O holy, blessed, glorious Three,
Eternal witnesses that be
In heaven, One God in Trinity!
As here on earth, when men withstood,
The Spirit, Water, and the Blood,
Made my Lord’s Incarnation good:
So let the antitypes in me
Elected, bought, and sealed for free,
Be owned, saved, sainted by You Three!
Herbert and Vaughan were in the seventeenth century what Heber and
Keble were in the nineteenth.
They set the tone of the Church of England, and they revealed with
no inefficient or temporary effect to the uncultured and the
unlearned the true refinement of worship. They united delicacy of
taste in the choice of ornament and of music with culture of
expression and of reserve, and they showed that this was not
incompatible with devoted work and life.[90]
Henry More (1614-87) ‘the Platonist,’ whom Professor Palgrave calls
‘the most interesting figure among our poetical mystics,’ owes his
place in our hymn-books to John Wesley, who made from one of More’s
‘Divine Hymns’ two numbers in his _Collection_
Father, if justly still we claim,
and a fine missionary hymn
On all the earth Thy Spirit shower,
The earth in righteousness renew,
Thy kingdom come and hell’s o’erpower,
And to Thy sceptre all subdue.
John Norris (1657-1711), who succeeded—sixty years intervening—George
Herbert as Parson of Bemerton, was a Platonist of the school of More,
for whom he had unbounded admiration, saying
Others in learning’s chorus bear their part,
And the great work distinctly share:
Thou our great catholic professor art,
All science is annexed to thy unerring chair.
John Wesley and Dr. Martineau tried to make Norris’s poems available
for congregational use, and his name is linked with those of Ken and
Mason in the preface to the Moravian book of 1754, but he can never
take a place among hymn-writers.
Bishop Jeremy Taylor (1613-67) wrote a number of hymns, most of them
being published in his _Golden Grove_, but they are unsuited for
congregational use. His ‘Advent Hymn’ has, however, been adapted with
admirable skill, and has a place in many hymnals. It is perhaps as
good a specimen of this kind of ‘translation’ as can be found. I give
Taylor’s original first, and afterwards the version of the _Sarum
Hymnal_, which is said to have been made by Earl Nelson. There is
another good version in the _Leeds Hymn-book_, which has been adopted
by Mr. Horder and others.