Assembly's approval upon
his teaching, discussing Christ's and Paul's theology in
all the sunny warmth and cheer and illumination and
vitality of the Greek point of view. It is sunshine in
the midst of icebergs.
At almost every point the teaching of Smith differs
from the prevailing theology of his time, but it differs
without being controversial. The great themes are God
in His World, the Divine Immanence; God in Man, the
Kinship of the Divine and Human; God in Christ, the
Incarnation; and God Himself, "the Altogether
Lovely " : and all these themes are treated in a way im-
possible to the current theology of the time, which would
not even have proposed them. They are the themes of
present-day preaching. Smith was two hundred and
fifty years ahead of his time.
Calvinism was teaching the august transcendence of
the sovereign God, ruling the world from afar, from
His eternal throne in the distant heavens. The divine
activity in the world was regarded as only occasional:
the earth was a desert drear. Very different from this
was Smith's view. To him God was not far off, but
ever3rwhere present, the soul of all things: and the
world was not a vile, cast-away product, proved a fail-
ure, but a holy place, hallowed by the abiding presence
and power of the Divine.
He did not make the world and then throw it away from Him-
self without any further attention to it; ior He is that omnipresent
life that penetrates all things. . . . The world is in God^ rather
than God in the world.
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JOHN SMITH
A soul that is truly Godlike cannot but everywhere behold
itself in the midst of that glorious unbounded Being, who is in-
divisibly everywhere. A good man finds every place he treads
upon holy ground; to him the world is God's temple; he is ready
to say with Jacob, " How dreadful is this place, this is none other
but the house of God!"
[In their converse with this lower world good men] find God
many times secretly flowing into their souls, and leading them
silently out of the court of the temple into the holy place.
Religion spiritualizes this outward creation. We should love all
things in God, and God in all things, because He is all in all.
[All created excellencies are] so many pure effluxes and emana-
tions from God, and in a particular being a good man loves the
universal goodness. Thus may a good man walk up and down
the world as in a garden of spices, and suck a divine sweetness
out of every flower.
Does any modern theologian speak more beautifully
of the Divine Immanence ?
If Smith's appreciation of the beauty and divineness
of nature differs refreshingly from the common view of
his contemporaries, still more does his appreciation of
the nobility and divineness of humanity. God is in the
world, and still more is God in men. The Latin
theology had set a great gulf between God and man, as
well as between God and His world : to Smith the divine
and human are closely akin. There is a divine impress
on human souls:
God hath stamped a copy of his own archetypal loveliness
upon the soul, that man by reflecting into himself might behold
there the glory of God.
Our own souls are the fairest images of the Deity itself, God
96
JOHN SMITH
having so copied forth Himself into the whole life and energy
of man's soul, as that the lovely characters of Divinity may be
most easily seen and read of all men within themselves; as they
say Phidias, after he had made the statue of Minerva impressed
his own image so deeply in her buckler, that no one could destroy
it without destroying the whole statue. And if we would know
what the impress of souls is, it is nothing but God Himself, who
could not write His own image so as that it might be read, but
only in rational natures. Whenever we look upon our own soul
in a right manner, we shall find an Urim and Thummim there.
In times when human nature was being disparaged
and vilified, it is reassuring to hear a voice proclaiming
**a law embosomed in the souls of men, which ties them
again to their Creator," a law of nature, "which indeed
is nothing else but a paraphrase upon the nature of God,
as it copies forth itself in the soul of man." How dif-
ferent such an appreciation of human nature sounds
from the prevailing note of the time, "What worthless
worms are we!"
The divine and human being thus akin, God may
freely communicate himself to man, and man may
blessedly participate in the divine life. The highest
glory of God is communication of Himself to man, the
highest glory of man participation in the life of God.
"Faith is that which unites men more and more to the
centre of life and love." Here is a definition of faith
quite different from that of the traditional phrase, am-
plified in such lovely sentences as these:
All true happiness consists in a participation of God, arising
out of the assimilation of our souls to Him.
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JOHN SMITH
Enjoyment of God is an internal union, whereby a divine spirit
informing our souls, sends the strength of a divine life through
them.
The foundation of heaven and hell is laid in men's own souls.
The Gospel is set forth as a mighty efflux and emanation of life
and spirit freely issuing forth from an omnipotent source of grace
and love, as that true Godlike vital influence whereby the Divinity
derives itself into the souls of men, enlivening and transforming
them into its own likeness, and strongly imprinting upon them
a copy of its own beauty and goodness. Briefly, it is that whereby
God comes to dwell in us, and we in Him.
It is life that is communicated. "The divine life " is
the one great and glorious phrase throughout.
True religion is an inward principle of life, of a divine life,
the best life, that which is life most properly so called.
The Gospel is an internal manifestation of divine life upon
men's souls, a vital and quickening thing, that internal form cf
righteousness that qualifies the soul for eternal life.
It is not so much a system of divinity, but the spirit and vital
influx of it, spreading itself over all the powers of men's souls, and
quickening them into a divine life; it is not so properly a doctrine
that is wrapt up in ink and paper, as it is vitalis scientia, a living
impression made upon the soul and spirit.
Religion is life and spirit, which flowing out from the source
of all life, returns to Him again as into its original, carrying the
souls of good men up with it.
It is only life that can feelingly converse with life.
In an age of much dogmatism, how refreshing is this
insistence upon Christianity as an indwelling divine hfe,
a communion of man's spirit with God's, an interpene-
tration of the human and divine! Such a Hving Chris-
98
JOHN SMITH
tianlty is far different from that "mechanics in re-
ligion," that *^ mimical Christianity," which apes the
conventional experience. Smith gives his estimate of
the current dogmatism:
There are some mechanical Christians that can frame and
fashion out religion so cunningly in their own souls by that book
skill they have got of it, that it may many times deceive them-
selves, as if it were a true living thing. Those Christians that
fetch all their religion from pious books and discourses, hearing of
such and such signs of grace and evidences of salvation, and being
taught to believe they must get those, that so they may go to
heaven, may presently begin to set themselves to work, and in an
apish imitation cause their animal powers and passions to repre-
sent all these. . . a handsome artifice of religion, wherein those
mechanics may much applaud themselves.
How different is this " mechanical Christianity " from
"that true spirit of regeneration, which comes from
heaven, and begets a divine life in the souls of good
men"!
Such a living Christianity is the antipode likewise of
a merely passive faith.
True religion does not consist in a mere passive capacity, in
a sluggish kind of doing nothing, that so God Himself might do
all; but it consists in life and power within. When God restores
men to a new and divine life. He does not make them like so many
dead instruments, stringing and fitting them, which yet are able to
yield no sound of themselves, but He puts a living harmony
within them.
Here is the note of a new song such as Watts could not
sing.
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JOHN SMITH /
Righteousness in this view is vital, not forensic. The
theology of the time hardly got beyond the third chap-
ter of Romans, with its legalistic interpretation. A
Christian's justification was regarded as a formal trans-
action of a legal nature before a heavenly throne.
Smith passed beyond the legal metaphors of Paul's
dialectic into the high orthodoxy of Paul's ethical
mysticism. He passed from the thought of Christ as a
Mediator enthroned in heaven to the thought of Christ
as "a divine principle" enthroned in holy souls, Christ
living in us, *' Christ in us, the hope of glory." Chris-
tianity is an indwelling of the divine life, for which the
forensic acquittal, the pardon of sin, is only the prepara-
tion. Pardon is not the end, but only the beginning,
which opens the way to the Christian's life in God,
and the life of God in him, the life "hid with Christ
in God."
A true gospel faith doth not only pursue an ambitious project
of raising the soul immaturely to the condition of a darling favor-
ite of heaven, while it is unripe for it, by procuring a mere empty
pardon of sin; it desires not only to stand upon clear terms with
heaven by procuring the crossing of all the debt-books of our sins
there; but it rather pursues after an internal participation of the
divine nature. A saving faith is not content to wait for salvation
till the world to come. . . . no, but it is here perpetually gasping
after it. It is that whereby we live in Christ, and whereby He
lives in us.
Here is a faith that is not dogmatic and formal, but
spiritual and living. Justification is not a legal fiction,
but a vital fact. The divine judgment of everything is
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JOHN SMITH
according to the truth of the thing. God can delight
only in his own image in men. There is no reconcilia-
tion between God and that which is utterly ungodly.
A merely formal and abstract justification is of little
service, the imagining that Christ is ours, while we find
Him not living within us. Pardon and justification are
of service only as they open the fountain of the divine
grace and love and life, which our sins had closed
against us. Pardon cannot be the end, for even if
conscience be at peace, there is a restless longing in man
for something larger than himself, a participation in the
life of God. So did Whichcote's pupil develop his
interpretation, and pierce to the heart of Paul's theology,
instead of lingering in its metaphors. ** Christ liveth
in me," "Your life is hid with Christ in God," is there
anything In Paul sweeter and deeper than this? And
was the man who dwelt on such phrases less orthodox
than his contemporaries, who absorbed in a legal ter-
minology penetrated too little to the reality back of it
which the terminology was only intended to express?
Was he not rather more orthodox?
The divine life is experienced by " spiritual sensation."
Spiritual things are more real than material things, and
we may be surer of them than of the reports of our
senses. There is a spiritual sense; we may " taste and
see that the Lord is good." This spiritual sensation is
active and clear only in the pure life, only the pure in
heart may see God, and such may see Him here.
Spiritual knowledge depends upon character, it rises
not from speculation and syllogism, but from goodness.
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JOHN SMITH
The tree of knowledge grows beside the tree of Hfe.
We must have some likeness to God in order to see
God. "Such as men themselves are, such will God
Himself seem to be." Speculations are barren, unfold-
ing the plicatures of truth's garment, but incapable of
beholding truth's lovely face.
There is a knowing of the truth as it is in Jesus, as it is in a
Christlike nature, as it is in that sweet, mild, humble and loving
spirit of Jesus, which spreads itself like a morning sun upon the
souls of good men, full of light and life. . . . 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. . . . Divine
truth is better understood, as it unfolds itself in the purity of
men's hearts and lives, than in all those subtle niceties into which
curious wits may lay it forth. And therefore our Saviour, who is
the great master of it, would not, while he was here on earth, draw
it up into a system or body, nor would his disciples after him; he
would not lay it out to us in any canons or articles of belief, not
being indeed so careful to stock and enrich the world with opinions
and notions, as with true piety and a Godlike pattern of purity,
as the best way to thrive in all spiritual understanding. His
main scope was to promote a holy life, as the best and most
compendious way to a right belief.
The indwelling of the divine life and the vital con-
sciousness of it give a divineness to the present and
usher in heaven now. We are to seek not so much an
assurance of heaven hereafter, as heaven itself here.
" Beloved, now are we the sons of God." We can never
be well assured of heaven,
until we find it rising up within ourselves and glorifying our own
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JOHN SMITH
souls. When true assurance comes, heaven itself will appear
upon the horizon of our souls, like a morning light, chasing away
all our dark and gloomy doubtings before it. We shall not need
then to light up our candles to seek for it in corners; no, it will
display its own lustre and brightness so before us, that we may
see it in its own light, and ourselves the true possessors of it.
The truest assurance of heaven rises from the con-
sciousness of a heaven already within, as the mere
animal life is mortified and there rises in its room a
divine life, as a sure pledge of immortality and happi-
ness.
He that beholds the Sun of righteousness arising upon the
horizon of his soul with healing in its wings, such a one desires
not now the star-light to know whether it be day or not; nor cares
he to pry into heaven's secrets, there to see the whole plot of his
salvation; for he views it transacted upon the inward stage of
his own soul, and reflecting upon himself, he may behold a heaven
opened from within, and a throne set up in his soul, and an al-
mighty Saviour sitting upon it, and reigning within him: he now
finds the kingdom of heaven within him, and sees that it is not a
thing merely reserved for him without him, being already made
partaker of the sweetness and efficacy of it.
To the conception of God in His world the Divine
Immanence, and God in man, the kinship of the divine
and human, must be added, the crown of all, the con-
ception of God in Christ, the Incarnation. The in-
carnation is broader than the atonement, not only an
atonement for sin, but also a revelation of the essential
grandeur of humanity. Man needs more than pardon,
and Christ does more than to effect pardon : He shows
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JOHN SMITH
what humanity was meant to be, God's ideal of human-
ity, and in the revelation there is "the bringing in of a
better hope." Christlikeness is the divine programme
for mankind. Not only his suffering and death but also
his teaching and life are full of significance and power.
Here is one that partakes every way of human nature, in whom
the Divinity magnifies itself and carries through this world in
human infirmities and sufferings to eternal glory: a clear mani-
festation to the world that God had not cast off human nature,
but had a real mind to exalt and dignify it again. The way into
the holy of holies is laid as open as may be in Christ, in His doc-
trine, life and death: in all which we may see with open face what
human nature may attain to.
In all these deeply spiritual teachings we are moving
in an atmosphere far removed from the severity and
gloom of Puritanism, which Smith seems to have in
mind, as he writes,
Religion is no such austere, sour and rigid thing as to affright
men away from it: no, but those that are acquainted with the
power of it, find it to be altogether sweet and amiable. Religion
is no sullen Stoicism, no sour Pharisaism; it does not consist in
a few melancholy passions, in some dejected looks or depressions
of mind: but it consists in freedom love, peace, life and power;
the more it comes to be digested into our lives, the more sweet and
lovely we shall find it to be. It is no wonder, when a defiled
fancy comes to be the glass, if you have an unlovely reflection.
Let us therefore labor to purge our own souls from all worldly
pollutions; let us breathe after the aid and assistance of the
divine spirit, that it may irradiate and enlighten our minds, that
we may be able to see divine things in a divine light.
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JOHN SMITH
In times when the contemplation of God was melan-
choly and full of awe, in the thought of an offended
Majesty, when the fear of God had a larger place in
men's hearts than the love of God, John Smith was
blessedly saying:
While men walk in darkness and are of the night, then it is
only that they are vexed with those ugly and ghastly shapes that
terrify and torment them. But when once the day breaks, and
true religion opens herself upon the soul like the eyelids of the
morning, then all those shadows and frightful apparitions flee
away. . , . There is no frightful terribleness in the supreme
Majesty. Meditation of God is sweet, beyond and above all
fears. God is love and loveliness.
Great as were the differences between Christian truth
as Smith and as his contemporaries saw it, he never
antagonized the current view, but was content to teach
his own in all gentleness, trusting in the truth to displace
error of itself. And such benignity appears not in times
of peace, but in times of war, for the Civil War was
raging during the whole period of Smith's teaching, not
to mention the fierce conflict of ecclesiastical parties:
and such benignity appears not in a man mellowed by
years, but in a young man, who died at thirty-five.
Smith taught from the depths of his own experience:
such living truth could come only from life. *' He lived,"
said Patrick, "by faith in the Son of God; by it he
came to be truly partaker of the righteousness of Christ,
and had it wrought and formed in his very soul." His
faith was of a kind that "brought down Christ into his
soul; which drew down heaven into his heart. He
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JOHN SMITH
lived in a continued sweet enjoyment of God. There
was so much divinity enshrined in this excellent man's
soul, that it made everything about him to have a kind
of sacredness in it, and will make his name to be always
as a sweet odor unto us."
And the fragrance still abides.
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HENRY MORE
HENRY MORE
1614-1687
Henry More represents the quintessence of Cam-
bridge Platonism. He lived so completely within that
he seemed unconscious of the disturbances without,
cloistered mid scenes of violence. "He was so busy in
his chamber with his pen and lines as not to mind much
the bustle and affairs of the world without." He knew
nothing of the agonizing of Hales driven to cover by
the storm, of Chillingworth dying a military captive, of
Falkland in a frenzy of despair exposing himself to
fatal fire. He did not even make the effort to adjust
himself to changing conditions like Whichcote, but
serenely ignored them. Retiring within, he lived in a
great calm. His environment mattered little.
More was born at Grantham, the son of a gentleman
of "fair estate and fortune." Like Whichcote, through
ample means he was relieved of all sordid cares. His
parents were strong Calvinists, and from his childhood
were disturbed over the religious welfare of their son,
who from his early years evinced a deep interest in
spiritual things but quite apart from the Calvinistic
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HENRY MORE
point of view. His uncle, to whose care he was com-
mitted during his school-days at Eton, threatened to
flog him "for his immature forwardness in philosophiz-
ing concerning the mysteries of necessity and free will."
His own words give the best picture of the precocious,
abstracted school-boy:
I had so firm and unshaken a persuasion of the divine justice
and goodness, that on a certain day in a ground belonging to
Eton College, where the boys used to play and exercise themselves,
musing concerning these things with myself, and recalling to my
mind this doctrine of Calvin (Predestination), I did thus seriously
and deliberately conclude within myself, viz. : If I am one of those
that are predestinated imto hell, where all things are full of
nothing but cursing and blasphemy, yet will I behave myself there
patiently and submissively towards God, and if there be any one
thing more than another that is acceptable to Him, that will I set
myself to do with a sincere heart, and to the utmost of my power,
being certainly persuaded, that if I thus demeaned myself. He
would hardly keep me long in that place. Which meditation
of mine is as firmly fixed in my memory, and the very place
where I stood, as if the thing had been transacted but a day or
two ago.
It was his custom, he says, to walk in the play-ground
slowly, with his head on one side, kicking now and then
the stones with his feet, and at times "with a sort of
musical and melancholic murmur" humming to himself
those lines of Claudian which question whether the
world is under a divine providence or mere chance.
Yet that exceeding hail and entire sense of God, which nature
herself had planted deeply in me, very easily silenced all such
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HENRY MORE
slight and poetical dubitations as these. Yea, even in my first
childhood an inward sense of the divine presence was so strong
upon my mind, that I did then believe there could no deed, word
or thought be hidden from Him. . . . Which thing, since no
reason, philosophy or instruction taught it me at that age, but
only an internal sensation urged it upon me, I think it is very
evident that this was an innate sense or notion.
Here is a school-boy of whom strange things might be
expected.
While his parents were distressed by their son's
wandering from the familiar paths of Calvinism, they
could not resist the unmistakable assurance of his deep
spiritual peace and joy. His father came upon him
unexpectedly among his books at Cambridge one day,
and was so profoundly impressed by his look and whole
manner as to declare that he "spent his time in an
angelical way," truly a sympathetic appreciation: and
sound Puritan that he was, he returned home to write
him down for a handsome legacy in his will.
In 1631 More, "a tall thin youth of clear olive com-
plexion and a rapt expression," entered Christ's College,
Cambridge, where congenial company welcomed him in
Whichcote, Mede, Smith and their friends. His tutor
was William Chappell, "a person both learned and
pious, and what I was not a little solicitous about, not at
all a Calvinist: but a tutor most skilful and vigilant."
In a conversation with Chappell, which reveals as in
the case of Joseph Mede the spirit and influence of the
tutorial system of the time, the attitude of the student
appears, as he enters upon his university studies.
Ill
HENRY MORE
When my prudent and pious tutor observed my mind to be
inflamed and carried with so eager and vehement a career, he
asked me on a certain time, why I was so above measure intent
upon my studies; that is to say, for what end I was so. Suspect-
ing, as I suppose, that there was only at the bottom a certain itch,
or hunt after vainglory; and to become by this means some
famous philosopher amongst those of my own standing. But I
answered briefly, and that from my very heart, "That I may know."
"But, young man, what is the reason," saith he again, "that you so
earnestly desire to know things ?" To which I instantly returned,
"I desire,[I say, so earnestly to know, that I may know." For even
at that time the knowledge of natural and divine things seemed to
me the highest pleasure and felicity imaginable.
Thereupon More plunged into philosophy, studying
Aristotle, Cardan, Julius Scaliger and others, but with-
out finding those satisfactions for which he yearned, so
that he took his degree of B.A. in 1635 with a sense of
disappointment in his course. In 1639 he was chosen
Fellow of Christ's College and took holy orders, al-
though he refused to preach, from a conviction that he
could do better service with his pen than with his voice.
He would not have known, he says, what to have done
in the world, if he could not have "preached at his
fingers' ends.''
Through philosophy More had failed to find satis-
faction, and his disappointment in the results of knowl-
edge led him to seek peace through a different channel,
that mystic illumination which comes to the purified
soul. The Platonic writers had turned his mind in this
direction, but it was the little book that Luther loved,
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HENRY MORE
HENRY MORE
the "Theologia Germanica," that awoke the response
from his deepest self. Now he came to feel that truth
is revealed not so much to the studious as to the sensitive
and pure in heart.
It fell out truly very happily for me, that I suffered so great
disappointment in my studies. For it made me seriously at last
begin to think with myself, whether the knowledge of things was
really that supreme felicity of man, or something greater and more
divine was: or, supposing it to be so, whether it was to be acquired
by such an eagerness and intentness in the reading of authors and
contemplating of things, or by the purging of the mind from all
sorts of vices whatsoever: especially having begun to read now the
Platonic writers, Ficinus, Plotinus himself, Trismegistus, and the
mystical divines, among whom there was frequent mention made
of the purification of the soul, and of the purgative course that is
previous to the illuminative, as if the person that expected to
have his mind illuminated of God was to endeavor after the high-
est purity. But amongst all the writings of this kind there was
none, to speak the truth, so pierced and affected me, as that golden
little book, with which Luther is said to have been wonderfully
taken, "Theologia Germanica". . . which sense (the sense of
divine things) that truly golden book did not then first implant
in my soul, but struck and roused it, as it were, out of sleep
in me, which it did verily as in a moment or the twinkling of
an eye.
The revelation of this new way to truth was followed
by a mighty struggle between the ** divine principle" and
the "animal nature," the Pauline struggle between
flesh and spirit. He must purge his soul, if he were to
know and experience the truth. Knowledge no longer
was the goal, but a more intimate converse with reality.
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HENRY MORE
That insatiable desire and thirst of mine after the knowledge
of things was wholly almost extinguished in me, as being solicitous
now about nothing so much as a more full union with this divine
and celestial principle, the inward flowing well-spring of life
eternal. . . . But here openly to declare the thing as it was;
when this inordinate desire after the knowledge of things was thus
allayed in me, and I aspired after nothing but this sole purity and
simplicity of mind, there shone in upon me daily a greater assur-
ance than ever I could have expected, even of those things which
before I had the greatest desire to know: insomuch that within
a few years I was got into a most joyous and lucid state of mind,
and such plainly as is ineffable.
The essence of his new way to blessedness is expressed
in a single sentence: " God reserves his choicest secrets
for the purest minds: it is uncleanness of spirit, not dis-
tance of place, that dissevers us from the Deity."
A sound body and perfect health saved More's
mysticism from becoming pathological, and gave even
to his highest flights of ecstasy a certain wholesomeness
and exhilaration. He ascends into seventh heavens,
but without becoming morbid or insane. At times his
intensity seemed a blaze that would consume him him-
self and set those about him on fire, but like the "burn-
ing bush," which Moses saw, he was not consumed.
More had a tall, thin, graceful figure, a spirited air,
hazel eyes as vivid as an eagle's. He had luxurious
tastes in dress and the air of a courtier. The portrait
which has been preserved represents him in his later
years with long hair falling over his shoulders, a slight
moustache, a broad forehead, high and prominent cheek-
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HENRY MORE
bones, a massive chin, cheeks firm and far from wasted.
He looks the gentleman as well as the scholar, and in
spite of his mysticism and otherworldliness gives no
evidence of asceticism. His appearance is refined and
wholesome. His body, he says, was "a well-strung
instrument to his soul, that so they might be both in
tune and make due music and harmony together." It
"seemed built for a hundred years, if he did not over-
debilitate it with his studies." He had a remarkable
ability to sleep deeply, "a strange sort of narcotick
power," and he arose refreshed. *'When yet early in
the morning he was wont to wake usually into an im-
mediate unexpressible life and vigor, with all his
thoughts and notions raying (as I may so speak) about
him, as beams surrounding the centre from whence they
all proceed." Every morning there was a sunrise in
his soul and the dawning of a fresh day.
Union with the central life, "joining centres with
God," lifted him into ecstasies, made him supernatural,
set him striding among the stars.
How lovely, how magnificent a state is the soul of man in,
when the life of God inactuating her, shoots her along with Himself
through heaven and earth; makes her unite with, and after a sort
feel herself animate the whole world. This is to become deiform,
to be thus suspended (not by imagination, but by union of life,
joining centres with God) and by a sensible touch to be held up
from the clotty dark personality of this compacted body. Here is
love, here is freedom, here is justice and equity in the superessen-
tial causes of them. He that is here look? upon all things as one,
and on himself, if he can then mind himself, as a part of the whole.
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HENRY MORE
. . . Nor am I out of my wits, as some may fondly interpret me
in this divine freedom. But the love of God compelled me. Nor
am I at all enthusiastical. For God doth not ride me as a horse,
and guide me I know not whither myself, but converseth with me
as a friend; and speaks to me in such a dialect as I understand
fully, and can make others understand, that have not made ship-
wrack of the faculties that God hath given them by superstition or
sensuality. . . . For God hath permitted to me all these things,
and I have it under the broad seal of heaven. Who dare charge
me ? God doth acquit me. For He hath made me full lord of the
four elements, and hath constituted me emperor of the world. . . .
I sport with the beasts of the earth; the lion licks my hand like a
spaniel; and the serpent sleeps upon my lap, and stings me not.
I play with the fowls of heaven, and the birds of the air sit sing-
ing on my fist. All these things are true in a sober sense. And
the dispensation I live in is more happiness above all measure,
than if thou couldst call down the moon so near thee by thy
magic charms, that thou mayst kiss her, as she is said to have
kissed Endymion; or couldst stop the course of the sun; or which
is all one, with one stamp of thy foot stay the motion of the earth.
. . . He that is come hither, God hath taken him to be his own
familiar friend; and though he speaks to others aloof off, in
outward religions and parables, yet he leads this man by the hand,
teaching him intelligible documents upon all the objects of his
providence; speaks to him plainly in his own language; sweetly
insinuates Himself, and possesseth all his faculties, understanding,
reason and memory. This is the darling of God, and a prince
amongst men, far above the dispensation of either miracle or
prophecy.
Mysticism with a vengeance is this, but there is no
tinge of morbidness, no suggestion of unhealthy, clois-
tered confinement : it is ecstasy rising on the wings of the
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HENRY MORE
morning, ascending into heaven, fleeing into the utter-
most parts of the sea, but ever in the open air. It is
intoxication not with noxious vapors, but with pure
oxygen. It is the ecstasy of Thoreau, stroking the fish
in Walden pond, in strange sympathy with all creation,
and soaring into worlds unknown, not through suppres-
sion of breath, but through deeper inhalation of the
pines.
More was accustomed to seek pleasant retirement
from Christ's College at Ragley, where he lived in the
open air, the wind fanning his temples, enjoying *'the
solemnness of the place, those shady walks, those hills
and woods, wherein often having lost the sight of the
rest of the world and the world of him, he found out
in that hidden solitude the choicest theories." What
Lord Falkland and Great Tew were to Chillingworth
and Hales, Lady Conway and Ragley were to More.
He found in Ragley a place of refreshing and in the
society of his hostess and her friends constant sym-
pathy and inspiration. It was a strange company that
gathered at Ragley, physicians, mystics, and perchance
charlatans, the salon of a remarkable woman, whose
mysticism, however, became pathological and neurotic.
Greatrakes, the famous Irish "stroker," who performed
wonderful cures with a kind of magic touch, was an
intimate of the house.
Except for repeated visits at Ragley, More lived al-
most entirely within the walls of Christ's College. He
persistently refused preferment, declining the master-
ship of his college, the Deanery of Christ Church, Ox-
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HENRY MORE
ford, the Provostship of Trinity College, Dublin, the
Deanery of St. Patrick's, and two bishoprics. Through
all the vicissitudes of the times he was loyal to the King
and church. His friends once induced him to journey
to Whitehall to kiss the King's hand, but he turned back
on discovering that this act of loyalty was to be the
prelude to a bishopric. A friend remonstrates with him
in a letter: "Pray be not so morose or humorsome as
to refuse all things you have not known so long as
Christ's College." More declined advancement from
"a pure love of contemplation and solitude, and because
he thought he could do the church of God greater
service in a private than in a public station." He had
spent, he said to one, "many happy days in his cham-
ber," and his labors were to him in looking back upon
them, "as an aromatick field." Like Smith, More
needed no exalted position in order to exert his influence.
Many pupils gathered about him at Christ's College,
listening to his words as to an oracle, and being ^im-
pressed alike by his learning and piety. In him were
combined intellectuality and saintliness, mystic ecstasy
and sanity, piety and grace. He was a spiritually
minded man of the world. He died in 1687, after
living more than fifty years within the confines of Cam-
bridge University one of the serenest of lives in the most
violent half century his country ever knew. The storm
raged without, but he dwelt in the secret place of the
Most High and abode under the shadow of the Al-
mighty.
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HENRY MORE
II
More's writings are voluminous, but are less interest-
ing than his personality, and in large part are so foreign
to the modern mind as to be almost unreadable. His
autobiography, which has been freely quoted, is far
more interesting than the philosophical works to which
it is the preface. "An Antidote against Atheism" pre-
sents a noble Transcendentalism, and carries one along
with its argument, until it flies off on a tangent into
discussions of witchcraft, apparitions, and extravagant
manifestations of the occult. Mystic that he was,
More was far from despising matter, and displays a
surprising interest in physical phenomena, to which he
applies an observation almost scientific. He makes
laudable attempts at physiological psychology in his
discussions of the spinal marrow, conarium and ventri-
cles of the brain as possible seats of the reasoning
faculty. Interesting as are these essays in primitive
science from an historical point of view, they could hard-
ly be expected to speak in modern phrase. Worthless
as are the results, the spirit of these investigations is
altogether admirable. The principle by which More
explains physical phenomena is the "spirit of nature."
In 1652, thirty-three years before Newton propounded
the law of gravitation. More thus describes the action
of this subtle incorporeal force:
It remands down a stone toward the centre of the earth as
well when the earth is in Aries as in Libra, keeps the water from
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HENRY MORE
swilling out of the moon, curbs the matter of the sun into round-
ness of figure, restrains the crusty parts of a star from flying
apieces into the circumambient ether, everywhere directs the
magnetic atoms in their right road, besides all the plastic services
it does both in plants and animals.
Why should not a body remain suspended in the air,
or if thrown from the earth continue its motion, and
why do not all things fly from the earth's surface, re-
pelled by centrifugal force? These questions More
answered by the hypothesis of a "spirit of nature."
This is the explanation of the strange results produced
by the air pump, the difficulty of removing the stopple
from an exhausted receiver, and the strong pressure
exerted upon it from within when the air is admitted.
"It is apparent that there is a principle transcending the
nature and power of matter that does umpire all, that
directs the motion of every part and parcel of matter
backward and forward and contrariwise in pursuance
of such general designs as are best for the whole." This
is the "spirit of nature," the "vicarious power of God
upon this great automaton the world." Newton's prin-
ciple was soon to dissipate More's "spirit of nature"
and Descartes' "vortices," but such speculations have
value as showing men's interest in natural science in the
seventeenth century, and more particularly in the case
of More as showing the attitude of certain Christians of
that much-abused century toward science in its begin-
nings and the startling ideas which it was introducing.
These times of ours are not the first in which Christian-
ity has adapted itself to new ideas with sympathy and
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HENRY MORE
grace. Not all heralds of new truth have been burned
at bigotry's stake. It is good to behold Henry More,
than whom his century produced few more profound
and devoted Christians, in his attitude toward the new
truths of his day.
The times we are in, and are coming on are times wherein
Divine Providence is more universally loosening the minds of men
from the awe and tyranny of mere accustomary superstition, and
permitting a freer perusal of matters of religion than in former ages.
It sounds like a voice from the present. "Blind
obedience to the authority of the church " is being swept
away. Scepticism and atheism are resulting: and these
should be met not by stemming the tide of the times, but
by adapting Christianity to the new conditions. A new
Christian phraseology and point of view are demanded,
which shall appeal to the naturalist.
The atheist will boggle at whatever is fetched from established
religion, and fly away from it, like a wild colt in a pasture at the
sight of a bridle. But that he might not be shy of me, I have
conformed myself as near his own garb as I might, without par-
taking of his folly or wickedness: and have appeared in the plain
shape of a mere naturalist myself, that I might, if it were possible,
win him off from downright atheism. For he that will lend his
hand to another fallen into a ditch, must himself, though not fall,
yet stoop and incline his body: and he that converses with a
barbarian must discourse to him in his own language; so he that
would gain upon the more weak and sunken minds of sensual
mortals, is to accommodate himself to their capacity.
Here is a Henry Drummond of the seventeenth
century!
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HENRY MORE
More was a personal friend of Descartes, and
carried on a long correspondence with him. He de-
plores Descartes' imprisonment, and "the inconven-
ience this external force and fear does to the com-
monwealth of learning." Cartesianism and Platonism
were making great headway, and More realized that it
would be "hugely disadvantageous to religion and
theology to seem to be left so far behind, or to appear
to be opposite to that, which I foresaw might proba-
bly become the common philosophy of the learned."
Therefore to prevent all contempt and cavil against the
sacredness of Christianity, as holding anything against
the solid truths of approved reason and philosophy, by
fantastic and allegorical interpretation he discovers
Cartesianism and Platonism in the books of Moses.
The method was bad, but the object good. Cabalistic
exegesis is absurd, but the demand that science, phi-
losophy and religion speak one language is beyond all
praise.
Responsiveness to new views and on the other hand
downright opposition to them are not uncommon: but
to be responsive to new views and at the same time to
sympathize with the feelings of those who oppose them,
to pass to the new without making a rupture with the
old, this is the rare spirit. Such a truly mediating
position was More's. He endeavored to write "without
any offence or scruple to the good and pious, or any real
exception or probable cavil from those whose preten-
sions are greater to reason than religion." He refuses
to be destructive. He will not tear down what others
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HENRY MORE
reverence, but is content to build up what he reverences
himself, and for the final result trust to the survival of
the fittest. Arguments for the existence of God, which
he considers illogical, he will still not confute, for the
reason that they help some, and he would not cause
any to stumble by the removal even of an unsteady
prop.
I think it may not unbeseem one that is faithful to the cause,
not to be over-industrious in discovering the weakness of such
arguments as are meant for the engendering in men's minds the
belief of that truth, which is of so necessary and vast importance
for mankind to be persuaded of. For I charitably surmise that
the first inventors of those reasons thought them conclusive, or
else they would not have made use of them. Whence it will fol-
low that they may still have their force with those that are but of
the same pitch with their first proposers. And he that guesseth
right and goes on his journey will as certainly come to the place
he aims at, as he that perfectly knows the way.
With rare magnanimity More, believing himself in
the new truth, respects its opposers, and understands
their opposition. He realizes that **that which is
strange has something of the face of that which is
hostile."
It is a piece of rudeness and unskilf ulness in the nature of things
and in the perfection of Divine Providence (who has generally
implanted a tenacious adhesion to what has accustomarily been
received, that the mind of man might be a safer receptacle when it
lights upon what is best) to conceit that because a truth is demon-
stratively evident in itself, that therefore its opposite shall im-
mediately surrender the castle. Which consideration with the
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HENRY MORE
ingenuous cannot but secure the continuance of unfeigned civility
and respect even to the jealous suspecters or opposers of new
truths and make them look upon it as a piece of surprising
ignorance or inhumanity to be otherwise affected toward them.
It has been too often forgotten that toleration is a
reciprocal relation, and is demanded of the liberal
toward the conservative quite as much as vice versa.
Of such toleration on the progressive side Henry More
is a notable example.
Considerate as was More toward the traditionalist,
he does not expect altogether to escape attack from
his own side on the part of those who mistake him
for a foe.
Wherefore I being so faithfully, and as I conceive so usefully
taken up in managing these out-works, as I may call them, I shall
not impute it, no not so much as to over-hasty zeal, but to mere
mishap, if I be pelted behind my back by any shots of obloquy
from any unknown servant of the sanctuary: and presume, if I
receive any hurt, that their smart will be the greatest that did it,
when they shall consider they have wounded a true and faithful
friend, and even then when he was so busily and watchfully em-
ployed in facing the common enemy.
In a remarkable passage More explains how authority
should be respected, and how disregarded. Only where
authority demands belief contrary to the teaching of the
Scriptures is it to be rebelled against. It may well be
compromised with, especially in terms of expression, in
matters of speculation and science.
For mine own part, though I were as certain of Cartesianism
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HENRY MORE
and Platonism as I am of any mathematical demonstration, yet I
do not find myself bound in conscience to profess my opinion
therein any further than is with the good liking or permission of
my superiors. But that I may not seem injurious to myself, nor
give scandal unto others by this so free profession, I am necessi-
tated to add, that the conscience of every holy and sincere Chris-
tian is as strictly bound up in matters of religion plainly and
expressly determined by the infallible oracles of God, as it is free
in philosophical speculations: and though out of love to his own
ease, or in a reverential regard to the authority of the church,
which undoubtedly every ingenuous spirit is sensible of, he may
have a great desire to say, profess and do as they would have
him; yet in cases of this kind, where anything is expected con-
trary to the plain and express sense of those divine writings, he
will use that short but weighty apology of the apostle, that God
is to be obeyed rather than men. But in philosophical theories,
euch as the preexistence of the soul, the motion of the earth, and
the like, where God has not required our profession, nor our
eternal interest is concerned, nor that which dictates is infallible;
though we should conceit to ourselves a mathematical assurance
of the conclusions, yet I must profess, as I said before, that I do
not see that anyone is conscientiously bound to aver them against
the authority of the church under which he lives, if they should at
any time dislike them, but that he may with a safe conscience
compromise with his superiors, and use their language and
phrases concerning such things. Certainly it cannot be a vice
in us in humble submission and reverence to the governors of the
church (let our private judgment be what it will) to receive their
definitive modes and phrases of speech in those things where God
has not tied us to the contrary.
More was willing to conform in non-essentials, if lie
might have liberty in essentials.
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HENRY MORE
For a thorough mystic, More's interest in physical
science was remarkable, but it was a spiritual interest.
He is always in antagonism to Hobbes, "that confident
exploder of immaterial substances," and to the material-
ism of the *' Leviathan." It was the "spirit of nature"
that he saw behind all material forms and phenomena.
He looked in, in order to understand what he saw as
he looked out.
In theology More is a transcendentalist. He argues
the reality of God from the existence in us of the idea of
a perfect and necessary being. The object must exist
as the correlate of the idea. The soul is furnished with
innate ideas and the natural emanations of the mind
are to be trusted as faithful guides. The principles of
the circle and triangle are appreciated by the mind,
though they are nowhere exhibited in visible form.
The geometrical propositions we feel are true of all
triangles and circles, the mind confidently leaping to
universal conceptions. As a musician sings the whole
song at the suggestion from another of a few notes, so
the soul leaps to universals and sings out the whole song
upon the first hint, "as knowing very well before." "It
is plain that we have some ideas that we are not behold-
ing to our senses for." There is more of reality than
matter offers through the senses. Man dwells in the
borders of two worlds, the spiritual and the material,
responding to influences from each, "tugging upward
and downward." Man is supernatural. Matter is
utterly incapable of such operations as we find in our-
selves, therefore there is in us something immaterial or
126
HENRY MORE
incorporeal. As our spirit understands and moves
corporeal matter, so behind the phenomena of nature is
there reason and spirit. The soul of man is a "little
medal of God." "As cattle are branded with their
owner's name, so God's character sealed upon our
souls marks us as his people and the sheep of his
pasture." "No bishop, no king"; and "No spirit, no
God."
But reason does not yield the great certainties. The
comprehension of spiritual truth requires "a certain
principle more noble and inward than reason itself and
without which reason will falter, or at least reach but to
mean and frivolous things. I have a sense of something
in me while I thus speak, which I must confess is of
so retruse a nature that I want a name for it, unless I
should endeavor to term it divine sagacity." "All pre-
tenders to philosophy will indeed be ready to magnify
reason to the skies, to make it the light of heaven and the
very oracle of God: but they do not consider that the
oracle of God is not to be heard but in his holy temple,
that is to say, in a good and holy man, thoroughly
sanctified in spirit, soul and body." "There is a
natural cohesion of truth with an unpolluted soul."
"That wisdom which is the gift of God is hardly com-
patible to any but to persons of a pure and unspotted
mind. Of so great concernment is it sincerely to en-
deavor to be holy and good."
This mystic was not obliged to soar to worlds un-
known for the beatific vision. Within and without he
saw God, whenever his heart was pure. To him there
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HENRY MORE
were ''two temples of God, the one the universe in
which the divine Logos is high priest: the other, the
rational soul whose priest is the true man " : and in both
temples he worshipped.
128
JEREMY TAYLOR
JEREMY TAYLOR
1613-1667
I
If adversity almost extinguished the light of Hales
and Chillingworth, it struck out of Jeremy Taylor his
brightest spark. In times of peace these would have
shone the brighter, but it is to be feared that in prosper-
ity Taylor would never have lighted his highest taper.
In 1634 a young man of twenty-two came up to
London from Cambridge to preach at Saint Paul's in
the place of his room-mate, Risden, who had been
prevented from filling the engagement. He created a
sensation. His handsome face and figure, his musical
voice, his exuberant fancy carried his hearers by storm.
"By his florid and youthful beauty, and sweet and
pleasant air, and sublime and raised discourses, he made
his hearers take him for some young angel, newly de-
scended from the visions of glory." In appearance
Taylor was attractive, above middle height, with
rounded face, expansive brow, full, kindly eyes and
small chin. "His person was uncommonly beautiful,
his manners polite, his conversation sprightly and en-
gaging, and even his voice was harmonious." There
131
JEREMY TAYLOR
is no lack of portraits of him. The number of engrav-
ings of the author, which form the frontispiece of many
of his books in their first editions, would seem to indicate
that Taylor himself was not unconscious of his pleasing
looks.
Up to the time of his appearance at Saint Paul's, Tay-
lor's career had been inconspicuous enough. He was
the son of a barber, born in Cambridge in 1613. He
attended the free grammar school established by the
generosity of Dr. Stephen Perse in 1619, in which year
Taylor entered as one of the earliest pupils. Such
beneficence has rarely done greater service in opening
opportunity to promising boys of slender means. After
seven years at the school he was admitted to Caius
College, Cambridge, in 1626, where he still enjoyed the
benefactions of Perse, being elected scholar and later
fellow on foundations in the university provided by the
same generous donor. His college course seems to
have been solitary, and although Milton, George Her-
bert and Henry More were contemporaneous with him,
he was not admitted to their fellowship, and seems to
have been untouched by their ampler spirit.
The preaching at Saint Paul's raised Taylor at once
from obscurity to distinction. He became " the fashion."
Archbishop Laud heard of the brilliant young preacher,
and with his genius for discovering merit was impressed
with Taylor's astonishing abilities, "observing the tart-
ness of his discourses, the quickness of his parts, the
modesty and sweetness of his temper, and the becoming-
ness of his personage and carriage." Laud at once
132
JEREMY TAYLOR
JEREMY TAYLOR
took him under his patronage, soon securing him a Fel-
lowship at Oxford, to which university he was trans-
ferred, as a more favorable school of that ecclesiastical
discipline dear to his patron's heart. At their first
interview Taylor made the retort which has become
famous. The only fault which Laud found in him was
his youth, but Taylor humbly begged his Grace to
pardon that, and promised *'if he lived he would
mend it."
The field of high service and distinction now lay fair
before Taylor. In 1636 he was appointed rector of
Uppingham, an excellent living, and later a chaplain to
the King, but the Civil War was at hand, and the wreck
of his fortunes in the disaster of his patrons. At the
outbreak of hostilities he was probably with the King at
Nottingham. In writings of this period Taylor stoutly
defended the royal and episcopal cause against the
claims of Parliament. His living was sequestrated and
given to another in 1644. His great patron was exe-
cuted the same year. In 1645, after the Battle of Nase-
by, sharing the fate of fellow royalists, he was taken
captive at Cardigan Castle in South Wales. Set at
liberty, probably through an exchange of prisoners, he
joined with William Wyatt and Dr. Nicholson in estab-
lishing a private school at Llanfihangel-Aberbythych,
near Golden Grove, the estate of Lord Carbery. Car-
bery fell under the spell of his unfailing charm and made
him his household chaplain. Here Taylor found an
asylum for eight productive years. His eulogist Rust
says that he was cast into "a private corner of the
133
JEREMY TAYLOR
world, where a tender Providence shrouded him under
his wings, and the prophet was fed in the wilderness."
Taylor himself thus alludes to this period :
In this great storm which hath dashed the vessel of the church
all in pieces, I have been cast upon the coast of Wales, and in a
little boat thought to have enjoyed that rest and quietness which
in England in a greater I could not hope for. Here I cast anchor,
and thinking to ride safely, the storm followed me with so im-
petuous violence, that it broke a cable, and I lost my anchor.
And here again I was exposed to the mercy of the sea, and the
gentleness of an element that could neither distinguish things nor
persons. And but that He, who stille h the raging of the sea, and
the noise of His waves, and the madness of His people, had pro-
vided a plank for me, I had been lost to all the opportunities of
content or study. But I know not whether I have been more
preserved by the courtesies of my friends, or the gentleness and
mercies of a noble enemy.
The voyage was interrupted, the fair weather was
gone, the mariner was wrecked with his hopes, but he
found himself on an island, where he was to cultivate a
rich crop sprinkled with fragrant flowers. We are re-
minded of that passage, in which he illustrates with a
remarkable elaboration of the nautical figure that
safety of the righteous in adversity, which he at this
time himself experienced.
He is safe in the midst of his persecutions. . . . And so have I
often seen young and unskilful persons sitting in a little boat,
when every little wave, sporting about the sides of the vessel, and
every motion and dancing of the barge seemed a danger, and
made them cling fast upon their fellows; and yet all the while
134
JEREMY TAYLOR
they were as safe as if they sate under a tree, while a gentle wind
shaked the leaves into a refreshment and a cooling shade: and the
unskilful, unexperienced Christian shrieks out whenever his vessel
shakes, thinking it always in danger, that the watery pavement
is not stable and resident like a rock ; and yet all his danger is in
himself, none at all from without: for he is indeed moving upon
the waters, but fastened to a rock: Faith is his foundation, and
hope is his anchor, and death is his harbour, and Christ is his
pilot, and heaven is his country; and all the evils of his poverty,
or affronts of tribunals and evil judges, of fears and sudden appre-
hensions, are but like the loud wind blowing from the right point,
they make a noise, and drive faster to the harbour: and if we do
not leave the ship, and leap into the sea; quit the interest of
religion, and run to the securities of the world; cut our cables,
and dissolve our hopes; grow impatient, and hug a wave, and dip
in its embraces; we are as safe at sea, safer in the storm which
God sends us, than in a calm when we are befriended with the
world.
Golden Grove was Taylor's Ragley and Great Tew.
Here man and nature alike ministered to him. It was
a beautiful country^ in the valley of the Towey with
thick woods broken by the lawns of great estates, the
land described seventy years later by the poet, Dyer,
as a
" long and level lawn.
On which a dark hill, steep and high.
Holds and charms the wandering eye;
Deep are his feet in Towey's flood,
His sides are clothed with waving wood;
And ancient towers crown his brow,
That cast an awful look below.
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JEREINIY TAYLOR
. . . woods, where echo talks.
The gardens trim, the terrace-walks,
The wildernesses, fragrant brakes.
The gloomy bowers and shining lakes."
By such beauties of nature the exuberant fancy of a
florid genius must have been stimulated, and many of
the nature pictures which Taylor painted into his
sermons with exquisite art are doubtless sketches of
scenes in Wales. That description in which one can
fairly see the sun rising, is a reminiscence of those
mornings at Golden Grove, when Taylor rose early to
behold the sun coming out of "the chambers of the
east":
The life of a man comes upon him slowly and insensibly. But
as when the sun approaching towards the gates of the morning, he
first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of
darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins,
and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the
eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns, like those which
decked the brows of Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil,
because himself had seen the face of God; and still while a man
tells the story the sun gets up higher, till he shews a fair face and
a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often,
and sometimes weeping great and Httle showers, and sets quickly:
so is a man's reason and his life.
In the words of Edmund Gosse:
It is to this beautiful retreat, in a rich valley of South Wales,
that we owe the ripest products of his intellect. The stamp of
the physical b auty which surrounded him is imprinted upon the
best and happiest of his writings, and we may say that Jeremy
136
JEREMY TAYLOR
Taylor was nourished by the Muses in the park of Golden Grove,
as the goat-herd Comatas was fed with honey by the bees while
he lay imprisoned in his master's cedarn chest.
The human environment of his retreat was no less
congenial than the physical. In the school he had his
friends Nicholson and Wyatt, and in the manor house
were Lord and Lady Carbery. His labors alternated be-
tween the school and house in an atmosphere of quiet
and refinement. The sermons which he preached to
the sympathetic little auditory were given a wider circu-
lation through the press of Royston, for many years his
faithful publisher.
It was under these favorable circumstances that
Taylor wrote his first book of importance and his great-
est, "Liberty of Prophesying," published in 1647.
It was one of the earliest pleas for liberty of conscience,
and is to be held in everlasting remembrance. The
fortunes of books are not to be reckoned in advance
even by the author, who is often no less surprised at the
success of one work than he is disappointed at the fail-
ure of another. Taylor considered his magnum opus,
for which posterity would remember him, the "Ductor
Dubitantium," an elaborate and weary encyclopaedia of
casuistry, with moral directions for all kinds of cases of
conscience. To this work he gave the labor of years but
it was never widely read. The *' Holy Living " and " Holy
Dying," published in 1650 and 1651 respectively, have
won first place among his works in popular favor. *' The
Great Exemplar," containing sermons preached at
Golden Grove on successive incidents in the life of Jesus,
137
JEREMY TAYLOR
is a notable work as the forerunner of the modern
"Life of Christ." Above all these, however, stands
"Liberty of Prophesying," as the herald of a new
age of intellectual liberty. It is Taylor's high-water
mark, so high indeed that the author himself unhap-
pily receded from it: but it is by such fluctuations
that the tide comes in, and of the incoming tide of
toleration this book is one of the most advanced waves.
It lacks the gorgeous imagery of his other works, and
wears the severe garb of the suppliant. The language
is not ornate, but direct and clear. It is a voice from
exile, chastened as such voices are, like the voice from
Babylon which sang in sobs of the suffering Servant of
Jehovah. All embellishments are cast aside. The
brilliant rhetorician puts off the beautiful garments of
his oratory and appears in the plain dress of logic and
reason. In general, Taylor was a preacher and orator
rather than a theologian or logician, but here he takes a
place in the high company of Chillingworth and the first
theologians of the time. Taylor and Chillingworth had
walked and talked together at Oxford, but the younger
man had not been rated high as a thinker by the keen
logician, who criticised him as slighting the arguments of
those he discoursed with. The influence, however, of
the "Religion of Protestants" is manifest in the "Lib-
erty of Prophesying," proving that Taylor gave more
heed to the arguments of these Oxford conversations
than his critic supposed. "Liberty of Prophesying"
was not an expression of Taylor's peculiar genius
as a brilliant preacher and splendid rhetorician: it was
138
JEREMY TAYLOR
a by-product, but a by-product which surpassed in
significance his regular work. He turned aside from
the beaten path and mounted a hill.
After eight years of shelter at Golden Grove, Taylor
emerged from seclusion to be buffeted by the violence
of the times. His views were offensive to the Protec-
torate, and through their diffusion doubtless endangered
the fortunes of his patron Lord Carbery, who seems to
have withdrawn his support. In the famous Evelyn,
Taylor now found a new friend, who supported him
from his own funds for several years. Throughout his
life Taylor showed a genius for making friends among
the great. In 1658 at the suggestion of Evelyn, Lord
Conway, a devout Irish Anglican, persuaded Taylor to
take up his residence at Portmore, in Ireland, on his
sumptuous estate, and to assume the office of lecturer
at Lisburn, a few miles distant. The troubled bark was
thus brought into harbor again.
At the Restoration Taylor, as his loyalty deserved,
was in high favor. He was appointed bishop of Down
and Connor, and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College,
Dublin. The great preacher, however, was not a great
administrator. His sympathies were not large enough
to appreciate the Irish situation, the place of Romanism
in the popular heart, and the importance of the native
language. The polished preacher to polite society was
not fitted to grapple with the problems of a down-
trodden, crude people. The Presbyterians also gave
him trouble, and the author of " Liberty of Prophe-
sying" so far forgot his own high counsels as to instigate
139
JEREMY TAYLOR
the imprisonment of all the Presbyterian ministers who
could be found in the counties of Antrim and Down.
The story is told that Taylor sent his chaplain Lewis to
England to buy up all the extant copies of his great
work, and that he burned these after a day of fasting
and prayer. It was a sad apostasy. Taylor's life in
Ireland was unhappy. He was above all a preacher
to the cultivated classes, and was utterly unfitted to the
work of reconstruction in the midst of a turbulent
populace. He died of fever at Lisburn in 1667. The
** Liberty of Prophesying" was the acme of his theolog-
ical work, and had he failed, like Hales and Chilling-
worth, to survive the evil days which put him to his
best endeavors, he would have bulked larger on the
horizon. After Golden Grove his life was an anti-
climax. His greatest fragrance came from the smok-
ing flax. Never were there sweeter uses of adversity.
II
In one of the first pages of the "Liberty of Prophesy-
ing" Taylor remarks that the Holy Spirit descended at
Pentecost in the form of cloven tongues, a parable to
teach that differing expressions may proceed from the
one Spirit. Unanimity of opinion is not to be expected.
Charity is to unite those differing in doctrine.
It is not the differing opinions that is the cause of the present
ruptures, but want of charity. . . . There is no cure for us but
piety and charity. . . . All these mischiefs proceed not from this,
that all men are not of one mind, for that is neither necessary nor
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JEREMY TAYLOR
possible, but that every opinion is made an article of faith, every
article is a ground of a quarrel, every quarrel makes a faction,
every faction is zealous, and all zeal pretends for God, and what-
soever is for God cannot be too much. We by this time are come
to that pass, we think we love not God except we hate our brother;
and we have not the virtue of religion, unless we persecute all
religions but our own: for lukewarmness is so odious to God and
man, that we proceeding furiously upon these mistakes, by sup-
posing we preserve the body, we destroy the soul of religion; or
by being zealous for faith, or which is all one, for that which
we mistake for faith, we are cold in charity, and so lose the
reward of both.
The position in regard to heresy is notable. Heresy
is an act of the will, not of the intellect. It is something
more than an error of opinion, which is generally ex-
cusable. Harmless prejudice, weakness, education, mis-
taking piety may produce erring convictions, but these
are not heretical where there is nothing of venom behind
them. Error of opinion in a pious person is innocent.
"No man is an heretic against his will." Heresy is not
to be accounted in merely speculative opinions, and
never to the pious. A truly good man is never a
heretic, whatever his views: an evil man, whatever his
views, is a heretic.
For whatever an ill man believes, if he therefore believe it
because it serves his own ends, be his belief true or false, the man
hath an heretical mind; for to serve his own ends, his mind is
prepared to believe a lie. But a good man, that believes what
according to his light, and upon use of his moral industry he
thinks true, whether he hits upon the right or no, because he hath
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JEREMY TAYLOR
a mind desirous of truth, and prepared to believe every truth, is
therefore acceptable to God.
The treatment of heresy which is recommended is
equal to the definition.
It is unnatural and unreasonable to persecute disagreeing
opinions. Unnatural, for understanding being a thing wholly
spiritual, cannot be restrained, and therefore neither punished by
corporal afflictions. It is a matter of another world: you may
as well cure colic by brushing a man's clothes. . . . Force in
matters of opinion can do no good, but is very apt to do hurt; for
no man can change his opinion when he will, or be satisfied in his
reason that his opinion is false because discountenanced. . . .
But if a man cannot change his opinion when he lists, nor ever
does heartily or resolutely but when he cannot do otherwise, then
to use force may make him an hypocrite, but never to be a right
believer: and so instead of erecting a trophy to God and true
religion, we build a monument for the devil.
Persecution "either punishes sincerity or persuades
hypocrisy. It teaches a man to dissemble and to be safe,
but never to be honest." The heretic is to be pitied and
instructed, not condemned nor excommunicated. Chrys-
ostom's maxim is to be observed, "We ought to reprove
and condemn impieties and heretical doctrines, but to
spare the men, and to pray for their salvation." The
Scriptures are to be remembered, "Restoring persons
overtaken with an error in the spirit of meekness, con-
sidering lest we also be tempted," and "The servant of
the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men,
in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves,
if God perad venture will give them repentance to the
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JEREMY TAYLOR
acknowledging of the truth." In the midst of the wind,
earthquake and fire of the seventeenth century, and the
boom of Cromwell's cannon, there rises this still, small
voice, and we feel that God is in the voice, and the
promise of better things.
In the discussion of creeds, the contention is for
simplicity. "The church hath power to intend our
faith, but not to extend it: to make our belief more
evident, but not more large and comprehensive." The
New Testament creeds are emphasized in their sim-
plicity, the creed of Paul and Peter and Martha and the
Ethiopian. The "Apostles' Creed" is urged as a
basis of communion. Taylor takes the liberty of criti-
cising even the Nicene Creed. He deplores its sub-
tleties and departure from Biblical simplicity.
There are some wise personages, who think the church had
been more happy, if she had not been in some sense constrained
to alter the simplicity of her faith, and make it more curious and
articulate, so much that he had need to be a subtle man to under-
stand the very words of the new determinations.
Those creeds are best, which keep the very words of Scripture;
and that faith is best, which hath greatest simplicity; and it is
better in all cases humbly to submit, than curiously to inquire
and pry into the mystery under the cloud, and to hazard our faith
by improving our knowledge: if the Nicene fathers had done so
too, possibly the church never would have repented it. . . . If
the article had been with more simplicity and less nicety deter-
mined, charity would have gained more, and faith would have lost
nothing.
The definitions as to "one substance" and "hypos-
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JEREMY TAYLOR
tases" were unfortunate as engendering strife. The
mysteries in the Bible are to be made ''occasions of
mutual charity and toleration and humility, rather than
repositories of faith and furniture of creeds and articles
of belief." The view, often expressed to-day, is
strongly presented by Taylor, that theological state-
ments may be put on record in the form of expositions
and rescripts, without being incorporated in the creed;
that theologians should publish their decrees "declara-
tively not imperatively, as doctors in their chairs, not
masters of other men's faith and consciences."
No modern advocate of toleration could insist more
strenuously than does Taylor that the way to heaven is
not to be made narrower than it is in the Scriptures.
I see not how any man can justify the making the way to
heaven narrower than Jesus Christ hath made it, it being already
so narrow, that there are few that find it.
To make the way to heaven straiter than God made it, or to
deny to communicate with those whom God will vouchsafe to be
united, and to refuse our charity to those who have the same
faith, because they have not all our opinions, and believe not
everything necessary which we overvalue, is impious and schis-
matical: it infers tyranny on one part, and persuades and tempts
to uncharitableness and animosities on both: it dissolves societies
and is an enemy to peace: it busies men in impertinent wranglings,
and by names of men and titles of factions it consigns the inter-
ested parties to act their difference to the height, and makes them
neglect those advantages which piety and a good life bring to the
reputation of Christian religion and societies.
Overstrict confessions are to be deplored as pro-
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JEREMY TAYLOR
ducing schism, and real schismatics are those who make
the separation necessary.
Few churches that have framed bodies of confession and
articles will endure any person that is not of the same confession ;
which is a plain demonstration that such bodies of confession and
articles do much hurt, by becoming instruments of separating and
dividing communions, and making unnecessary or uncertain
propositions a certain means of schism and disunion. But then
men would do well to consider whether or no such proceedings
do not derive the guilt of schism upon them who least think it;
and whether of the two is the schismatic, he that makes un-
necessary and inconvenient impositions, or he that disobeys them
because he cannot, without doing violence to his conscience, be-
lieve them: he that parts communion because without sin he
could not entertain it, or they that have made it necessary for him
to separate, by requiring such conditions which to man are simply
necessary, and to his particular are either sinful or impossible.
Liberty of conscience did not mean to Taylor license
nor indifference, as *' bringing into captivity every
thought to the obedience of Christ" did not mean
slavery. It may be well to quote in connection with the
"Liberty of Prophesying" a notable passage from a
sermon preached in 1651 :
Indifferency to an object is the lowest degree of liberty, and
supposes unworthiness or defect in the object or the apprehen-
sion: but the will is then the freest and most perfect m its opera-
tion, when it entirely pursues a good with so certain determination
and clear election, that the contrary evil cannot come into dispute
or pretence. Such in our proportions is the liberty of the sons of
God; it is an holy and amiable captivity to the Spirit. The will
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JEREMY TAYLOR
of man is in love with those chains which draw us to God, and
loves the fetters that confine us to the pleasures and religion of the
kingdom. And as no man will complain that his temples are
restrained, and his head is prisoner, when it is encircled with a
crown; so when the Son of God hath made us free, and hath only
subjected us to the service and dominion of the Spirit, we are as
free as princes within the circles of their diadem, and our chains
are bracelets, and the law is a law of liberty, and his service is
perfect freedom, and the more we are subjects the more we shall
reign as kings; and the faster we run, the easier is our burden;
and Christ's yoke is like feathers to a bird, when in summer we
wish them unfeathered, that they might be cooler and lighter.
The quotation with which this remarkable book closes
is a gem in which its essential spirit is crystallized :
I end with a story which I find in the Jews' books: When
Abraham sat at his tent door, according to his custom, waiting to
entertain strangers, he espied an old man stooping and leaning on
his staff, weary with age and travel, coming towards him, who was
an hundred years of age; he received him kindly, washed his feet,
provided supper, and caused him to sit down ; but observing that
the old man ate and prayed not nor begged for a blessing on his
meat, asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven?
The old man told him that he worshipped the fire only, and
acknowledged no other god; at which answer Abraham grew so
zealously angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and
exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condi-
tion. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and
asked him where the stranger was; he replied, "I thrust him away
because he did not worship thee ": God answered him, " I have
suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonored me,
and could'st thou not endure him one night, when he gave thee
146
JEREMY TAYLOR
no trouble?" Upon this, saith the story, Abraham fetched him
back again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise
instruction. Go thou and do likewise, and thy charity will be re-
warded by the God of Abraham.
The prophet was indeed "fed in the wilderness"; and
more, he made the wilderness rejoice and blossom like
the rose.
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SIR THOMAS BROWNE
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
1605-1682
Late on a December evening of 1642 Sir Kenelm
Digby received a letter from his friend Lord Dorset,
commending to his attention a Httle book that had
recently appeared, the ^'Religio Medici." Digby at
once sent out his servant to procure a copy, and in his
absence retired. On the servant's return with the book,
Digby read it through in bed, and early the next morn-
ing began to write a glowing criticism of it, apparently
before rising. In a letter of the same morning he writes
to Dorset:
This good-natured creature (Religio Medici) I could easily
persuade to be my bedfellow, and to wake with me as long as I
had any edge to entertain myself with the delights I sucked from
so noble a conversation. And truly, my Lord, I closed not my
eyes till I had enriched myself with, or at least exactly surveyed,
all the treasures that are lapped up in the folds of those few sheets.
It was Digby's "Observations" that brought the
" Religio Medici " and its author into prominence. The
book created a sensation that extended to the Conti-
151
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
nent, appearing in Latin, Italian, German, Dutch and
French translations.
The writer thus suddenly made famous had settled five
years before as a physician in Norwich, and had evidently
been at work upon his reflections at intervals for seven
years, as a "private exercise" lovingly wrought with ex-
quisite art. The author's life, in his own words, had
been "a miracle of thirty years," although one searches
in vain for anything extraordinary in his early career to
warrant such enthusiasm. It was an exquisite inner
experience, soaring like Henry More*s among the con-
stellations. For outer circumstance those thirty years
seem far from miraculous, pursuing the even tenor
of prosperity and development, experiencing neither
marked successes nor struggles nor deliverances.
Browne's whole life appears calm and prosperous. He
was a child of privilege, inheriting from his father, who
died in the son's boyhood, an ample fortune, allowing
the best advantages of education and travel. After the
father's death the mother married Sir Thomas Dutton,
who occupied an important position in the government
of Ireland. In 1626 Browne was graduated from Broad-
gate Hall, afterward Pembroke College, Oxford. For
several years he travelled in Ireland, France and Italy,
making the ''grand tour," and attending lectures at the
famous schools of medicine in Montpellier and Padua.
He received the degree of doctor of medicine at Leyden
in 1633, and at Oxford four years later. On returning
from his foreign travels and studies he began his
practice about 1635 at Shipden Hall, where in the
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SIR THOMAS BROWNE
leisure of a young physician he seems to have begun the
writing of those intimate reflections which developed
into the "Religio [Medici.'' In 1637 he removed to
Norwich, where for nearly fifty years, until the time
of his death, he enjoyed a large and lucrative practice,
*'much resorted to for his skill in physic."
Browne knew nothing of Jeremy Taylor's school of
adversity, and suffered nothing of Falkland's and Chil-
lingworth's agonies over the evil of the times. He was
a faithful royalist and Episcopalian, but without antip-
athies which would make him obnoxious to the op-
posite parties, or unhappy in their domination. "He
attended the public service very constantly, when he was
not withheld by his practice; never missed the sacra-
ment in his parish, if he were in town; read the best
English sermons he could hear of, with liberal applause;
and delighted not in controversies." There was nothing
of the martyr in him. Differences political and relig-
ious he did not consider worth dying for, as the following
passage reveals:
I have often pitied the miserable bishop that suffered in the
cause of Antipodes, yet cannot but accuse him of as much madness
for exposing his life on such a trifle, as those of ignorance and
folly, that condemned him. I think my conscience will not give
me the lie, if I say there are not many extant that in a noble way
fear the face of death less than myself. Yet, from the moral duty
I owe to the commandment of God, and the natural respects that
I tender unto the conservation of my essence and being, I would
not perish upon a ceremony, politic points, or indilYerency. Nor
is my belief of that untractable temper, as not to bow at their
153
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
obstacles, or connive at matters wherein there are not manifest
impieties. The leaven, therefore, and ferment of all, not only
civil but religious actions, is wisdom, without which, to commit
ourselves to the flames is homicide, and, I fear, but to pass
through one fire into another.
Herein is more of sanity than heroism. The condi-
tions of his time evidently would not disturb such
equanimity. The Norwich doctor could go calmly
about his practice, jotting down exquisite thoughts in all
serenity, while the partisans were approaching their
life-and-death struggle. The "Religio Medici" was
published in the year when other minds were framing
the Solemn League and Covenant.
During the Civil War Browne was busy with his
patients, employing his leisure moments in reading in
many languages, in correspondence with kindred
spirits, in studying flowers, trees and stars. He was
deeply interested in nature studies, and was a faithful
observer, although imbued with the superstitions of
alchemy and astrology. He corresponds with Evelyn
on gardening and grafting, describing in one of his
letters the great linden at Depeham. To Sir William
Dugdale he writes of embanking and draining. For
twenty years he was in communication with Theodorus
Jonas, minister of Hitterdale in Iceland, letters in Latin
being exchanged between them annually by means of
the ships sailing from Yarmouth. Browne looked up
to the stars and down to the flowers and off to the ice-
fields, and forgot the war raging about him. When others
were throwing up earthworks, he was digging drains.
154
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
His home also gave him sweet occupation. While one
would hardly discover that Jeremy Taylor had a family
except for the occasional reference to a bereavement, one
cannot become acquainted with Browne without meeting
also his wife and children. In 1641 he married Dorothy
Mileham, described by one who knew them both well
during the whole period of their married life as *'a lady
of such symmetrical proportion to her worthy husband,
both in the graces of her body and mind, that they
seemed to come together by a kind of natural magnet-
ism." Delightful letters between Browne and his sons
have been preserved, which reveal the father as much as
the children. The second son, affectionately known at
home as "honest Tom," was sent to school in France
at the age of fourteen. Lord Chesterfield and Polonius
are suggested in the letters which exhort the boy to put
off rustic bashfulness, to put on a "commendable bold-
ness," and to "have a good handsome garb on his
body." He is earnestly enjoined to "hold firm to the
Protestant religion, and be diligent in going to church."
"Be constant," the father urges, "not negligent in your
daily private prayers, and habituate your heart in your
tender days unto the fear and reverence of God."
Here is piety without Puritanism and cosmopolitanism
without irreligion. The wisdom of such liberal educa-
tion was vindicated in the result, for "honest Tom"
developed into a kindly, frank, spirited young man. He
entered the navy, and seems to have been lost at sea
early in a career full of promise.
The eldest son, Edward, was educated with hke
155
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
liberality. We read of him "dancing, dissecting and
going to church," wholesome union of pleasure, work
and worship, of grave and gay. Edward Browne was a
great traveller and keen observer, and became a Lon-
don physician of note. In 1664 he met in Paris Dr. Guy
Patin, dean of the faculty of medicine, who had been
one of the first to appreciate the "Religio Medici," thus
commenting on it in 1644:
A little new book entitled " Religio Medici," written by an Eng-
lishman and translated into Latin by a Dutchman. It is a book
all gentle and singular, but very delicate and mystical : the author
has no lack of spirit: you will see strange and transporting
thoughts. There are few books of this sort.
When Edward Browne met Dr. Patin twenty years
after this comment, he *' saluted me very kindly," he
writes to his father, "asked me many things concerning
my father, whom he knew only as author of 'Religio
Medici,' discoursed with me very lovingly, and told me
he would write to my father." As we behold these de-
lightful relations between father and sons, we are re-
minded of a sweet story of Dr. Browne's own infancy,
that his father used to lay bare the child's breast when
he was asleep, and kiss it in prayers over him that the
Holy Ghost would take possession there.
Although Browne suffered little from the war, he was
heartily rejoiced at the Restoration. On Coronation
Day, he went up and down the streets of Norwich ex-
changing greetings and felicitations, "civil and debon-
air." On a royal visit to Norwich in 1671, the King
156
THOMAS BROWNE
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
desired to knight some distinguished citizen, selecting
the Mayor as the candidate, but the Mayor with rare
grace and propriety proposed the city's distinguished
doctor for the honor in his stead.
Although the complete biography of Dr. Browne, long
contemplated by Archbishop Tenison, was never writ-
ten, most fortunately the Rev. John Whitefoot soon
after Browne's death in 1682 wrote a sketch of his life
that is really descriptive, and happily devoid of those
glittering generalities which make the conventional
eulogy of the seventeenth century colorless and indis-
criminate. It is to this sketch that we are most indebted
for the facts of Browne's life and the characterization of
the man. Moreover, Dr. Johnson seventy years later
wrote a biographical and critical sketch, incorporating
for the most part Whitefoot's minutes, as a preface to
an edition of the " Christian Morals," which Johnson
particularly admired. In his introduction Whitefoot
writes :
I ever esteemed it a special favour of Divine Providence to
have had a more particular acquaintance with this excellent
person, for two-thirds of his life, than any other man that is now
left alive; but that which renders me a willing debtor to his name
and family, is the special obligations of favour that I had from
him above most men.
Browne is described as in "stature moderate," and in
"habit of body neither fat nor lean." The face looks
out to us from his pictures, full of distinction and kind-
liness, with VanDyke beard, large eyes, and smiling
mouth. His taste in dress was simple, and he always
157
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
dressed very warmly. His manner was modest, and he
blushed easily. He was a hard student, and impatient
of interruption in his studies. In conversation he was
"always singular and never trite or vulgar." *'He was
never seen to be transported with mirth or dejected with
sadness: always cheerful, but rarely merry." *'He
was excellent company, when he was at leisure, and ex-
pressed more light than heat in the temper of his brain."
This perhaps is Browne's highest encomium, that in
times of ferment and darkness he expressed more light
than heat. Unconsciously he was describing himself
when he wrote:
Bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, bounty, and
generous honesty are the gems of noble minds; wherein — to
derogate from none — the true heroic English gentleman hath no
peer.
If it had been a funeral sermon that he was writing,
Whitefoot says that he would have chosen his text from
Ecclesiasticus :
Honour a physician with the honour due unto him; for the
uses which you may have of him, for the Lord hath created him;
for of the Most High cometh healing, and he shall receive honour
of the king. The skill of the physician shall lift up his head, and
in the sight of great men shall be in admiration,
II
The style of the "Religio Medici" is as quaint as its
catholicity is modern. It is charged with Latinity.
Boswell says that Dr. Johnson imitated Browne. The
158
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
great critic certainly defended Browne's style, and his
comments are interesting, as they appear in the pref-
ace to which reference has been made.
His exuberance of knowledge and plenitude of ideas sometimes
obstruct the tendency of his reasoning, and the clearness of his
decisions: on whatever subject he employed his mind, there
started up immediately so many images before him, that he lost
one by grasping another. ... He was always starting into col-
lateral considerations; but the spirit and vigor of his pursuit al-
ways gives delight; and the reader follows him without reluctance
through his mazes, in themselves flowery and pleasing, and ending
at the point originally in view. , . . Browne poured in a multi-
tude of exotic words; many, indeed, useful and significant — but
many superfluous — and some so obscure, that they conceal his
meaning rather than explain it. . . . In defence of his uncom-
mon words and expressions, we must consider, that he had un-
common sentiments, and was not content to express in many
words that idea for which any language could supply a single
term. But his innovations are sometimes pleasing, and his te-
merities happy: he has many "verba ardentia," forcible expres-
sions, which he would never have found, but by venturing to the
utmost verge of propriety; and flights which would never have been
reached, but by one who had very little fear of the shame of falling.
The reader's attitude will determine whether he will
be annoyed by pedantry, or pleased with the *' learned
sweetness of cadence."
The "Religio Medici" is written by a man without
antipathies.
I have ever endeavored to nourish the merciful disposition and
humane inclination I borrowed from my parents, and regulate
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SIR THOMAS BROWNE
it to the written and prescribed laws of charity. ... I am of a
constitution so general that it consorts and sympathizeth with all
things; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet,
humour, air, anything. I wonder not at the French for their
dishes of frogs, snails, and toadstools, nor at the Jews for locusts
and grasshoppers: but being amongst them, make them my
common viands; and I find they agree with my stomach as well
as theirs. I could digest a salad gathered in a churchyard as well
as in a garden. I cannot start at the presence of a serpent,
scorpion, lizard, or salamander; at the sight of a toad or viper,
I find in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them. I feel
not in myself those common antipathies that I can discover in
others: those national repugnances do not touch me, nor do I
behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch;
but, where I find their actions in balance with my countrymen's, I
honour, love and embrace them in the same degree. I was born
in the eighth climate, but seem to be framed and constellated unto
all. I am no plant that will not prosper out of a garden. All
places, all airs, make unto me one country; I am in England
everywhere, and under any meridian. I have been shipwrecked,
yet am not enemy with the sea or winds; I can study, play, or
sleep in a tempest. In brief, I am averse from nothing: my
conscience would give me the lie, if I should say I absolutely
detest or hate any essence, but the devil; or so at least abhor any-
thing, but that we might come to composition.
It is refreshing to have such a genial spirit, at home
everywhere, catholic and cosmopolitan, greet us out of
the malignant partisanships of the seventeenth century.
Browne looks upon all men with fairness. He believes
that real atheism does not exist; no more does real
badness; "Methinks there is no man bad." It is mad-
160
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
ness to "miscal and rave against the times." "Saint
Paul, that calls the Cretans liars, doth it but indirectly
and upon quotation from their own poet."
It is a tribute to Browne's catholicity that he was
reckoned Deist, Atheist and Romanist (although the
"Rehgio Medici " was put upon the Index Prohibitorius)
and that the "Friends" sought to win him, while he
defines himself as a Christian, a Protestant, and an
Anglican. He assumes "the honorable style of a
Christian," but in such general charity toward humanity
at large, that toward Turks, infidels and Jews he feels
pity rather than hate. He is a Protestant, "of the same
belief our Saviour taught," restored to its primitive
integrity: but he is not at enmity with Romanism.
"We have reformed from them, not against them."
He could worship with them with good heart.
Holy water and crucifix (dangerous to the common people) de-
ceive not my Judgment, nor abuse my devotion at all. At my
devotion I love to use the civility of my knee, my hat, and my
hand, with all those outward and sensible motions which may
express or promote my invisible devotion. At the sight of a
cross or crucifix, I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the
thought or memory of my Saviour. I could never hear the Ave
Maria bell without an elevation, or think it a sufficient warrant,
because they erred in one circumstance, for me to err in all — that
is in silence and dumb contempt. Whilst, therefore, they di-
rected their devotions to her, I offered mine to God; and rectified
the errors of their prayers by rightly ordering my own.
He is of the Church of England. " In divinity I love
to keep the road; and though not in an implicit, yet an
161
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
humble faith, follow the great wheel of the church."
He has had doubts, which he has conquered *'not in
martial posture, but on his knees." Anglican, he is
without animosity toward dissenters. He refuses to call
names, however much his own position may be maligned.
**It is the method of charity to suffer without reaction."
'* A good cause needs not to be patroned by passion, but
can sustain itself upon a temperate dispute." ** I have
no genius to disputes in religion." And what a passage
is this on charity in differences of opinion !
I cannot conceive why a difference of opinion should divide an
affection. . . . There remain not many controversies worthy a
passion. How do grammarians hack and slash for the genitive
case in Jupiter! Yea even among wiser militants, how many
wounds are given and credits slain for the poor victory of an
opinion, or beggarly conquest of a distinction ! Scholars are men
of peace, they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than
Actius' razor; their pens carry further, and give a louder report
than thunder. I had rather stand in the shock of a basilisk than
in the fury of a merciless pen. ... In all disputes, so much as
there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose.
Browne is a mystic. He is weary of arguments and
syllogisms. He delights to contemplate an insoluble
mystery in humble reverence. He can believe the im-
possible. "To believe only possibilities is not faith,
but mere philosophy." There are not impossibilities
enough in religion to satisfy his faith. He regrets the
clearing of mystery.
I love to lose myself in a mystery; to pursue my reason to an
0 altitudot 'Tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension
162
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
with those involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity, incarna-
tion, and resurrection. I can answer all the objections of Satan
and my rebellious reason with that odd resolution I learned of
Tertullian, Certum est quia impossibile est. I desire to exercise
my faith in the difficultest point; for to credit ordinary and
visible objects is not faith, but persuasion.
He is thankful that he did not live in the days of
miracles, that he never saw Christ nor his disciples, for
then faith would have been almost compulsory.
I would not have been one of those Israelites that passed the
Red Sea; nor one of Christ's patients, on whom He wrought His
wonders: then had my faith been thrust upon me; nor should I
enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe, and saw
not.
Even for the present believer is faith too simple, for
it is grounded on history.
They only had the advantage of a bold and noble faith, who
lived before His coming, who upon obscure prophecies and mys-
tical types could raise a belief, and expect apparent impossibilities.
With his mysticism there is mingled strangely a love
of inquiry, as in Henry More and Thoreau. He is at
once mystic and scientist. His rebellion against reason
is only in the weary realm of dogmatism. He will not
argue, where insight brings him into immediate contact
with the truth, but he delights to exercise his reason
upon nature.
The wisdom of God receives small honor from those vulgar
heads that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire
163
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
His works. Those highly magnify Him, whose judicious inquiry
into His acts, and deliberate research into His creatures, return
the duty of a devout and learned admiration.
He is profoundly interested in natural science. He
studies the bees, ants and spiders, the tides, the increase
of the Nile, the turning of the needle to the north. His
mysticism is not of the type that despises the material
world: and his science is not of the type that despises
the spiritual world, for in the midst of the discussion
of the tides, the Nile and the compass, he turns to the
mysteries within, "the cosmography of myself." "We
carry with us the wonders we seek without us : there is
all Africa and her prodigies in us." He lived in two
worlds, and read two books.
Thus there are two books from whence I collect my divinity.
Besides that written one of God, another of His servant, nature,
that universal and public manuscript that lies expansed unto the
eyes of all. Those that never saw Him in the one have discovered
Him in the other.
Browne believes in God, not as an abstraction of
dogma, but as a reality of experience. His God is im-
manent, "a universal and common spirit to the whole
world," "the life and radical heat of spirits."
This is that gentle heat that brooded on the waters. . . .
This is that irradiation that dispels the mists of hell, the clouds of
horror, fear, sorrow, despair; and preserves the region of the
mind in serenity. Whosoever feels not the warm gale and gentle
ventilation of this spirit (though I feel his pulse) I dare not say he
lives: for truly without this, to me there is no heat under the
tropic, nor any light, though I dwelt in the body of the sun.
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SIR THOMAS BROWNE
The mercies of God are felt more than his judgments.
I fear God, yet am not afraid of Him; His mercies make me
ashamed of my sins, before His judgments afraid thereof. .
I can hardly think there was ever any scared into heaven: they
go the fairest way to heaven that would serve God without a hell.
. . . And to be true, and speak my soul, when I survey the
occurrences of my life, and call into account the finger of God,
I can perceive nothing but an abyss and mass of mercies, either
in general to mankind, or in particular to myself.
He is certain of God's providence.
There is therefore some other hand that twines the thread of
life than that of nature. . . . Our ends are as obscure as our
beginnings; the line of our days is drawn by night, and the
various effects therein by a pencil that is invisible; wherein,
though we confess our ignorance, I am sure we do not err, if
we say, it is the hand of God.
God is a spirit, and there is a spirit in man. This
seventeenth-century doctor, to whom life meant some-
thing more than a pulse beat, felt the presence in
humanity of something which anatomy cannot reveal.
Amongst all those rare discoveries I find in the fabric of man,
I do not content myself so much, as in that I find not — that is, no
organ or instrument for the rational soul. . . . Thus we are men,
and we know not how; there is something in us that can be with-
out us, and will be after us, though it is strange it hath no his-
tory what it was before us, nor cannot tell how it entered us.
And this is his definition of a spirit:
Conceive light invisible, and that is a spirit.
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SIR THOMAS BROWNE
In a notable passage Browne bears testimony to the
greatness of the world within. History, as we have
seen, records no wonders in his outer life, which was
quiet and uneventful, but he is able to say:
Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate
were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and would sound to com-
mon ears like a fable. The world that I regard is myself. . . .
Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition and
fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above Atlas' shoulders.
The earth is a point not only in respect of the heavens above us,
but of that heavenly and celestial part within us. That mass of
flesh that circumscribes me limits not my mind. That surface that
tells the heavens it hath an end, cannot persuade me I have any.
I take my circle to be above three hundred and sixty. Whilst I
study to find how I am a microcosm, or a little world, I find my-
self something more than the great. There is surely a piece of
divinity in us; something that was before the elements, and owes
no homage unto the sun. Nature tells me I am the image of God,
as well as Scripture. He that understands not thus much, hath
not his first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of man.
The seventeenth century was deluged with contro-
versy, but the "Religio Medici" is as the olive leaf
which the dove brought back to the ark, an indication
that at least from the elevation of some high souls the
waters of conflict had subsided.
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RICHARD BAXTER
RICHARD BAXTER
1615-1691
When the Pilgrims were setting sail for New England
in 1620, Richard Baxter, a boy of five years, was grow-
ing up at Eaton-Constantine in a home which was
Puritan, without being impelled to separation from
mother country and mother church. It was a home
Puritan and Anglican at once, respecting Prayer Book
and bishop in loyalty to the church, and also yearning
with the Puritan spirit for a deeper knowledge of the
Scriptures, a richer spirituality, and a more godly life.
In his boyhood Baxter was distressed by the prevalent
desecration of the Sabbath, and became familiar with
simple home talks about religion: yet in this Puritan
home there was opposition neither to bishops nor the
established order, and the only prayers offered were
from the authorized book. In the "Reliquise Baxter-
ianae," Baxter presents a vivid picture of the times in
their sad need of reform: but the spirit of reform was
one that conformed. There was little preaching in the
churches. In his own village the reader was about
eighty years of age, and never preached. His sight
169
RICHARD BAXTER
failing, he said the prayers from memory, but em-
ployed for the Scriptural readings a common thrasher
one year, a tailor another, and at last a kinsman, **the
excellentest stage-player in all the country, and a good
gamester and good fellow, that got orders and supplied
one of his places." This "ingenious stage-player" ac-
commodated a neighbor's son, who desired to enter the
ministry, by forging his orders. Such were the school-
masters of Baxter's youth, tippling on the week-days and
whipping the boys when they were drunk. Only three
or four competent preachers lived in his vicinity, and
these, though all were conformable but one, were marks
of obloquy, and any who went to hear them, were treated
with derision ** under the odious name of a Puritan."
In the village where I lived the reader read the Common
Prayer briefly, and the rest of the day, even till dark night almost
except eating time, was spent in dancing under a May-pole and a
great tree, not far from my father's door, where all the town met
together: and though one of my father's own tenants was the
piper, he could not restrain him, nor break the sport: so that we
could not read the Scripture in our family without the great dis-
turbance of the taber and pipe and noise in the street. Many
times my mind was inclined to be among them, and sometimes
I broke loose from conscience and joined with them; and the more
I did it, the more I was inclined to it. But when I heard them
call my father Puritan, it did much to cure me and alienate me
from them: for I considered that my father's exercise of reading
the Scripture was better than theirs, and would surely be better
thought on by all men at the last; and I considered what it was
for that he and others were thus derided. When I heard them
speak scornfully of others as Puritans whom I never knew, I was
170
RICHARD BAXTER
at first apt to believe all the lies and slanders wherewith they
loaded them: but when I heard my own father so reproached, and
perceived the drunkards were the forwardest in the reproach, I
perceived that it was mere malice: for my father never scrupled
Common Prayer or ceremonies, nor spake against bishops, nor
ever so much as prayed but by a book or form, being not ever ac-
quainted then with any that did otherwise: but only for reading
Scripture, when the rest were dancing on the Lord's Day, and for
praying (by a form out of the end of the Common Prayer-Book)
in his house, and for reproving drunkards and swearers, and for
talking sometimes a few words of Scripture and the life to come,
he was reviled commonly by the name of Puritan, Precisian and
Hypocrite: and so were the godly, conformable ministers that
lived anywhere in the country near us, not only by our neighbours
but by the common talk of the vulgar rabble of all about us. By
this experience I was fully convinced that godly people were the
best, and those that despised them and lived in sin and pleasure
were a malignant, unhappy sort of people: and this kept me out of
their company, except now and then, when the love of sports and
play enticed me. . . .
Till this time I was satisfied in the matter of conformity:
whilst I was young I had never been acquainted with any that
were against it or that questioned it. I had joined with the Com-
mon Prayer with as hearty fervency as afterward I did with other
prayers. As long as I had no prejudice against it, I had no stop
in my devotions from any of its imperfections.
Here is Puritanism in all sincerity, but without a note
of Separation, a devout Puritanism within the church,
breathing the hope of a reformation from within, a hope
unhappily not to be fulfilled. As one gazes into such a
home, the vision rises of a great church purified without
171
RICHARD BAXTER
schism, maintaining its integrity without losing its
spirituality, the vision of an established order energized
with a passion for righteousness, and of a rare spiritual-
ity restrained from excesses of expression by ordered
decency, and tempered with saneness.
Baxter's education, beginning thus under incompe-
tent and unfaithful tutors, was unfortunate throughout.
On the point of entering Oxford, he was badly advised
instead to put himself under the tuition of Wickstead,
chaplain at Ludlow Castle, where it was thought his ad-
vantages would be great. Here he received little in-
struction; but a good library was at his disposal, in
which he read, though without direction: and it was at
Ludlow that he came under the influence of a friend
whose piety, although he afterward became dissolute,
exercised a critical and lasting influence, of which he
wrote in later life with affectionate gratitude. Leaving
Ludlow at the age of eighteen, he taught for a short
period in the school at Wroxeter, and then being en-
couraged to enter court life, was commended by Wick-
stead to the Master of Revels, Sir Henry Herbert: but
the essential Puritanism of the lad caused him within a
month to turn in disgust from Whitehall. If Baxter
had gone to Oxford, as he desired, he could hardly have
failed to come under the influence of Chillingworth,
Lord Falkland and their intimates, for he would have
entered in the halcyon days of Great Tew and its Ox-
ford coterie. To have missed this was an irreparable
loss. No man could have made better use of a liberal
education than this great writer and preacher.
172
RICHARD BAXTER
Returning home from Whitehall in the winter of 1633,
Baxter was enveloped in gloom, for within the house his
mother was dying of a painful disease, and without was
a protracted snow-storm, which rendered roads impassa-
ble for months. Under these melancholy conditions,
the naturally morbid mind of the youth was confirmed
in the purpose of entering the ministry and preaching
" as a dying man to dying men." His theological studies
were begun under the guidance of Francis Garbet,
parish clergyman of Wroxeter, a stout churchman. It
is to be noted that up to this time Baxter had had little
acquaintance with non-conformity. His parents ad-
hered to the church, he himself had been regularly con-
firmed, and the only non-conforming minister he knew
was Barnell of Uppingham, whose piety exceeded his
scholarship. About his twentieth year, he became ac-
quainted with Joseph Symonds and Walter Cradock,
who later attained distinction among non-conformists.
It was at first not so much positive argument nor per-
sonal influence as the silencing and persecution of men
he respected that led him to study the grounds of dissent.
Being appointed head-master of a newly endowed
school in Dudley, he was ordained in 1638 at Worcester
by Bishop Thornborough. His first preaching was at
Dudley, where he made intimate non-conformist
friends. Upon the ecclesiastical points, about which
controversy was raging, he occupied at this time as
always a sane and mediating position. The use of the
cross in baptism he considered unlawful, and of the sur-
plice doubtful, but he was willing to administer the
173
RICHARD BAXTER
sacraments to communicants in any posture, kneeling,
standing or sitting, and although he considered the
liturgy defective, it was to his mind lawful, and might
even be imposed. To Baxter the great fault in the
church was lack of discipline, particularly as manifested
in the neglect of pastoral care, and the admission of
persons of unworthy and scandalous life to confirmation
and the communion. Reformation, not schism, was
his life-long programme. It was not the posture of the
body, but the posture of the soul, that seemed important
to him, before the sacraments.
Baxter was assistant minister at Bridgenorth in Shrop-
shire, when the ^' et cetera^' oath, demanding sweeping
and indiscriminate adherence to the constituted Angli-
can order, was issued ; and by this extreme measure the
conscientious adherent of the church was impelled to
go back through research and examine the original
claims of Episcopacy. His conclusion from these
studies was that the Anglican bishopric was different
from the primitive bishopric of the New Testament.
In 1640, Dance, the dissolute and incompetent vicar
of Kidderminster, compromised with the Puritan senti-
ment in his parish by allowing sixty pounds a year from
his living for the support of a ''lecturer," to be installed
as his curate. Appointed to this oJ05ce, Baxter was
introduced to the field of his notable service. During
the first two years at Kidderminster his influence was
hampered by poor health, intense political agitation,
and slander. Having withdrawn in 1642 to Gloucester
for a month's respite, and finding on his return condi-
174
RICHARD BAXTER
tions unfavorable to pastoral work in the great excite-
ment of the opening war, he went to Coventry ''with a
purpose to stay there till one side or other had got the
victory, and the war was ended; for so wise in matters
of wars was I, and all the country besides, that we com-
monly supposed that a very few days or weeks, by one
other battle, would end the wars." The battle of Edge-
hill already had been fought on a Sunday, when Baxter
was preaching at Alcester within sound of the booming
cannon. After the battle of Naseby, having spent the
two years before it in Coventry, he visited the army
in the field, being persuaded to accept the chaplaincy of
Whalley's regiment, a post which he occupied from 1644
to 1646. The story of this visit and the impressions
received from it may best be given in Baxter's own
words. His loyalty to Parliament, Church and King, his
condemnation of the subversive political sentiments of
the army, and his estimate of Cromwell as a misguided
usurper, swept away by ambition, are evident in every
line.
Naseby being not far from Coventry where I was, and the
noise of the victory being loud in our ears, and I having two or
three that of old had been my friends in Cromwell's army, I was
desirous to go see whether they were dead or alive; and so to
Naseby field I went two days after the fight, and thence by the
army's quarters before Leicester to seek my acquaintance.
When I found them, I stayed with them a night, and I understood
the state of the army much better than ever I had done before.
We that lived in Coventry did keep to our old principles, and
thought all others had done so too, except a very few inconsider-
175
RICHARD BAXTER
able persons: we were unfeignedly for King and Parliament: we
believed that the war was only to save the Parliament and king-
dom from papists and delinquents, and to remove the dividers,
that the king might again return to his parliament; and that no
changes might be made in religion, but by the laws which had his
free consent: we took the true happiness of King and people,
church and state, to be our end and so we understood the Cove-
nant, engaging both against papists and schismatics. But when
I came to the army among Cromwell's soldiers, I found a new
face of things, which I never dreamt of. I heard the plotting
heads very hot upon that which intimated their intention to sub-
vert both church and state. Abundance of the common troopers,
and many of the officers, I found to be honest, sober, orthodox
men, and others tractable, ready to hear the truth, and of upright
intentions: but a few proud, self-conceited, hot-headed sectaries
had got into the highest places, and were Cromwell's chief favor-
ites, and by their very heat and activity bore down the rest, or
carried them along with them, and were the soul of the army,
though much fewer in number than the rest. ... By law or
without it, they were resolved to take down not only bishops and
liturgy and ceremonies, but all that did withstand their way.
They were far from thinking of a moderate Episcopacy, or of
any healing way between the Episcopal and the Presbyterians.
They most honored the separatists, Anabaptists and Antino-
mians. . . .
As soon as I came to the army, Oliver Cromwell coldly bid me
welcome, and never spake one word to me more while I was there.
And his secretary gave out that there was a reformer come to the
army to undeceive them, and to save church and state, with some
such jeers. . . .
He would not dispute with me at all, but he would in good
discourse very fluently pour out himself in the extolling of free
176
RICHARD BAXTER
grace, which was savoury to them that had right principles,
though he had some misunderstandings of free grace himself.
He was a man of excellent natural parts for affection and oratory;
but not well seen in the principles of his religion; of a sanguine
complexion, naturally of such a vivacity, hilarity and alacrity as
another man hath when he hath drunken a cup too much; but
naturally also so far from humble thoughts of himself that it was
his ruin.
Hereupon Cromwell's general religious zeal giveth way to the
power of that ambition, which still increaseth as his successes
do increase. Both piety and ambition concurred in his counte-
nancing of all that he thought godly of what sect soever; piety
pleadeth for them as godly, and charity as men, and ambition
secretly telleth him what use he might make of them. He mean-
eth well in all this at the beginning, and thinketh he doth all for the
safety of the godly and the public good, but not without an eye
to himself. When successes had broken down all considerable
opposition, he was then in the face of his strongest temptations,
which conquered him, when he had conquered others.
In the day of Cromweirs success Baxter still stoutly
maintained his criticism:
At this time Lord Broghill and the Earl of Warwick brought
me to preach before Cromwell the Protector. I knew not which
way to provoke him better to his duty than by preaching on 1 Cor.
1 : 10, against the divisions and distractions of the church, and
shewing how mischievous a thing it was for politicians to maintain
such divisions for their own ends, and to shew the necessity and
means of union. But the plainness and nearness I heard was
displeasing to him and his courtiers; but they put it up.
A while after Cromwell sent to speak with me, and when I
came, in the presence only of three of his chief men, he began a
177
RICHARD BAXTER
long and tedious speech to me of God's providence in the change
of the government, and how God had owned it, and what great
things had been done at home and abroad. When he had
wearied us all with speaking thus slowly about an hour, I told him,
it was too great condescension to acquaint me so fully with all
these matters which were above me, but I told him that we took
our ancient monarchy to be a blessing and not an evil to the land,
and humbly craved his patience, that I might ask him how Eng-
land had ever forfeited that blessing, and unto whom the forfeiture
was made. Upon that question he was awakened into some
passion, and told me it was no forfeiture, but God had changed
it as pleased Him; and then he let fly at the Parliament, and
especially by name at four or five of those members which were
my chief acquaintance; and I presumed to defend them agains
his passion; and thus four or five hours were spent.
Here is staunch Puritanism and staunch loyalty to
Church and King. The year before Baxter's chaplaincy
in Cromweirs army began, Chillingworth and Falkland
were holding their conferences in the camp of the King,
as conscious of the errors of the royal party, as was
Baxter of the errors of the sectaries. Could such repre-
sentatives of the royal army have met such a representa-
tive of the army of Cromwell, the differences would soon
have been composed. On both sides were men of
catholicity and moderation.
During the two years of his service with the army,
Baxter continually suffered from his constitutional
maladies, for he was a consumptive from youth, and in
1646 he was forced to retire. A haven of rest was
opened to him by Lord and Lady Rous, whose friend-
ship he had won in Worcestershire, and in the peace of
178
RICHARD BAXTER
their house at Rous-Lench he spent three months,
''entertained with the greatest care and tenderness."
It was here that he wrote the first part of "The Saints'
Everlasting Rest," at the very time when Jeremy Taylor
was writing the "Liberty of Prophesying" in the se-
clusion of Golden Grove. The times were hardly more
satisfactory to the Puritan protected by Cromwell than
to the friend of Laud in exile. " The Saints' Everlasting
Rest" in outlook and inspiration is a reminder of
Bernard's "Hora Novissima, Tempora Pessima," for
before each of these pious souls in evil times rose the
vision of peace eternal in the better country. The
world's indebtedness to Baxter and Taylor and More
and Chillingworth is an indebtedness also to their
gracious hosts at Rous-Lench and Golden Grove and
Ragley and Great Tew, whose shelter proved to great
souls a "secret place of the Most High," where they
abode "under the shadow of the Almighty." Baxter,
however, did not linger in mystic visions, for before he
entered into his rest, he girded himself for mighty
labors. His vision of the saints' everlasting rest was a
stimulant, not a narcotic, a sursum corda, laboring in the
might of which many a glimpse was vouchsafed him of
the holy city here below, "coming down from God out
of heaven."
On his recovery at Rous-Lench, he returned to
Kidderminster, and from 1646 to 1660 exercised that
"awakening ministry," the thrill of which is still felt.
Vigorously as he had criticised Cromwell for his dis-
loyalty to Parliament, Church and King, the great
179
RICHARD BAXTER
Protector did not retaliate, but allowed the Kidder-
minster preacher "fourteen years liberty in such sweet
employment." At Kidderminster we behold Baxter's
principles at work, a model, unfortunately not followed
elsewhere, of an Anglican parish reformed by a Puritan
pastor. Here the spectacle greets us of an active
Puritanism within the established order. The "re-
formed pastor" preached living sermons to the heart in
place of the perfunctory addresses into which preaching
had degenerated. He held meetings in private houses,
instructed the ignorant in the truths of religion, taught
men how to pray, encouraged them to discuss religious
themes, catechised untiringly and systematically, held
personal interviews. It was "an awakening ministry"
indeed ! The preacher tells his own story :
One advantage was that I came to a people that never had any
awakening ministry before (but a few formal cold sermons of the
curate) : for if they had been hardened under a powerful ministry,
and been sermon proof, I should have expected less.
Another advantage was that at first I was in the vigor of my
spirits, and had a naturally familiar, moving voice (which is a
great matter with the common hearers) ; and doing all in bodily
weakness, as a dying man, my soul was the more easily brought to
seriousness, and to preach as a dying man to dying men; for
drowsy formality and customariness doth but stupefy the hearers,
and rock them asleep. It must be serious preaching, which must
make men serious in hearing and obeying it.
The congregation was usually full, so that we were fain to
build five galleries after my coming thither. Our private meet-
ings were also full. On the Lord's Days there was no disorder
to be seen in the streets, but you might hear an hundred families
180
RlLHAKl) liAXlKK
RICHARD BAXTER
singing Psalms and repeating sermons, as you passed through the
streets. In a word, when I came thither first, there was about
one family in a street that worshipped God and called on His
name, and when I came away, there were some streets, where
there was not passed one family in the side of a street that did
not so; and that did not by professing serious godliness give us
hopes of their sincerity; and those families which were the worst,
being inns and alehouses, usually some persons in each hcuse did
seem to be religious.
The point is not to be forgotten, that this was not a
community of the pious, who had separated themselves
from the established church, but a regular Anglican
parish reformed by a Puritan pastor, a piety within the
church. A pity it is that the way to piety without
schism did not remain open.
Jeremy Taylor and Dr. Thomas Browne welcomed
the Restoration no more heartily than did Baxter.
His political convictions were not prejudiced by his
personal fortunes, for he considered the Protectorate,
which allowed him liberty, a usurpation, and rejoiced
in the restoration of royalty, by which he was silenced.
At the first he was in royal favor. In 1060 he
preached before the House of Commons at Saint Mar-
garet's, Westminster on the day before the Restora-
tion was voted, and before the Lord Mayor and all
London in Saint Paul's on the day of thanksgiving for
Monk's success. As long as sane counsels prevailed, he
was heartily with the royal and Episcopal cause. He
was offered the Bishopric of Hereford by Clarendon,
but declined it, requesting instead to be returned to his
181
RICHARD BAXTER
lectureship at Kidderminster. Appointed a member
of the Savoy Conference, he gave untiring zeal to the
effort to reform the liturgy and to make the church
comprehensive of all parties. Evil counsels, however,
of reaction and retaliation soon prevailed. The Act of
Uniformity and the Five Mile Act required more than
men like Baxter could give, and put them under the ban.
Twenty years followed of intermittent persecution
and imprisonment, with scattered opportunities for
noble and wise preaching, untainted by bitterness.
Several of these years were passed at Acton, where he
enjoyed the friendship and support of Sir Matthew
Hale, as an oasis in the desert. In 1685 he was charged
with libelling the church in his innocent "Paraphrase
of the New Testament," and tried with shameless treat-
ment before the notorious Jeffreys, was sentenced to
pay a fine, in default of which he was imprisoned for a
year and a half. On his release, and especially after
the revolution of 1688, he was free from molestation, and
seems to have spent his last days in peace. He died in
1691 at the age of seventy-six, physically weak and
consumptive from his youth, frequently disabled by
extreme weakness, but preaching for more than fifty
years as "a dying man to dying men," in all things ap-
proving himself as the minister of God, "in much pa-
tience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in im-
prisonments, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in
fastings, by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering,
by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by
the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armor
182
RICHARD BAXTER
of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by
honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report:
as deceiver, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well
known; as dying, and behold he lived; as chastened,
and not killed; as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as
poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and
yet possessing all things."
A statue erected in Kidderminster in 1875 represents
the preacher preaching, and bears this inscription:
Between the years 1641 and 1660 this town was the scene
of the labors of Richard Baxter, renowned equally for his Chris-
tian learning and his pastoral fidelity. In a stormy and divided
age he advocated unity and comprehension, pointing the way to
everlasting rest.
Churchmen and Nonconformists united to raise this memorial
A. D. 1875.
Two hundred years after his labors, churchmen and
non-conformists beheld their essential unity realized
and anticipated in this great soul.
II
As Jeremy Taylor's "Liberty of Prophesying" has
been overshadowed by the popularity of ''Holy Dying,"
so Baxter's " Narrative of the Most Memorable Passages
of His Life and Times," the "Reliquiae Baxteriana,"
has been neglected for the "Saints' Rest." Devotional
works looking to the future world, which teach men how
to die, should not be allowed to eclipse practical treatises
absorbed in earthly conditions, which teach men how to
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RICHARD BAXTER
live. The seventeenth century knew how to die better
than it knew how to live. It bred many heroic souls
glad to die for a partisan principle: it was not lacking
in martyrs : but it produced few minds capable of rising
above all partisanship into the vision of a state polity
and a church catholicity, in which all parties, conserving
their essential principles and virtues, might be compre-
hended. To this high and small company belonged
Richard Baxter.
In the story of his life and times, written for the most
part in 1664, 1665 and 1670, years to him of persecution,
there breathes a catholic spirit, exerting itself to the
utmost in irenic endeavors, none the less to be honored,
because they failed.
It was the greatness of Baxter ever to preach and
practise moderation in an age of passion.
Rash attempts of headstrong people do work against the good
ends which they themselves intend; and the zeal which hath
censorious strife and envy doth tend to confusion and every evil
work: and overdoing is the ordinary way of undoing.
While we wrangle here in the dark, we are dying and passing
to the world that will decide all our controversies: and the safest
passage thither is by peaceable holiness.
Now I can see so easily what to say against both extremes, that
I am much more inclinable to reconciling principles.
He opposes alike the censoriousness of the non-
conformist and the persecuting ardor of the Anglican.
To persecute men, and then call them to charity is like whipping
children to make them give over crying. I saw that he that will
184
RICHARD BAXTER
be loved, must love. And he that will have children must be a
father; and he that will be a tyrant must be contented with
slaves.
He blames both parties. The indiscretion and
"headiness" of separatists in their violence against
King, bishops and liturgy have blown the coals of a
wicked retaliatory persecution. He alludes to some,
who stand at the church doors, while the Common
Prayer is being read, saying, "We must stay, till he is
out of his pottage." Quite different from such exas-
perating narrowness is Baxter's spirit:
I cannot be so narrow in my principles of church-communion
as many are; that are so much for a liturgy, or so much against
it, so much for ceremonies or so much against them, that they can
hold communion with no church that is not of their mind and
way.
He is ready to commune with Greeks, Lutherans,
Independents, Anabaptists.
I cannot be of their opinion that think God will not accept
him that prayeth by the Common Prayer Book, and that such
forms are a self-invented worship which God rejecteth: nor
yet can I be of their mind that say the like of extemporary
prayers.
He is opposed to all extremes, and recognizes that one
extreme excites the opposite. He sees that the suffer-
ings of both parties are the reaction of their own violence.
He opposes Cromwell's indiscriminate silencing of the
royalist clergy no less than the King's silencing of the
185
RICHARD BAXTER
opposite party in the Act of Uniformity. Of his sermon
at the King's restoration he says :
The moderate were pleased with it; the fanatics were offended
with me for keeping such a thanksgiving; the diocesan party
thought I did suppress their joy.
In days of intense partisanship, Baxter's moderation
left him almost alone.
Baxter is continually speaking of a "moderate Epis-
copacy." In one passage of great historical interest he
shows that extreme views of Episcopacy were new to
his day, and that the denial of the validity of non-
Episcopal ordination was a decided innovation.
There were at that time two sorts of Episcopal men, who
differed from each other more than the more moderate sort dif-
fered from the Presbyterians. The one was the old common
moderate sort, who were commonly in doctrine Calvinists, and
took Episcopacy to be necessary to the well being, but not the
being of the church; and took all those of the reformed that had
not bishops for true churches and ministers, wanting only that
which they thought would make them more complete.
The other sort followed Dr. Hammond, and (for aught we
knew) were very few, and very new. They held that ordination
without bishops was invalid, and a ministry so ordained was null,
and the reformed churches that had no bishops, nor presbyters
ordained by bishops, were no true churches, though the Church of
Rome be a true church, as having bishops. These men in doc-
trine were such as are called Arminians; and though the other
sort were more numerous and elder, yet Dr. Hammond and the
few that at first followed him, by their parts and interest in the
nobility and gentry did carry it at last against the other party.
186
RICHARD BAXTER
Now in my Christian Concord I had confessed that it was only
the moderate ancient Episcopal party which I hoped for agree-
ment with; it being impossible for the Presbyterian and Inde-
pendent party to associate with them that take them and their
churches and all the reformed ministers and churches that have
not Episcopal ordination for null. And knowing that this opinion
greatly tended to the division of the Christian churches, and
gratifying the Papists, I spake freely against it, which alienated
that party from me.
The insistence upon Episcopal ordination as alone
valid was evidently a novelty in Baxter's day, and no
such exclusive idea could have a place in the wide
catholicity of his mind. It would be interesting to dis-
cover whether it was the Episcopal or non-conformist
party that first sought to defend its polity and ministry
as the order of the New Testament and of divine origin,
with the denial that any body with a different polity
could be a church at all. The argument was freely
expounded on both sides. The distinction of originat-
ing it, however, would deserve no great honor.
In describing Baxter's position, moderation is the
first note: reformation is the second. His platform was
reformation, not separation. The parishes were to be
taken as they were, and reformed : the stricter Christians
were not to secede from them: the leaven was to remain
in the lump. Instead of snatching brands from the
burning, the fire was to be put out.
It is a better work to reform the parishes than to gather churches
out of them, without great necessity.
And this began but in unwarrantable separations, and too much
187
RICHARD BAXTER
aggravating the faults of the churches and common people, and
Common Prayer Book and ministry; which indeed were none of
them without faults to be lamented and reformed. But they
thought that because it needed amendment, it required their
obstinate separation.
Reformation of the existing parishes was a true
mediating principle. It was a protest equally against the
secession of the separatists and Anglican carelessness
of living. The parishes were to remain in their integ-
rity, but they were to be reformed. Baxter had a
passion for discipline. He opposed on the one hand
those who would separate the few strictly pious in
churches by themselves. He said brave words, quite
of the modern tenor, against overstrict and dogmatic
tests of church membership. He did not wish the
church of Christ unduly narrowed.
The doubt was, when I came to Kidderminster, whether it
were better to take twenty professors for the church, and leave
a reader to head and gratify the rest; or to attempt the just
reformation of the parish.
On the other hand, however, he insisted equally that
there must be discipline. The old laxity could not be
tolerated; and it was on this practical ground that he
attacked the diocesan bishopric. A bishop should
have under his care no more souls than one man could
care for. He favored the primitive bishopric of the
New Testament, which to his mind consisted of one
parish. The diocesan bishop was unable to discipline
so many parishes. Baxter was for the parish, but
188
RICHARD BAXTER
against the diocese. Each parish was to constitute a
complete church in itself. He was with the Episcopal
party in maintaining the parishes, but against it in the
laxity of its discipline. He was with the Independents
in their reforming fervor and in their contention that a
single parish constituted a church, but against them in
their overstrict communion and separation from the
original parishes. He was a consistent mediator. Of
the practicability of his mediating principles Kidder-
minster is the everlasting memorial.
To moderation and reformation a third principle
must be added in characterizing Baxter, comprehension.
He speaks of ** sober, unanimous Christians," men
"adhering to no faction, neither Episcopal, Presby-
terian nor Independent, as to parties, but desiring union,
and loving that which is good in all." He was tireless,
almost tiresome, in proposing various schemes of union.
He drew up elaborate platforms for harmony. Presby-
terians and Episcopalians might unite, if the Presby-
terians would have the presbyters elect a permanent
president, and if the Episcopalians would recognize in
him a bishop. The Anabaptists were to be satisfied
by a stricter care of baptized children, and a more
serious confirmation, so that adult membership in the
church might mean a genuine Christian experience and
faith. Congregationalists and Presbyterians should
compose their differences by a mutual compromise,
Presbyterians recognizing a church in a particular con-
gregation, Congregationalists agreeing to the laying
on of hands by elders in ordination. All parties were
189
RICHARD BAXTER
to preach the fundamental truths in which all were
agreed, and were to refrain from giving undue promi-
nence to controverted points in which they differed.
What golden precepts are these!
Let us agree that we will not preach for or against infant
baptism, when our consciences tell us that the people's ignorance
of greater truths, or their ungodUness, doth require us to deal
with them on more weighty points.
Let us preach as seldom for or against infant baptism as
conscience will permit; and particularly let that which herein we
account the truth have but its due proportion of our time, com-
pared with the multitude and greatness of other truths.
Let these points also have but an answerable proportion of our
zeal, that we may not make people believe that they are greater
matters than they are.
Let us not endeavor to reproach one another, when we think we
are bound to speak for our opinions: that we make not each other
uncapable of doing the people good.
To know God in Christ is life eternal. As the stock of the
tree affordeth timber to build houses and cities, when the small
though higher multifarious branches are but to make a crow's
nest or a blaze: so the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ,
of heaven and holiness, doth build up the soul to endless blessed-
ness, and affordeth it solid peace and comfort; when a multitude
of school niceties serve but for vain janglings and hurtful diver-
sions and contentions.
All honor to Cromwell and the "Ironsides" and the
Pilgrims! Perhaps in no other way than by violence
and separation, by the fierce clashing of extreme with
extreme, could religion be purified: but the agitation
that purified the church almost wrecked it. In Baxter,
190
RICHARD BAXTER
with his moderation, reformation, comprehension, we
seem to hear a voice saying both to belligerent church-
men and to beUigerent separatists:
And yet I show unto you a more excellent way. Charity
suffereth long and is kind, beareth all things, believeth all things,
hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth.
191
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSION
These blessed peace-makers manifest both the strenp^th
and weakness of the irenic. Without antipathies, they
genially appreciated the truth and good in all the con-
tending parties. Without partisanship, they lacked the
effectiveness of men of one idea, the intensity of narrow-
ness. Without a definite programme, political, ecclesias-
tical or doctrinal, they did not secure the immediate and
striking results achieved in turn by the extreme Puritan
and the extreme Anglican, but the reality of their abid-
ing influence is manifest.
Hales, Chillingworth and Taylor are associated in
thought, experience and mutual influence. Prot^gds of
Laud, they were partners in suffering from Puritan
persecution. Whichcote, Smith, More and Browne
form a second group, known as "Cambridge Platon-
ists." Unobnoxious to Puritanism, they suffered little
from the stress of the times. Affiliated with neither
group, Baxter in the peace-making spirit comes forward
to meet these churchmen from the more Puritan and
evangelical side.
In the first group there was a revival of the original
Protestant emphasis ujx)n freedom of personal inr|iiiry,
which unfortunately had been stifled as the lleforma-
195
CONCLUSION
tion advanced by a period of dogmatic uniformity. The
authority of the Roman Church had been exchanged for
the authority of Protestant dogma, and against both
authorities the rights of the individual reason needed
to be championed, the true Protestant self-reliance.
These clear minds refused to consider reason vicious
or hostile to revelation. Reason illumined by revela-
tion is to be trusted, and personal responsibility, even
at the cost of possible error, is to be preferred to any
external infallibility. Intellectual errors are not dan-
gerous in those whose wills and hearts are true. In
maintaining the rights of the individual reason, varia-
tions of creed are likewise involved, but are not to be
feared. It is one of the glories of these men that they
made Christian unity to consist in unity of spirit rather
than in uniformity of doctrine, which they considered
not greatly to be desired, if it were possible. Diversity
of opinion, in their view, is to be expected, and is not
unfavorable to the unity of a church, in which many
minds meet in mutual charity. The highest unity is that
which combines not the homogeneous but the diverse.
Christian unity is to be sought as little in uniformity
of ritual as in uniformity of doctrine. The Anglican
tyranny of worship is opposed as vigorously as the
Puritan tyranny of doctrine. The Anglican insisted
upon liberty of belief, without allowing liberty of wor-
ship. The Puritan insisted upon liberty of worship
without allowing liberty of belief. These broad souls
espoused both liberties together, a true and sound
mediation.
196
CONCLUSION
In distinguishing between essentials and non-essen-
tials, they did further service to the cause of Christian
unity. The fundamentals of faith, they held, were
evident, a clear ground of unity, and divisions arose
from precise and excessive definition of things not
clearly revealed. A wholesome Christian agnosticism
before unnecessary questions they encouraged as an aid
to concord. They insisted that the way of life was not
to be made narrower than Christ made it. If Papists,
Calvinists, Lutherans and Anglicans would forget
party names and be content to be plain and honest
Christians, divisions would be dissipated. It was the
spirit of the modern cry, "Back to Christ!"
Their views of the Bible were notable. The Script-
ures were not to be approached with prepossessions,
but were to be allowed to yield their original and natural
sense. The essentials of faith stood forth clear and
unquestioned. Before obscure passages an excessive
curiosity to know more than has been revealed was to
yield to patience and caution. Not a theory of the
Bible, but the appreciation and practice of its God-
given truth does it honor. Its authority is not external
but internal, springing from its content, and its power
over reason and conscience. The way was thus being
cleared for a new and more vital appreciation of the
Scriptures.
It was the peculiar service of the Cambridge Platon-
ists to ignore the Roman theology, which through
Augustine and Calvin dominated in the western church,
and to revive the spirit of the Greek interpretation.
197
CONCLUSION
Whichcote and Smith, More and Browne rejoiced in a
thought and experience of the divine immanence, which
brought the transcendent God of Augustinianism near
as Immanuel, God with us. To their insight God im-
manent in His world glorified nature, immanent in man
established a kinship between the divine and human,
immanent in Christ exalted the incarnation. The
false Augustinian separation between God and man
was nullified. Faith rose from an assent to doctrine to
a participation in the divine life, carried perhaps to an
extreme in the ecstatic mysticism of More and Browne.
Paul's ethical mysticism, his blessed experience of
vital union with Christ, was rescued from the oblivion
into which it had fallen, and was exalted above his
forensic doctrine of justification. The fulness of the
incarnation, it was held, was not exhausted by the
atonement. Forgiveness in Christ was not an end, but a
means, preparatory to the supreme experience of the
divine indwelling. There was a fresh appreciation of
humanity, and of redemption as humanity's restoration
to its true estate through the divine stimulation of
** resident forces." The so-called ''new theology" of
the nineteenth century was thus clearly in evidence in
the seventeenth. Whichcote and Smith were prophetic
spirits indeed!
In More and Browne a rare interest in nature without
was strangely combined with mystic contemplation of
the life within. Their crude investigations of natural
phenomena on the one hand, and their superstitious
credulity toward the occult on the other are easily
198
CONCLUSION
criticised, but the union of interest in both nature and
spirit is not easily overpraised. Mystics, they did not
ignore the outer world. Naturalists, they did not
ignore the inner world. They studied matter without
being materialists. Living to-day, they would l)e
interested alike in natural science and psychical re-
search. Materialism has failed to explain matter.
The scientific ultimate is no longer the atom but
force, something less akin to matter than to spirit. It
may be that in these mystic naturalists there was an
anticipation of a union of science and religion still to
come, in which science shall be religious and religion
scientific, the world without finding its explanation in
the world within.
In Baxter a devoutly evangelical spirit devotes itself
to reformation of the church instead of separation from
it, to a policy of comprehension without sacrifice of
vital piety.
These men of moderation and insight were thus
mediators, not only between the warring factions of their
own time, but also between the past and present. In
their atmosphere the modern spirit can freely breathe.
Below the tumultuous waves of theological storm their
spirits sounded the deeps where peace abides and the
great currents smoothly but surely run.
199
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