We have completed the circle of theological schools. Many illustrations
of religious character and experience growing out of the principles
now explained, or rather, in some cases, producing sympathy with them,
have been already exhibited. To give completeness to the task I have
undertaken, it is desirable that there should be added some other
biographical illustrations, and that they should be brought together in
immediate connection with the forms of opinion to which they belong.
I may again begin with the Anglicans, and as the examples of the class
hitherto have been clerical, I shall now select examples from the laity.
[Sidenote: ISAAK WALTON.]
Isaak Walton deserves to be taken first. Disliking “the active
Romanists,” averse, perhaps still more, to the “restless
Nonconformists,” he would rank himself as “one of the passive and
peaceable Protestants;” but the Anglican tincture of his Protestantism
is visible in the whole of his writings. Without giving to the
world any theological treatise, or entering into any ecclesiastical
controversy, he has diffused his religious sentiments with singular
sweetness and purity over his works, so as to leave no doubt respecting
their distinctive colour. How far the influence of his parentage and
education might contribute to the formation of his character we do not
know; but no doubt the natural bent of his mind, his taste for quiet
contemplation, his reverence for antiquity, his disposition to submit
to authority, his faculty of imagination, and his taste for music, had
prepared him for those paths of faith and worship in which, through a
long life, he loved to walk. In addition to this, we should remember
his early, as well as his later friendships, with certain distinguished
members of the Anglican communion.
In his Elegy on Dr. Donne, he exclaims--
“Oh do not call
Grief back by thinking on his funeral,
Forget he loved me--
Forget his _powerful preaching_, and forget
I am his _convert_:”--
words which indicate the writer’s spiritual obligation to that eminent
orator. Walton’s marriage with his first wife brought him into “happy
affinity” with the descendants of Archbishop Cranmer; and to this
circumstance is attributed the origin of Walton’s _Life of Hooker_. The
marriage with his second wife--half-sister to Bishop Ken--placed him,
in his latter days, upon intimate terms with that holy prelate. Morley,
Sanderson, and King were amongst his endeared associates.
Walton’s _Lives_ give us glimpses of himself: for he is one of
those artists who introduce their own portrait in a corner of their
pictures. Of all his heroes, Bishop Sanderson was the man respecting
whom he knew most; and, at the close of his memoir, Walton touchingly
reveals his own spiritual aspiration:--“’Tis now too late to wish that
my _life_ may be like his, for I am in the eighty-fifth year of my
age; but I humbly beseech Almighty God, that my _death_ may; and
do as earnestly beg of every reader to say, Amen.--‘Blessed is the man
in whose spirit there is no guile.’” (Psalm xxxii. 2.)
His _Complete Angler, or the Contemplative Man’s Recreation_,
is a mirror of his life. His moral and religious sympathies are seen
gleaming over his pages from beginning to end; and as the revelation
of an inner life, the first part by himself should be compared with
the second part by Cotton; we see at once that he was not born to be a
reformer, that he was not one of those who can grapple with falsehood
and corruption, and that if all had resembled him, England’s destiny
would have been humiliating indeed,--we feel that in his case absence
from any active part in the controversies of his time, can be regarded
neither as a virtue nor as a vice, neither as censurable nor as
admirable, but simply as the operation of a natural tendency.
Being what he was, he loved the quiet nooks and corners of human
experience and interest, and in every place manifested purity,
gentleness, meekness, and charity; as he wandered along the banks
of the Lea, or sat in the fishing house beside the Dove, Scripture
thoughts, like flowers, bright and sweet, entwined about the
trellis-work of his cherished recreations; sacred thoughts, of the
quaintest kind, gathered round his rod, and his fish-hooks, and that
“most honest, ingenuous, quiet, and harmless art of angling.” “Evil
communications, which corrupt good manners,” filled him with sadness.
“Such discourse,” he observes, in one of his walks, “as we heard last
night, it infects others, the very boys will learn to talk and swear
as they heard mine host, and another of the company that shall be
nameless; I am sorry the other is a gentleman, for less religion will
not save their souls than a beggar’s; I think more will be required at
the last great day.” He counted every misery he missed a new mercy,
was thankful for health, competence, and a quiet conscience, and dwelt,
with sympathetic joy, on the character of the meek man who has no
“turbulent, repining, or vexatious thoughts,” who possesses what he has
“with such a quietness as makes his very dreams pleasing both to God
and himself.” “When,” he says in another place, “I would beget content,
and increase confidence in the power, and wisdom, and providence of
Almighty God, I will walk the meadows of some gliding stream, and there
contemplate the lilies that take no care, and those very many other
various little living creatures, that are not only created, but fed,
man knows not how, by the goodness of the God of nature, and therefore
trust in Him. This is my purpose, and so ‘let everything that hath
breath praise the Lord;’ and let the blessing of St. Peter’s Master be
with mine.”
Walton, at his death--amidst the great frost of 1683--could not but
enter that world of perfect harmony to which his thoughts and desires
had so often ascended as he listened to the nightingale. “He that at
midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I
have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising
and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be
lifted above earth, and say; Lord, what music hast thou provided for
the saints in Heaven, when thou affordest bad men such music on earth?”
We now turn to another and somewhat different type of the same school.
[Sidenote: JOHN EVELYN.]
John Evelyn lost his mother when he had reached his fifteenth year;
and her beautiful memory, as of one “whose constitution inclined to a
religious melancholy, or pious sadness,” seemed to have remained with
him all his days, giving that plaintiveness to his piety, which, as a
richly-coloured thread, appears interwoven with the brightest joys
of his calm yet active life. He records her death with reverential
affection, and how she summoned her children around her, and expressed
herself in a manner so heavenly, with instructions so pious and
Christian, as made them strangely sensible of the extraordinary loss
then becoming imminent:--after which, she gave to each a ring, with
her blessing. Evelyn lost his father at twenty-one; and again he
minutely relates the tale of his sorrow, how, at night, they followed
the mourning hearse to the church at Wotton, where, after a sermon and
funeral oration by the minister, the ashes of the husband were mingled
with those of the wife. “Thus,” he adds, “we were bereft of both our
parents, in a period when we[574] most of all stood in need of their
counsel and assistance, especially myself, of a raw, vain, uncertain,
and very unwary inclination; but so it pleased God to make trial of my
conduct in a conjuncture of the greatest and most prodigious hazard
that ever the youth of England saw; and, if I did not, amidst all this,
impeach my liberty nor my virtue with the rest who made shipwreck of
both, it was more the infinite goodness and mercy of God, than the
least providence or discretion of mine own, who now thought of nothing
but the pursuit of vanity, and the confused imaginations of young
men.”[575]
[Sidenote: JOHN EVELYN.]
The mercy of Providence, the truths of Christianity, and the grace of
the Holy Spirit, kept him amidst his extensive travels, amidst his
intercourse with men of different countries and classes, and especially
amidst the temptations of fashionable society at a period when such
as frequented courts were commonly addicted to vice. Notwithstanding
the great moral peril to which Evelyn stood exposed, he preserved a
pure mind and a virtuous reputation. He loved the Episcopal Church
of England with a jealous affection,--finding in her liturgy what
was congenial with his spiritual taste; deriving nourishment for
his spiritual sensibilities from the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper
administered according to her ritual; and, in short, living in the
culture of those habits which are distinctive of Anglican piety.
He did not, indeed, refuse to attend his parish church during the
Commonwealth, and to hear a Presbyterian or Independent minister;
but this proceeded from prudence rather than from sympathy. Evelyn’s
Catholic feeling shrank from Puritanism; his charity leaned towards
Roman Catholics. It is with regard to such that he says:--“For the
rest we must commit to Providence the success of times and mitigation
of proselytical fervours, having for my own particular a very great
charity for all who sincerely adore the blessed Jesus, our common and
dear Saviour, as being full of hope that God (however the present zeal
of some, and the scandals taken by others at the instant [present]
affliction of the Church of England may transport them), will at
last compassionate our infirmities, clarify our judgments, and make
abatement for our ignorances, superstructures, passions, and errors of
corrupt times and interests, of which the Romish persuasion can no way
acquit herself, whatever the present prosperity and secular polity may
pretend. But God will make all things manifest in His own time, only
let us possess ourselves in patience and charity. This will cover a
multitude of imperfections.”[576]
Like other persons of his cast of sentiment, like the nuns at Gidding
eulogized by Isaak Walton and condemned by the Puritans, like the
Anglican sisterhoods of the present day, Evelyn had a liking for a
semi-monastic life; and in the year 1659, when affairs were unsettled
in England, he proposed to Robert Boyle, an elaborate plan for an
establishment of this description. There was to be a house erected
in the midst of a tall wood, and “opposite to the house, towards the
wood, should be erected a pretty chapel; and at equal distances, even
within the flanking walls of the square, six apartments or cells
for the members of the society, and not contiguous to the pavilion;
each whereof should contain a small bedchamber, an outward room,
a closet, and a private garden, somewhat after the manner of the
Carthusians.”[577] There was to be maintained at the public charge
a “chaplain well qualified.” There were to be prayers in the chapel
morning and evening; and a weekly fast and communion once every
fortnight or month at least, with divers arrangements for study and
recreations. The scheme came to nothing, but it shows the bent of its
author’s inclinations. Whatever may be thought of them, one impression
only can be justly derived from reading on the white marble, covering
his tomb, in Wotton Church, the record of his death:--“He fell asleep
the 27th day of February, 170⅚, being the 86th year of his age, in
full hope of a glorious resurrection, through faith in Jesus Christ.
Living in an age of extraordinary events and revolutions, he learnt (as
himself asserted) this truth--which, pursuant to his intention, is here
declared--‘_That all is vanity which is not honest, and that there is
no solid wisdom but in real piety_.’”[578]
[Sidenote: JOHN EVELYN.]
The cast of Evelyn’s religion is further illustrated in that of his
friend Margaret Blagge,[579] afterwards the wife of Sidney Godolphin.
When he heard some distinguished persons speaking of her, he fancied
she was “some airy thing that had more wit than discretion.” But,
making a visit to Whitehall with his wife, he fell in with the youthful
maid of honour, and “admired her temperance, and took especial notice,
that, however wide or indifferent the subject of their discourse
was amongst the rest, she would always direct it to some religious
conclusion, and so temper and season her replies, as showed a gracious
heart, and that she had a mind wholly taken up with heavenly thoughts.”
Their acquaintance was ratified by a quaint solemnity; after a formal
solicitation, that he would look upon her thenceforth as his child,
she took a sheet of paper, upon which Evelyn had been carelessly
sketching the shape of an altar, and wrote these words: “Be this
a symbol of inviolable friendship: Margaret Blagge, 16th October,
1672;” and underneath, “For my brother E----.” Something of romance
is visible in the singular attachment which this girl formed for her
amiable and pious friend; and it issued in his guiding her affairs,
in his increasing her wisdom, and in his ripening her piety. Never at
home amidst the gaieties of Whitehall, Margaret, after seven years’
experience, felt that she could no longer endure living at Court, and
therefore earnestly sought, and at length, with difficulty, obtained
Royal permission to retire. On a Sunday night, after most of the
company were departed, Evelyn waited on her down to her chamber, which
she had no sooner entered, than falling on her knees, she blessed God,
as for a signal deliverance: “She was come,” she said, “out of Egypt,
and was now in the way to the land of promise.” Tears trickled down
her cheeks, “like the dew of flowers, making a lovely grief,” as she
parted from one of the ladies who had a spirit kindred to her own. She
found a home with Lady Berkeley, and what she especially sought, time
for meditation and prayer; indeed the love of seclusion so increased,
that she manifested a strong tinge of asceticism. Evelyn, in this
respect more sober-minded, availed himself of his influence, and
with success, to persuade her to renounce a celibate life, to which
she seemed strongly disposed; and she came to see that union with a
virtuous and religious person, would tend rather to promote than to
retard her spiritual progress. Accordingly, she was married privately
in the Temple Church, on the 16th of May, being Ascension Day, “both
the blessed pair receiving the Holy Sacrament, and consecrating the
solemnity with a double mystery;”[580] but, in a letter written shortly
after, she showed what continued to be the main bent of her mind. “I
have this day,” she says, addressing Evelyn, “thought your thoughts,
wished I dare say your wishes, which were, that I might every day sit
looser and looser to the things of this world; discerning as every day
I do, the folly and vanity of it; how short all its pleasures, how
trifling all its recreations, how false most of its friendships, how
transitory everything in it; and on the contrary, how sweet the service
of God, how delightful the meditating on His Word, how pleasant the
conversation of the faithful, and, above all, how charming prayer, how
glorious our hopes, how gracious our God is to all His children, how
gentle His corrections, and how frequently, by the first invitations of
His Spirit, He calls us from our low designs to those great and noble
ones of serving Him, and attaining eternal happiness.”[581]
[Sidenote: MARGARET GODOLPHIN.]
Margaret Godolphin became an exemplary matron. She instructed her
servants, she cultivated domestic religion, she breathed towards
everybody a kind considerate spirit, and with all this condescension as
a mistress, she blended the utmost devotion and tenderness as a wife.
She also assisted the poor, and in the spirit of Elizabeth Fry, visited
the hospital and the prison: and Evelyn could produce a list of above
thirty, restrained for debts in several prisons, which she paid and
compounded for at once; and another list of no fewer than twenty-three
poor creatures whom she clad at one time. She employed “most part of
Lent in working for poor people, cutting out and making waistcoats and
other necessary coverings, which she constantly distributed amongst
them, like another Dorcas, spending much of her time, and no little
of her money, in relieving, visiting, and inquiring of them out. And
whilst she was thus busy with her needle, she would commonly have one
or other read by her, through which means and a happy memory, she
had almost the whole Scriptures by heart, and was so versed in Dr.
Hammond’s _Annotations_ and other practical books, controversies,
and cases, as might have stocked some who pass for no small Divines:
not to mention sundry Divine penitential and other hymns, breathing of
a spirit of holiness, and such as showed the tenderness of her heart,
and wonderful love to God.”[582]
Within a few days after the birth of her only child, she expired,
September 9, 1678, in the twenty-fifth year of her age, and she lies
buried in the church of Breague, in Cornwall: her tomb reminding us of
the pillar over Rachel’s grave.
As in the Court of Arcadius, we meet with the pious Olympias in
contrast with the Empress Eudoxia, and her ladies,--so, in the Court
of Charles II., we discover a Margaret Godolphin in contrast with a
Castelmaine and a Gwynn.
[Sidenote: SIR MATTHEW HALE.]
There are, in every age, Christians whom it would be difficult
to connect with one particular school of theological sentiment,
because they have sympathies with all good men, and do not adopt
the peculiarities of any class. Such a person was Sir Matthew Hale.
No ecclesiastical history of the period--unless written upon some
miserable sectarian principle--could be considered complete which did
not include a reference to so eminently excellent a man. His parents
dying when he was very young, he became dependent for his education
upon a relative who was a Puritan minister, and this circumstance
may account for some points in his character which present a rather
Puritanical appearance. After being addicted to the gaieties of youth,
he was, whilst at Oxford, _converted_, in heart and life, as the
result, partly at least, of an affecting circumstance which occurred
at a convivial meeting when he was present. A boon-companion fell
down in a state of death-like insensibility, when Hale, overwhelmed
with remorse and pity, retired into another room, and, prostrating
himself before God, asked forgiveness for his own sins, and interceded
earnestly for the restoration of his friend. A sudden spiritual
crisis like that, when the soul is suddenly fused, and poured into a
new mould, is sure to be remembered afterwards, and to influence all
subsequent religious feeling. As it has been justly said, a man no
more forgets the moral deliverance it involves, than he forgets an
escape from shipwreck,[583] and therefore Hale’s conversion gave a
marked evangelical impress to his subsequent experience. He glorified
the riches of Divine grace, and delighted “in studying the Mystery
of Christ.” He found in God an overflowing fulness which fills up
the intensest gaspings and outgoings of the soul, a fulness which
continues to eternity, ever increasing gratitude, adoration, and
love. Throughout a course of remarkable diligence in business, this
illustrious Judge manifested no less fervour of spirit. Prayer “gave a
tincture of devotion” to his secular employments--it was “a Christian
chemistry converting those acts which are materially natural and civil,
into acts truly and formally religious, whereby all life is rendered
interpretatively a service to Almighty God.” It was a sun which “gave
light in the midst of darkness, a fortress that kept safe in the
greatest danger, that never could be taken unless self-betrayed,”--a
“Goshen to, and within itself, when the rest of the world, without and
round about a man, is like an Egypt for plagues and darkness.” “To
lose this,” Hale went on to say, “is, like Samson, to lose the lock
wherein next to God our strength lieth.” Such expressions as these
have a Puritanical sound in the ears of many, and there are other
things noticeable in his memoirs in harmony with such expressions:--for
it is stated, as very probable, that he took the Solemn League and
Covenant, it is certain that he did not approve of the rigours of the
Act of Uniformity, and he severely condemned the conduct of many of the
clergy. He had also the deepest reverence for the Sabbath, he cherished
an intense aversion to Romanism, he cultivated, with great respect,
a friendship with Richard Baxter--to whom he acknowledged himself
under great theological obligations--and, if we may mention so minute
a circumstance, which however is significant--“in common prayer, he
behaved himself as others, saving that to avoid the differencing of the
Gospels from the Epistles, and the bowing at the name of Jesus, from
the names Christ, Saviour, God, &c., he would use some equality in his
gestures and stand up at the reading of all God’s Word alike.” These
facts separate him from the Anglo-Catholic division of the Church of
England, yet they are not sufficient to identify him with the fully
developed, and sharply defined Puritan party. For he did not use such
religious language in conversation, as satisfied them--they considered
him too reticent on spiritual subjects;--and, as Baxter says, those
that took no men for religious, who frequented not private meetings,
regarded him simply, as “an excellently righteous man.” Baxter himself
seems to have wished, that Hale had been a little more communicative
on spiritual matters, instead of confining himself in conversation to
what is philosophical in religion. The Divine remarks, respecting the
Judge:--“At last I understood that his averseness to hypocrisy made him
purposely conceal the most of such of his practical thoughts and works
as the world now findeth by his Contemplations and other writings.”
In some respects, Sir Matthew sympathized with the Latitudinarian
school--for, like them, he believed, “that true religion consisteth
in great plain necessary things, the life of faith and hope, the love
of God and man, an humble self-denying mind, with mortification of
worldly affection--and that the calamity of the Church, and withering
of religion hath come from proud and busy men’s additions, that cannot
give peace to themselves and others by living in love and quietness on
this Christian simplicity of faith and practice, but vex and turmoil
the Church with these needless and hurtful superfluities.”[584] Nor
did he believe in any divinely authorized form of ecclesiastical
government; although he greatly preferred, on grounds of expediency,
the Episcopalian polity to any other. Yet these points of affinity
do not justify us in numbering him with the Latitudinarians any more
than with the Puritans, because there was in him more of evangelical
sentiment, more of attachment to dogmatic truth, and more of spiritual
fervour, than belonged to the former description of thinkers. He
counted amongst his religious friends, the High Churchman, Seth Ward,
Bishop of Salisbury, as well as the Broad Churchman, Wilkins, Bishop
of Chester, and the Low Churchman, Richard Baxter, who refused to be a
Bishop at all. It suggests rebuke to all bigoted partizans, to remember
that a layman of the latter half of the seventeenth century most
renowned for his wisdom, justice, charity and piety, was one of whom it
is equally true that he can be claimed by no particular party, and yet
can be claimed by all single-minded Christians.
[Sidenote: HENRY MORE.]
It is little more than a nominal departure from the purpose of
selecting lay examples in this chapter, to introduce Dr. Henry More, as
another distinctive type of the spiritual life of the period--inasmuch
as he was a clergyman in little more than name, and constantly eschewed
public office. For after being appointed to a stall at Gloucester, he
quickly resigned it to another person, and a deanery, a provostship,
and two bishoprics he successively refused. Retirement and study were
his delight. He has been commonly numbered amongst the members of the
Cambridge school, but he--and there were others of that school more
or less like him--ought to be regarded as a most decided Mystic. As
an Eton boy, when wandering in the quaint old quadrangle, or in the
beautiful playing fields, with his head on one side, and kicking the
stones with his feet, he had, he says, a deep consciousness of the
Divine presence; and believed that no deed, or word, or thought could
be hidden from the Invisible yet All-seeing One. He early conceived
an antipathy to Calvinism, in which he had been educated, and plunged
himself, to use his own words, “head over ears” into the study of
philosophy. He forsook Aristotle for Plato, and found a most congenial
teacher in John Tauler, whose deep spiritual thoughts he drank in with
avidity.
He was a philosopher, a friend of Cudworth, and a correspondent
with Descartes. Imagination largely influenced his opinions, and in
his enthusiastic reveries,--under the influence of which, he seemed
unconscious of the outer world, and fancied himself to be living in
a trance,--he conceived that he possessed an ethereal body, which
“exhaled the perfume of violets.” Yet, Mystic as he was, he could
criticise other Mystics, and find just the same fault with them, which
others of a different turn of mind would find with him.
More says of Jacob Behmen:--He, “I conceive is to be reckoned in the
number of those whose imaginative faculty has the pre-eminence above
the rational: and though he was an holy and good man, his natural
complexion, notwithstanding, was not destroyed, but retained its
property still; and therefore his imagination, being very busy about
Divine things, he could not, without a miracle, fail of becoming an
enthusiast.”
It is further curious to couple with this, More’s opinion of the
Quakers:--“To tell you my opinion of that sect which are called
Quakers, though I must allow that there may be some amongst them
good and sincere-hearted men, and it may be nearer to the purity of
Christianity for the life and power of it than many others; yet, I am
well assured, that the generality of them are prodigiously melancholy,
and some few perhaps possessed with the devil.”[585]
As his philosophy is poetical so his poetry is philosophical; and his
_Psychozoia, or Life of the Soul_, puzzles, if it does not weary
its readers: yet it leaves the impression that he “believed the magic
wonders which he sung;” and it has been well compared to a grotto,
“whose gloomy labyrinths we might be curious to explore, for the
strange and mystic associations they excite.”[586]
His philosophy and his poetry touched his religion, and he was wont
to speak in language very different from that of the Anglican on the
one hand, and from that of the Puritan on the other. “The oracle of
God,” he remarked, “is not to be heard but in His Holy Temple, that is
to say in a good and holy man thoroughly sanctified.” “This or such
like rhapsodies,” he observes, relative to his _Dialogues_, “do I
often sing to myself in the silent night, or betimes in the morning,
at break of day, subjoining always, that of our Saviour, as a suitable
_Epiphonema_ to all, ‘Abraham saw my day afar, and rejoiced at
it.’ At this window, I take breath, while I am choked and stifled with
the crowd, and stench of the daily wickedness of this present evil
world; and am almost wearied out with the tediousness and irksomeness
of this my earthly pilgrimage.”[587] More felt deeply the sins and
sorrows which he could not remove, yet a strain of holy peace ran
through such melancholy; and it was doubtless from experience that
he exclaimed--“Even the most miserable objects in this present life
cannot divest him (the good man) of his happiness, but rather modify
it, the sweetness of his spirit being melted into a kindly compassion
in the behalf of others, whom, if he be able to help, it is a greater
accession to his joy; and if he cannot, the being conscious to himself
of so sincere a compassion, and so harmonious and suitable to the
present state of things, carries along with it some degree of pleasure,
like mournful notes of music, exquisitely well fitted to the sadness
of the ditty.”[588] Yet More’s life was not all sentiment; he was
charitable to the needy, and “his chamber door was an hospital.”
His death was like his life, holy, peaceful, happy; and even in
his last hours, he could not help expressing his Christian hope in
philosophical language--uttering the beautiful words of Cicero, which
come so near the Gospel, “_O præclarum illum diem_,” &c., and
declaring that he was going to join that blessed company, with whom, in
a quarter of an hour, he would be as familiar as if he had known them
for years.[589]
[Sidenote: SIR THOMAS BROWNE.]
Our notice of the phases of religious life in the Church of England
would be defective, did we omit all reference to a distinguished,
but eccentric individual, who has left his mark upon our religious
literature. Eccentricity is sometimes the main distinction of a man’s
religious life, and even in such cases there may be no room to doubt
the genuineness of personal piety; but in the instance to which we now
refer, there were distinguishing qualities of another and a worthier
nature. Sir Thomas Browne was charged with being a Quaker, on what
ground it is difficult to say; and a Roman Catholic, although the
Pope honoured his _Religio Medici_ with a place in the _Index
Expurgatorius_; and an atheist, whilst all his writings bear witness
to his reverence for the Divine Being.
Dr. Johnson has vindicated the character of this remarkable person
by referring to passages in which he says, that he was of the belief
taught by our Saviour, disseminated by the Apostles, authorized by
the fathers, and confirmed by the martyrs; that though paradoxical in
philosophy, he loved in Divinity to keep the beaten road, and pleased
himself with the idea; that he had no taint of heresy, schism, or
error.[590] But a more satisfactory vindication is supplied in his
memorable resolutions, never to let a day pass “without calling upon
God in a solemn formed prayer seven times within the compass thereof,”
after the example of David and Daniel; always to magnify God, in the
night, on his “dark bed when he could not sleep,” and to pray in all
places where privacy invited--in any house, highway, or street; to
know no street or passage in the City of Norwich, where he lived,
which might not witness that he remembered God and his Saviour in it;
never to miss the sacrament upon the accustomed days; to intercede
for his patients, for the minister after preaching, and for all
people in tempestuous weather, lightning and thunder, that God would
have mercy upon their souls, bodies, and goods; and “upon sight of
beautiful persons, to bless God in His creatures, to pray for the
beauty of their souls, and to enrich them with inward graces to be
answerable unto the outward; upon sight of deformed persons, to send
them inward graces, and enrich their souls, and give them the beauty
of the resurrection.”[591] A dash of eccentricity is obvious in these
his pious regulations for the government of life, such as might be
expected in the author of the _Hydriotaphia_ and the _Garden
of Cyrus_; but there is no reason whatever to question their
perfect sincerity, or to suspect his affection towards the Church of
England--with respect to which he said that he was a sworn subject to
her faith, subscribing unto her Articles, and endeavouring to observe
her constitutions.[592]
[Sidenote: SIR THOMAS BROWNE.]
We notice with deep regret an absence in his writings of all reference
to certain important evangelical doctrines, and only a slight allusion
to others. Besides this grave omission, we find a positive statement
of opinions generally pronounced to be heterodox, namely, that the
soul sleeps with the body until the last day, that the damned will at
last be released from torture, and that prayers may be offered for the
dead; and these opinions he implies he had entertained himself, but
he insists in his own characteristic style, that he never maintained
them with pertinacity; that without the addition of new fuel, “they
went out insensibly of themselves;” and that they were not heresies
in him, but bare errors, and single lapses of the understanding,
without a joint depravity of the will. “Those,” he remarks, “have not
only depraved understandings, but diseased affections, which cannot
enjoy a singularity without a heresy, or be the author of an opinion,
without they be of a sect also.”[593] Browne entertained comprehensive
and liberal views of the extent of salvation, saying, that though
“the bridge is narrow, the passage strait unto life--yet those who do
confine the Church of God either to particular nations, Churches, or
families, have made it far narrower than our Saviour ever meant it.”
“There must be therefore more than one St. Peter. Particular Churches
and sects usurp the gates of heaven, and turn the key against each
other, and thus we go to heaven against each other’s wills, conceits,
and opinions, and, with as much uncharity as ignorance, do err, I
fear, in points not only of our own, but one another’s salvation.”
He professes a consciousness of there being, not only in philosophy,
but in Divinity, “sturdy doubts and boisterous objections, wherewith
the unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly acquainted us;” and
declares that, after having in his earlier years, “read all the books
against religion, he was in the latter part of his life, averse from
controversies.”[594]
We dismiss the character of Sir Thomas Browne by quoting the following
passage, with which he concludes his _Religio Medici_, and
which taken alone is sufficient to show the devoutness of the man’s
spirit:--“Bless me in this life with but the peace of my conscience,
command of my affections, the love of Thyself, and my dearest friends,
and I shall be happy enough to pity Cæsar! These are, O Lord, the
humble desires of my most reasonable ambition, and all I dare call
happiness on earth, wherein I set no rule or limit to Thy hand or
providence. Dispose of me according to the wisdom of Thy pleasure. Thy
will be done, though in my own undoing.”[595]
[Sidenote: COUNTESS OF WARWICK.]
The Countess Dowager of Warwick--seventh daughter of Richard, first
Earl of Cork--died in 1678, and remained in the Church of England to
the close of her life. Her education, her conversion, her abstinence,
her inward beauty, her love to souls, her family government, together
with her justice and prudence, have been duly celebrated by Samuel
Clarke, in his _Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons_; and her Diary,
extensively circulated of late years, has made this lady very widely
known. “She was neither of Paul, or of Apollos, or of Cephas, but only
of Christ. Her name was Christian, and her surname Catholic. She had
a large and unconfined soul, not hemmed in or pounded up within the
circle of any man’s name.” She bountifully relieved both Conformist
and Nonconformist ministers; but she “very inoffensively regularly and
devoutly observed the orders of the Church of England, in its liturgy
and public service, which she failed not to attend twice a day, with
exemplary reverence. Yet was she far from placing religion in ritual
observances.”[596]
“She needed neither borrowed shades, nor reflexious lights, to
set her off, being personally great in all natural endowments and
accomplishments of soul and body, wisdom, beauty, favour, and virtue.
Great by her tongue, for never woman used one better, speaking so
gracefully, promptly, discreetly, pertinently, holily, that I have
often admired the edifying words that proceeded from her mouth. Great
by her pen, as you may (_ex pede Herculem_) discover by that
little taste of it, the world hath been happy in, the hasty fruit of
one or two interrupted hours after supper, which she professed to me,
with a little regret, when she was surprised with its sliding into
the world without her knowledge, or allowance, and wholly beside her
expectation. Great, by being the greatest mistress and promotress,
not to say the foundress and inventress of a new science--the art of
obliging; in which she attained that sovereign perfection, that she
reigned over all their hearts with whom she did converse. Great in
her nobleness of living and hospitality. Great in the unparalleled
sincerity of constant, faithful, condescending friendship, and for
that law of kindness which dwelt in her lips and heart. Great in
her dexterity of management. Great in her quick apprehension of the
difficulties of her affairs, and where the stress and pinch lay, to
untie the knot, and loose and ease them. Great in the conquest of
herself. Great in a thousand things beside, which the world admires as
such: but she despised them all, and counted them but loss and dung in
comparison of the fear of God, and the excellency of the knowledge of
Christ Jesus.”[597]
Before concluding this review of different forms assumed by personal
religion in the national Church, at least one word is due to a
remarkable instance of conversion, in the case of the Earl of
Rochester, whose deep repentance and Christian faith, after a career
of reckless vice, have been made familiar to the world through the
memoir of him written by Bishop Burnet. Nor should Ley, Earl of
Marlborough, less known to posterity, be entirely overlooked; for,
after having contemned religion, he was “brought to a different sense
of things, upon real conviction, even in full health, some time before
he was killed in the sea-fight at Southold Bay, 1665.”[598] Neither
can I omit all notice of that quiet, unobtrusive piety which in those
days adorned some in the higher walks of life; for example, “the
Lord Crew,” of whom, in a contemporary diary, it is said,--“Friday,
December 12th, 1679. The Lord Crew died, who had been very eminent in
his age for holiness and charity; and at, and in his death, for useful
and suitable instructions to those about him, and for well-grounded
peace, and solid comfort for himself.”[599] Much of the religion in
the Church of England, however, bore a very different impress. Many
were of the same type as William Cavendish, the loyal Marquis of
Newcastle, of whom Clarendon says: “He loved monarchy, as it was the
foundation and support of his own greatness; and the Church, as it
was well constituted for the splendour and security of the Crown; and
religion, as it cherished and maintained that order and obedience that
was necessary to both; without any other passion for the particular
opinions which were grown up in it, and distinguished it into parties,
than as he detested whatsoever was like to disturb the public
peace.”[600]
[Sidenote: THEOLOGICAL DIVERGENCES.]
These notices of persons, all of them members of the Church of
England, present great differences of character. As amongst the
Divines described in a former chapter, we observed, in connection with
their maintenance of the established Episcopal order and government,
their use of the same formularies, and their subscription to the same
standards of faith, a wide divergence of theological belief, and the
indications of a considerable diversity of religious sentiment; so
amongst the laity, as might be expected from the circumstance of no
subscription being exacted in their case, we discover a still greater
divergence of belief, and a still greater variety of sentiment. Not to
speak here of that deep inner life, existent in the Church of Christ
under various outward forms, to which I shall refer hereafter, I may
observe now that the only manifest resemblance amongst those who have
just been indicated, consisted in the uniformity of their worship,
and in their submission to the same kind of Church government. The
High Church, the Low Church, and the Broad Church of the nineteenth
century find their historical parallels in the seventeenth, although
by no means in the same measure of development; and if legal questions
touching Church matters were not raised at that time as they are at
present, the same radical differences between one section and another
existed then as now.