In 1642 Grotius had become wholly averse to the Reformation. He

thought it had done more harm than good, especially by the habit

of interpreting everything on the papal side for the worse. Malos

mores qui mansere corrigi æquum est. Sed an non hoc melius

successurum fuerit, si quisque semet repurgans pro repurgatione

aliorum preces ad Deum tulisset, et principes et episcopi

correctionem desiderantes, non rupta compage, per concilia

universalia in id laborassent. Dignum est de quo cogitetur, p.

938. Auratus, as he calls him, that is, D’Or, a sort of chaplain

to Grotius, became a Catholic about this time. The other only

says--Quod Auratus fecit, idem fecit antehac vir doctissimus

Petrus Pithæus; idem constituerat facere Casaubonus si in Gallia

mansisset, affirmavit enim id inter alios etiam Cordesio. p. 939.

Of Casaubon he says afterwards: Casaubonus multo saniores putabat

Catholicos Galliæ quam Carentonianos. Anglos autem episcopos

putabat a schismatis culpa posse absolvi, p. 940. Every

successive year saw him now draw nearer to Rome. Reperio autem

quicquid communiter ab ecclesia occidentali quæ Romanæ cohæret

recipitur, idem reperiri apud Patres veteres Græcos et Latinos,

quorum communionem retinendam esse vix quisquam neget. Si quid

præter hoc est, id ad liberas doctorum opinationes pertinet; in

quibus suum quis judicium sequi potest, et communionis jus non

amittere, p. 958. Episcopius was for limiting articles of faith

to the creed, but Grotius did not agree with this, and points out

that it would not preserve uniformity. Quam multa jam sunt de

sacramentis, de ecclesiarum regimine, in quibus, vel concordiæ

causa, certi aliquid observari debet. Alioqui compages ecclesiæ

tantopere nobis commendata retineri non potest, p. 941. It would

be endless to quote every passage tending to the same result.

Finally, in a letter to his brother in Holland, he expresses his

hope that Wytenbogart, the respectable patriarch of Arminianism,

would turn his attention to the means of restoring unity to the

church. Velim D. Wytenbogardum, ubi permiserit valetudo, nisi id

jam fecerit, scriptum aliquid facere de necessitate restituendæ

in ecclesia unitatis, et quibus modis id fieri possit. Multi pro

remedio monstrant, si necessaria a non necessariis separentur, in

non necessariis sive creditu sive factu relinquatur libertas. At

non minor est controversia, quæ sint necessaria, quam quæ sint

vera. Indicia, aiunt, sunt in scripturis. At certè etiam circa

illa loca variat interpretatio. Quare nondem video an quid sit

melius, quam ea quæ ad fidem et bona opera nos ducunt retinere,

ut sunt in ecclesia catholica; puto enim in iis esse quæ sunt

necessaria ad salutem. In cæteris ea quæ conciliorum auctoritate,

aut veturum consensu recepta sunt, interpretari eo modo quo

interpretati sunt, illi qui commodissimè sunt locuti, quales

semper aliqui in quaque materia facile reperientur. Si quis id a

se impetrare non possit, ut taceat, nec propter res de quibus

certus non est, sed opinationem tantum quandam habet turbet

unitatem ecclesiæ necessariam, quæ nisi retinetur ubi est, et

restituitur ubi non est, omnia ibunt in pejus, p. 960. (Nov.

1648.) Wytenbogard replied very well: Si ita se res habet, ut

indicia necessariorum et non necessariorum in scriptura reperiri

nequeant, sed quæri debeant in auctoritate conciliorum aut

veterum consensu, eo modo quo interpretati sunt illi, qui

commodissimè locuti sunt, prout Excellentia tua videtur

existimare, nescio an viginti quinque anni, etiamsi illi mihi

adhuc restarent, omnesque exigui ingenii corporisque mei vires in

mea essent potestate, sufficerent ut maturo cum judicio perlegam

et expendam omnia quæ eo pertinent. This letter is in the Epistolæ

præstantium et eruditorum virorum edited by Limborch in 1683, p.

826. And Grotius’s answer is in the same collection. It is that

of a man who throws off a mask he had reluctantly worn. There was

in fact no other means of repelling Wytenbogard’s just

observation on the moral impossibility of tracing for ourselves

the doctrine of the Catholic church as an historical inquiry.

Grotius refers him to a visible standard. Quare considerandum

est, an nonfacilius et æquius sit, quoniam doctrina de gratia, de

libero arbitrio, necessitate fidei bonorumque operum obtinuit in

ecclesia quæ pro se habet universale regimen et ordinem

successionis, privatos se in aliis accommodare, pacis causa, iis

quæ universaliter sunt recepta, sive ea aptissimis

explicationibus recipiendo, sive tacendo, quam corpus illud

catholicum ecclesiæ se in articulo tolerantiæ accommodare debere

uniuscujusque considerationibus et placitis. Exempli gratiâ:

Catholica ecclesia nemini præscribit ut precetur pro mortuis, aut

opem precum sanctorum vita hac defunctorum imploret: solummodo

requirit, ne quis morem adeo antiquum et generalem condemnet. The

church does, in fact, rather more than he insinuates, though less

than Protestants generally fancy.

I have trespassed on the patience of the general reader in this

very long note, which may be thought a superfluous digression in

a work of mere literature. But the epistles of Grotius are not

much read; nor are they in many private libraries. The index is

also very indifferent, so that without the trouble I have taken

of going over the volume, it might be difficult to find these

curious passages. I ought to mention that Burigny has given

references to most of them, but with few quotations. Le Clerc, in

the first volume of the Bibliothèque Universelle, reviewing the

epistles of Grotius, slides very gently over his bias towards

popery; and I have met with well-informed persons in England, who

had no conception of the lengths to which this had led him. It is

of far more importance, and the best apology I can offer for so

prolix a note, to perceive by what gradual, but, as I think,

necessary steps, he was drawn onward by his excessive respect for

antiquity, and by his exaggerated notions of Catholic unity,

preferring at last to err with the many, than to be right with

the few. If Grotius had learned to look the hydra schism in the

face, he would have had less fear of its many heads, and at least

would have dreaded to cut them off at the neck, lest the source

of life should be in one of them.

That Grotius really thought as the fathers of Trent thought upon

all points in dispute cannot be supposed. It was not in the power

of a man of his learning and thoughtfulness to divest himself of

his own judgment, unless he had absolutely subjugated his reason

to religious awe, which was far from being the case. His aim was

to search for subtle interpretations, by which he might profess

to believe the words of the church, though conscious that his

sense was not that of the imposers. It is needless to say that

this is not very ingenuous; and even if it could be justifiable

relatively to the person, would be an abandonment of the

multitude to any superstition and delusion which might be put

upon them. Via ad pacem expeditissima mihi videtur, si doctrina,

communi consensu recepta, commodè explicetur, mores, sanæ

doctrinæ adversantes, quantum fieri potest, tollantur, et in

rebus mediis accommodet se pars ingenio totius. Epist., 1524.

Peace was his main object; if toleration had been as well

understood as it was afterwards, he would perhaps have

compromised less.

Baxter having published a Treatise of the Grotian Religion,

wherein he imputed to Grotius this inclination towards the church

of Rome, Archbishop Bramhall replied, after the Restoration, with

a vindication of Grotius, in which he does not say much to the

purpose, and seems ignorant of the case. The epistles indeed,

were not then published.

Besides the passages in these epistles above quoted, the reader

who wishes to follow this up may consult Epist. 1108, 1460, 1561,

1570, 1706 of the first series; and in the second series, p. 875,

896, 940, 943, 958, 960, 975. But there are also many to which I

have made no reference. I do not quote authorities for the design

of Grotius to have declared himself a convert, if he had lived to

return to France, though they are easily found; because the

testimony of his writing is far stronger than any anecdote.

14. But if any one could put a different interpretation on these

works, which would require a large measure of prejudice, the epistles

of Grotius afford such evidence of his secession from the Protestant

side, as no reasonable understanding can reject. These are contained

in a large folio volume, published in 1687, and amount to 1766 of one

series, and 744 of another. I have quoted the former, for

distinction’s sake, by the number, and the latter by the page. Few, we

may presume, have taken the pains to go through them, in order to

extract all the passages that bear upon this subject. It will be found

that he began, as I have just said, by extolling the authority of the

Catholic or universal church, and its exclusive right to establish

creeds of faith. He some time afterwards ceased to frequent

the Protestant worship, but long kept his middle path, and thought it

enough to inveigh against the Jesuits and the exorbitancies of the see

of Rome. But his reverence for the writers of the fourth and fifth

centuries grew continually stronger; he learned to protest against the

privilege, claimed by the reformers, of interpreting Scripture

otherwise than the consent of the ancients had warranted; visions,

first of an union between the Lutheran and English churches, and then

of one with Rome itself, floated before his eyes; he sought religious

peace with the latter, as men seek it in opposition to civil

government, by the redress of grievances and the subsequent

restoration of obedience. But in proportion as he perceived how little

of concession was to be obtained, he grew himself more ready to

concede; and though at one time he seems to deny the infallibility of

the church, and at another would not have been content with placing

all things in the state they were before the council of Trent, he came

ultimately to think such a favourable sense might be put on all the

Tridentine decrees, as to render them compatible with the Confession

of Augsburg.

15. From the year 1640 his course seems to have been accelerated; he

intimates no disapprobation of those who went over to Rome; he found,

as he tells us, that whatever was generally received in the church of

Rome, had the authority of those Greek and Latin fathers, whose

communion no one would have refused; and at length, in a remarkable

letter to Wytenbogart, bearing date in 1644, he puts it as worthy to

be considered, whether it would not be more reasonable for private men

who find the most essential doctrines in a church of an universal

hierarchy and a legitimate succession, to wave their differences with

it for the sake of peace, by putting the best interpretations they

can, only keeping silence on their own opinions, than that the

Catholic church should accommodate itself to the separate judgment of

such men. Grotius had already ceased to speak of the Arminians as if

he was one of themselves, though with much respect for some of their

leaders.

16. Upon a dispassionate examination of all these testimonies, we can

hardly deem it an uncertain question whether Grotius, if his life had

been prolonged, would have taken the easy leap that still remained;

and there is some positive evidence of his design to do so. But, dying

on a journey and in a protestant country, this avowed declaration was

never made. Fortunately indeed for his glory, since his new friends

would speedily have put his conversion to the proof, and his latter

years might have been spent, like those of Lipsius, in defending

legendary miracles, or in waging war against the honoured dead of the

Reformation. He did not sufficiently remember that a silent neutrality

is never indulged to a suspicious proselyte.

17. It appears to me, nevertheless, that Grotius was very far from

having truly subjected his understanding to the church of Rome. The

whole bent of his mind was to effect an exterior union among

Christians; and for this end he did not hesitate to recommend

equivocal senses of words, convenient explanations, and respectful

silence. Listening attentively, if I may be allowed such a metaphor,

we hear the chaunt of the Æsculapian cock in all he has written for

the catholic church. He first took up his reverence for antiquity,

because he found antiquity unfavourable to the doctrine of Calvin. His

antipathy to this reformer and to his followers led him on to an

admiration of the episcopal succession, the organized hierarchy, the

ceremonial and liturgical institutions, the high notions of

sacramental rites, which he found in the ancient church, and which

Luther and Zuingle had cast away. He became imbued with the notion of

unity as essential to the catholic church; but he never seems to have

gone the length of abandoning his own judgment, or of asserting any

positive infallibility to the decrees of man. For it is manifest that,

if the councils of Nice or of Trent were truly inspired, it would be

our business to inquire what they meant themselves, not to put the

most convenient interpretations, nor to search out for some author or

another who may have strained their language to our own opinion. The

precedent of Grotius, therefore, will not serve those who endeavour to

bind the reason of the enlightened part of mankind, which he respected

like his own. Two predominant ideas seem to have swayed the mind of

this great man in the very gradual transition we have indicated; one,

his extreme reverence for antiquity and for the consent of the

catholic church; the other, his Erastian principles as to the

authority of the civil magistrate in matters of religion. Both

conspired to give him an abhorrence of the ‘liberty of prophesying,’

the right of private men to promulgate tenets inconsistent with

established faith. In friendly conversation or correspondence, even

perhaps; with due reserve, in Latin writings, much might be

indulged to the learned, room was to be found for an Erasmus and a

Cassander; or, if they would themselves consent, for an Episcopius and

a Wytenbogart, at least for a Montagu and a Laud; but no pretext was

ever to justify a separation. The scheme of Grotius is, in a modified

degree, much the same as that of Hobbes.

|Calixtus.|

18. In the Lutheran church we find an eminent contemporary of Grotius,

who may be reckoned his counterpart in the motives which influenced

him to seek for an entire union of religious parties, though

resembling him far more in his earlier opinions, than in those to

which he ultimately arrived. This was George Calixtus, of the

university of Helmstadt, a theologian, the most tolerant, mild, and

catholic in his spirit, whom the Confession of Augsburg had known

since Melanchthon. This university indeed, which had never subscribed

the Form of Concord, was already distinguished by freedom of inquiry,

and its natural concomitant, a large and liberal spirit. But in his

own church generally, Calixtus found as rigid schemes of orthodoxy,

and perhaps a more invidious scrutiny into the recesses of private

opinion, than in that of Rome, with a less extensive basis of

authority. The dream of good men in this age, the reunion of Christian

churches in a common faith, and, meanwhile, the tolerance of

differences, were ever the aim of Calixtus. But he fell, like the

Anglican divines, into high notions of primitive tradition, placing,

according to Eichhorn and Mosheim, the unanimity of the first six

centuries by the side of Scripture itself. He was assailed by the

adherents of the Form of Concord with aggravated virulence and

vulgarity; he was accused of being a papist and a Calvinist,

reproaches equally odious in their eyes, and therefore fit to be

heaped on his head; the inconsistency of calumnies being no good

reason with bigots against uttering them.[71]

[71] Eichhorn, vol. vi., part ii., p. 20. Mosheim. Biogr. Univ.

|His attempts at concord.|

19. In the treatise, published long after his death, in 1697, De

tolerantia Reformatorum circa quæstiones inter ipsos et Augustanam

confessionem professes controversas consultatio, it is his object to

prove that the Calvinists held no such tenets as should exclude them

from Christian communion. He does not deny or extenuate the reality of

their differences from the Confession of Augsburg. The Lutherans,

though many of them, he says, had formerly maintained the absolute

decrees of predestination, were now come round to the doctrine of the

first four centuries.[72] And he admits that the Calvinists, whatever

phrases they may use, do not believe a true and substantial presence

in the Eucharist.[73] But neither of these errors if such they are, he

takes to be fundamental. In a shorter and more valuable treatise,

entitled Desiderium et studium concordiæ, ecclesiasticæ, Calixtus

proposes some excellent rules for allaying religious heats. But he

leans far too much towards the authority of tradition. Every church,

he says, which affirms what others deny, is bound to prove its

affirmation; first by Scripture, in which whatever is contained must

be out of controversy, and secondly (as Scripture bears witness to the

church that it is the pillar and foundation of truth, and especially

the primitive church which is called that of the saints and martyrs),

by the unanimous consent of the ancient church; above all, where the

debate is among learned men. The agreement of the church is therefore

a sufficient evidence of Christian doctrine, not that of individual

writers, who are to be regarded rather so far as they testify the

catholic doctrine, than as they propound their own.[74] This

deference to an imaginary perfection in the church of the fourth or

fifth century must have given a great advantage to that of Rome, which

is not always weak on such ground, and doubtless serves to account for

those frequent desertions to her banner, especially in persons of very

high rank, which afterwards occurred in Germany.

[72] Nostri e quibus olim multi ibidem absolutum decretum

approbarunt, paulatim ad sententiam primorum quatuor sæculorum,

nempe decretum juxta præscientiam factum, receperunt. Qua in re

multum egregiè laboravit Ægidius Hunnius. Difficile autem est

hanc sententiam ita proponere, ne quid Pelagianismo habere affine

videatur, p. 14.

[73] Si tamen non tam quid loquantur quam quid sentiant

attendimus, certum est eos veri corporis et sanguinis secundum

substantiam acceptorum præsentiam non admittere. Rectius autem

fuerit utramque partem simpliciter et ingenuè, quod sentit,

profiteri, quam alteram alteri ambiguis loquendi formulis

imponere. Qualem conciliandi rationem inierunt olim Philippus et

Bucerus, nempe ut præscriberentur formulæ, quarum verba utraque

pars amplecteretur, sed singulæ suo sensu acciperent ac

interpretarentur. Quem conatum, quamvis ex pio eoque ingente

concordiæ desiderio et studio profectum, nulla successûs

felicitas excepit. p. 70. This observation is very just in the

abstract; but in the early period of the reformation, there were

strong reasons for evading points of difference, in the hope that

the truth would silently prevail in the course of time. We,

however, who come later, are to follow the advice of Calixtus,

and, in judging as well as we can, of the opinions of men, must

not altogether regard their words. Upon no theological

controversy, probably, has there been so much of studied

ambiguity as on that of the eucharist. Calixtus passes a similar

censure on the equivocations of some great men of the preceding

century in his other treatise mentioned in the text.

[74] Consensu itaque primæ ecclesiæ ex symbolis et scriptis

manifesto doctrina Christiana rectè confirmatur. Intelligimus

autem doctrinam fundamentalem et necessariam, non quasvis

appendices et quæstiones, aut etiam quorundam scripturæ locorum

interpretationes. De talibus enim unanimis et universalis

consensus non poterit erui vel proferri. Et magis apud plerosque

spectandum est, quid tanquam communem ecclesiæ sententiam

proponunt, quam quomodo eam confirmant aut demonstrant, p. 85. I

have not observed in the little I know of Calixtus, any proof of

his inclination toward the church of Rome.

Gerard Vossius, as Episcopius wrote to Vorstius in 1615, declared

in his inaugural lecture as professor of theology, his

determination to follow the consent of antiquity, in explicatione

Scripturarum et controversiarum diremtionibus diligenter

examinare et expendere catholicum et antiquissimum consensum, cum

sine dubio illud quod a pluribus et antiquissimis dictum est,

verissimum sit. Epist. Virorum præstantium, p. 6.

|High-church party in England.|

20. The tenets of some of those who have been called High-church

Anglicans may in themselves be little different from those of Grotius

and Calixtus. But the spirit in which they have been conceived is

altogether opposite. The one is exclusive, intolerant, severe,

dogmatical, insisting on uniformity of faith as well as of exterior

observances; the other catholic in outward profession, charitable in

sentiment, and in fact one mode, though a mode as imprudent as it was

oblique, in which the latitudinarian principle was manifested. The

language both of Grotius and Calixtus bears this out, and this ought

closely to be observed, lest we confound the real laxity of one school

with the rigid orthodoxy of the other. One had it in view to reconcile

discordant communions by mutual concession, and either by such

explication of contrarieties as might make them appear less

incompatible with outward unity, or by an avowed tolerance of their

profession within the church; the other would permit nothing but

submission to its own authority: it loved to multiply rather than to

extinguish the risks of dissent, in order to crush it more

effectually; the one was a pacific negotiator, the other a conquering

tyrant.

|Daillé on the right use of the Fathers.|

21. It was justly alarming to sincere protestants, that so many

brilliant ornaments of their party should either desert to the hostile

side, or do their own so much injury by taking up untenable

ground.[75] Nothing, it appeared to reflecting men, could be trusted

to the argument from antiquity: whatever was gained in the controversy

on a few points was lost upon those of the first importance. It was

become the only secure course to overthrow the tribunal. Daillé,

himself one of the most learned in this patristic erudition whom the

French reformed church possessed, was the first who boldly attacked

the new school of historical theology in their own stronghold, not

occupying their fortress, but razing it to the ground. The design of

his celebrated Treatise concerning the right use of the Fathers,

published in 1628, is, in his own words, to show, “that they cannot be

the judges of the controversies in religion at this day between the

papist and the protestant,” nor, by parity of reasoning, of many

others; “1. Because it is, if not an impossible, yet at least a very

difficult thing to find out what their sense hath been touching the

same. 2. Because that their sense and judgment of these things,

supposing it to be certainly and clearly understood, not being

infallible, and without all danger of error, cannot carry with it a

sufficient authority for the satisfying the understanding.”

[75] It was a poor consolation for so many losses, that the

famous Antonio de Dominis, archbishop of Spoleto, came over to

England, and by his books de Republica Ecclesiastica, as well as

by his conversation, seemed an undisguised enemy to the church of

Rome. The object of his work is to prove that the pope has no

superiority over other bishops. James gave de Dominis the deanery

of Windsor and a living; but whether he, strictly speaking,

belonged to the church of England, I do not remember to have

read. Preferments were bestowed irregularly in that age. He

returned, however, to the ancient fold; but did not avoid

suspicion, being thrown into prison at Rome; and after his death,

the imputations of heresy against him so much increased that his

body was dug up and burned. Neither party has been ambitious to

claim this vain and insincere, though clever prelate.

22. The arguments adduced by Daillé in support of the former of these

two positions, and which occupy the first book of the treatise, are

drawn from the paucity of early Christian writers, from the nature of

the subjects treated by them having little relation to the present

controversies, from the suspicions of forgery and interpolation

affecting many of their works, the difficulty of understanding their

idioms and figurative expressions, the habit of some of the fathers to

say what they did not believe, their changes of mind, the peculiar and

individual opinions of some among them, affording little evidence of

the doctrine of the church; finally, the probability that many who

differed from those called the fathers, and whose writings have not

descended to us, may have been of as good authority as themselves.

23. In the second book, which in fact has been very much anticipated

in the first, he shows that neither the testimony nor the doctrine of

the fathers is infallible (by which word he must be understood to mean

that it raises but a slight presumption of truth), proving this by

their errors and contradictions. Thus he concludes that, though their

negative authority is considerable, since they cannot be presumed

ignorant of any material doctrine of religion, we are to be very slow

in drawing affirmative propositions from their writings, and much more

so in relying upon them as undoubted verities.

24. It has been said of this treatise on the right use of the fathers,

that its author had pretty well proved they were of no use at all.

This indeed is by no means the case, but it has certainly diminished

not only the deference which many have been wont to pay to the opinion

of the primitive writers, but what is still more contended for, the

value of their testimony, whether as to matters of fact, or as to the

prevailing doctrines of the Christian church. Nothing can be more

certain, though in the warmth of controversy men are apt to disregard

it, than that a witness, who deposes in any one case what can be

disproved, is not entitled to belief in other assertions which we have

no means of confuting, unless it be shown that the circumstances of

his evidence render it more trust-worthy in these points than we have

found it before. Hence, such writers as Justin and Irenæus ought not,

except with great precaution, to be quoted in proof at all, or at

least with confidence; their falsehood, not probably wilful, in

assertions that have been brought to a test rendering their testimony

very precarious upon any other points. Daillé, it may be added, uses

some circumspection, as the times, if not his own disposition,

required in handling this subject, keeping chiefly in view the

controversies between the Romish and protestant churches: nor does he

ever indulge in that tone of banter or acrimony which we find in

Whitby, Barbeyrac, Jortin, and Middleton; and which must be condemned

by every one who reflects that many of these writers exposed their

lives, and some actually lost them, in the maintenance and propagation

of Christianity.

|Chillingworth’s Religion of Protestants.|

25. This well-timed and important book met with a good reception from

some in England, though it must have been very uncongenial to the

ruling party. It was extolled and partly translated by Lord Falkland;

and his two distinguished friends, Chillingworth and Hales, found in

it the materials of their own bold revolt against church authority.

They were both Arminians, and, especially the former, averse in all

respects to the Puritan school. But like Episcopius, they scorned to

rely, as on these points they might have done, on what they deemed so

precarious and inconclusive as the sentiments of the fathers.

Chillingworth, as is well known, had been induced to embrace the

Romish religion, on the usual ground that a succession of infallible

pastors, that is, a collective hierarchy, by adhering to whom alone we

could be secure from error, was to be found in that church. He

returned again to the protestant religion on being convinced that no

such infallible society could be found. And a Jesuit, by name Knott,

having written a book to prove that unrepenting protestants could not

be saved, Chillingworth published, in 1637, his famous answer: The

Religion of Protestants a safe Way to Salvation. In this he closely

tracks the steps of his adversary, replying to every paragraph and

almost every sentence.

|Character of this work.|

26. Knott is by no means a despicable writer, he is concise, polished,

and places in an advantageous light the great leading arguments of his

church. Chillingworth, with a more diffuse and less elegant style, is

greatly superior in impetuosity and warmth. In his long parenthetical

periods, and in those of other old English writers, in his

copiousness, which is never empty or tautological, there is an

inartificial eloquence springing from strength of intellect and

sincerity of feeling, that cannot fail to impress the reader. But his

chief excellence is the close reasoning, which avoids every dangerous

admission and yields to no ambiguousness of language. He perceived and

maintained with great courage, considering the times in which he wrote

and the temper of those he was not unwilling to keep as

friends, his favourite tenet, that all things necessary to be believed

are clearly laid down in Scripture. Of tradition, which many of his

contemporary protestants were becoming as prone to magnify as their

opponents, he spoke very slightingly; not denying of course a maxim

often quoted from Vincentius Lirinensis, that a tradition strictly

universal and aboriginal must be founded in truth, but being assured

that no such could be shown; and that what came nearest, both in

antiquity and in evidence of catholic reception, to the name of

apostolical, were doctrines and usages rejected alike by all

denominations of the church in modern times.[76] It will be readily

conceived, that his method of dealing with the controversy is very

different from that of Laud in his treatise against Fisher; wherein we

meet chiefly with disputes on passages in the fathers, as to which,

especially when they are not quoted at length, it is impossible that

any reader can determine for himself. The work of Chillingworth may at

least be understood and appreciated without reference to any other;

the condition, perhaps, of real superiority in all productions of the

mind.

[76] “If there were anything unwritten which had come down to us

with as full and universal a tradition as the unquestioned books

of canonical Scripture, that thing should I believe as well as

the Scripture; but I have long sought for some such thing, and

yet I am to seek; nay, I am confident no one point in controversy

between papists and protestants can go in upon half so fair

cards, for to gain the esteem of an apostolic tradition, as those

things which are now decried on all hands; I mean the opinion of

the Chiliasts and the communicating infants.” Chap. 3, § 82. He

dilates upon this insecurity of tradition in some detached

papers, subjoined to the best editions of his work. Chillingworth

might have added an instance if he had been writing against

Romanising Anglicans. Nothing can come so close to the foolish

rule above-mentioned, as the observation of celibacy by bishops

and priests, not being married before their ordination, which,

till the time of Luther, was, as far as we have reason to

believe, universally enjoined in the church; no one, at least,

has ever alleged an authority to the contrary. Yet those who talk

most of the rule of Vincentius Lirinensis set aside without

compunction the only case in which we can truly say that it may

with some show of probability be applied. Omnia vincit amor.

27. Chillingworth was, however, a man versed in patristical learning,

by no means less so, probably, than Laud. But he had found so much

uncertainty about this course of theological doctrine, seducing as it

generally is to the learned, “fathers,” as he expresses it, “being set

against fathers, and councils against councils,” that he declares, in

a well-known passage, the Bible exclusively to be the religion of

protestants; and each man’s own reason to be, as from the general

tenor of his volume it appears that he held it, the interpreter of the

Bible.[77] It was a natural consequence that he was a strenuous

advocate not so much for toleration of separate churches, as for such

an “ordering of the public service of God, that all who believe the

Scripture and live according to it, might, without scruple or

hypocrisy or protestation against any part, join in it;”[78] a scheme

when practicable, as it could not possibly be often rendered, far more

eligible than the separation of sects, and hence the favourite object

of Grotius and Taylor, as well as of Erasmus and Cassander. And in a

remarkable and eloquent passage, Chillingworth declares that

“protestants are inexcusable, if they did offer violence to other

men’s consciences;” which Knott had said to be notorious, as in fact

it was, and as Chillingworth ought more explicitly to have

admitted.[79] “Certainly,” he observes in another place, “if

protestants are faulty in this matter [of claiming authority], it is

for doing it too much and not too little. 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 of the things of God better than in the

words of God; this deifying our own interpretations and tyrannous

enforcing them upon others; this restraining of 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, and that which

makes them immortal;[80] the common incendiary of Christendom,

and that which tears in pieces not the coat but the bowels and members

of Christ. Take away these walls of separation and all will quickly be

one. Take away this persecuting, burning, cursing, damning of men for

not subscribing the words of men as the words of God; require of

Christians only to believe Christ, and to call no man master but him

only; let those leave claiming infallibility that have no title to it,

and let them that in their words disclaim it, disclaim it also in

their actions. In a word, take away tyranny,” &c.[81]

[77] This must always be understood with the condition, that the

reason itself shall be competently enlightened: if Chillingworth

meant more than this, he carried his principle too far, as others

have done. The case is parallel in jurisprudence, medicine,

mechanics, and every human science: any one man, primâ facie, may

be a competent judge, but all men are not so. It is hard to prove

that there is any different rule for theology; but parties will

always contend for extremes; for the rights of bigots to think

for others, and the rights of fools to think for themselves.

[78] Chap. 3, § 81.

[79] Chap. 5, § 96.

[80] “This persuasion,” he says in a note, “is no singularity of

mine, but the doctrine which I have learned from divines of great

learning and judgment. Let the reader be pleased to peruse the

7th book of Acontius de Stratagematibus Satanæ, and Zanchius his

last oration delivered by him after the composing of the discord

between him and Amerbachius, and he shall confess as much.”

[81] Chap. 4, § 17.

28. It is obvious that in this passage, and indeed throughout the

volume, Chillingworth contravenes the prevailing theories of the

Anglican church, full as distinctly as those of the Roman. He escaped

however unscathed by the censure of that jealous hierarchy; his

private friendship with Laud, the lustre of his name, the absence of

factious and sectarian connections, and still more perhaps the rapid

gathering of the storms that swept both parties away, may be assigned

as his protection. In later times his book obtained a high reputation;

he was called the immortal Chillingworth; he was the favourite of all

the moderate and the latitudinarian writers, of Tillotson, Locke, and

Warburton. Those of opposite tenets, when they happen to have read his

book, can do nothing else but condemn its tendency.

|Hales on Schism.|

29. A still more intrepid champion in the same cause was John Hales;

for his little tract on Schism, not being in any part directed against

the church of Rome, could have nothing to redeem the strong

protestations against church authority, “which,” as he bluntly

expresses it, “is none;” words that he afterwards slightly qualified.

The aim of Hales, as well as of Grotius, Calixtus, and Chillingworth,

was to bring about a more comprehensive communion; but he went still

farther; his language is rough and audacious;[82] his theology in some

of his other writings has a scent of Racow; and though these crept

slowly to light, there was enough in the earliest to make us wonder at

the high name, the epithet Ever-memorable, which he obtained in the

English church.

[82] “I must, for my own part, confess that councils and synods

not only may and have erred, but considering the means how they

are managed, it were a great marvel if they did not err, for what

men are they of whom those great meetings do consist? Are they

the best, the most learned, the most virtuous, the most likely to

walk uprightly? No, the greatest, the most ambitious, and many

times men of neither judgment nor learning; such are they of whom

these bodies do consist. Are these men in common equity likely to

determine for truth?”--Vol. i., p. 60, edit. 1765.

“Universality is such a proof of truth as truth itself is ashamed

of; for universality is but a quainter and a trimmer name to

signify the multitude. Now human authority at the strongest is

but weak, but the multitude is the weakest part of human

authority; it is the great patron of error, most easily abused

and most hardly disabused. The beginning of error may be and

mostly is from private persons, but the maintainer and continuer

of error is the multitude. Private persons first beget errors in

the multitude and make them public; and publicness of them begets

them again in private persons. It is a thing which our common

experience and practice acquaints us with, that when some private

persons have gained authority with the multitude, and infused

some error into them and made it public, the publicness of the

error gains authority to it, and interchangeably prevails with

private persons to entertain it. The most singular and strongest

part of human authority is properly in the wisest and most

virtuous; and those I trow are not the most universal.”--iii.

164.

The treatise on Schism, from which these last passages are _not_

extracted, was printed at Oxford in 1642, with some

animadversions by the editor. Wood’s Athenæ, iii. 414.

|Controversies on grace and free will. Augustinian scheme.|

30. It is unnecessary to say that few disputes in theology have been

so eagerly conducted, so extensively ramified, as those which relate

to the free will of man, and his capacity of turning himself towards

God. In this place nothing more will be expected than a brief

statement of the principal question, doing no injustice by a tone of

partiality to either side. All shades of opinion, as it seems, may be

reduced to two, which have long divided and will long divide the

Christian world. According to one of these, the corrupt nature of man

is incapable of exerting any power towards a state of acceptance with

God, or even of willing it with an earnest desire, until excited by

preventing (præveniens) grace; which grace is vouchsafed to some only,

and is called free, because God is not limited by any respect

of those persons to whom he accords this gift. Whether those who are

thus called by the influence of the Spirit, are so irresistibly

impelled to it, that their perseverance in the faith and good works

which are the fruits of their election, may surely be relied upon, or,

on the other hand, may either at first obdurately resist the divine

impulses, or finally swerve from their state of grace, is another

question, upon which those who agree in the principal doctrine have

been at variance. It is also controverted among those who belong to

this class of theologians, whether the election thus freely made out

of mankind depends upon an eternal decree of predestination, or upon a

sentence of God following the fall of man. And a third difference

relates to the condition of man after he has been aroused by the

Spirit from a state of entire alienation from God; some holding that

the completion as well as commencement of the work of conversion is

wholly owing to the divine influence, while others maintain a

co-operation of the will, so that the salvation of a sinner may, in

some degree, be ascribed to himself. But the essential principle of

all whom we reckon in this category of divines is the necessity of

preventing grace, or, in other words, that it is not in the power of

man to do any act, in the first instance, towards his own salvation.

This, in some or other of its modifications, used to be deemed the

orthodox scheme of doctrine; it was established in the Latin church by

the influence of Augustin, it was generally held by the schoolmen, by

most of the early reformers, and seems to be inculcated by the decrees

of the council of Trent, as much as by the articles of the church of

England. In a loose and modern acceptation of the word, it often goes

by the name of Calvinism, which may perhaps be less improper, if we do

not use the term in an exclusive sense, but, if it is meant to imply a

particular relation to Calvin, leads to controversial chicane, and a

misstatement of the historical part of the question.

|Semi-pelagian hypothesis.|

31. An opposite class of theological reasoners belong to what is

sometimes called the Semi-pelagian school. These concur with the

former in the necessity of assistance from the Spirit to the

endeavours of man towards subduing his evil tendencies, and renewing

his heart in the fear and love of God, but conceive that every sinner

is capable of seeking this assistance, which will not be refused him,

and consequently of beginning the work of conversion by his own will.

They therefore either deny the necessity of preventing grace, except

such as is exterior, or, which comes effectively to the same thing,

assert that it is accorded in a sufficient measure to every one within

the Christian church, whether at the time of baptism, or by some other

means. They think the opposite opinion, whether founded on the

hypothesis of an eternal decree or not, irreconcilable with the moral

attributes of the Deity, and inconsistent with the general tenor of

Scripture. The Semi-pelagian doctrine is commonly admitted to have

been held by the Greek fathers; but the authority of Augustin, and the

decisions of the Western church caused it to assume the character of a

heresy. Some of the Scotists among the schoolmen appear to have made

an approach to it, by their tenet of grace ex congruo. They thought

that the human virtues and moral dispositions of unregenerate men were

the predisposing circumstances which, by a sort of fitness, made them

the objects of the divine goodness in according the benefits of his

grace. Thus their own free will, from which it was admitted that such

qualities and actions might proceed, would be the real, though

mediate, cause of their conversion. But this was rejected by the

greater part, who asserted the absolute irrespective freedom of grace,

and appealed to experience for its frequent efficacy over those who

had no inherent virtues to merit it.

|Tenets of the reformers.|

32. The early reformers, and none more than Luther, maintained the

absolute passiveness of the human will, so that no good actions, even

after conversion, could be ascribed in any proper sense to man, but

altogether to the operation of the Spirit. Not only, however,

Melanchthon espoused the Synergistic doctrine, but the Lutheran

church, not in any symbolic book, but in the general tenets of its

members, has been thought to have gone a good way towards

Semi-pelagianism, or what passed for such with the more rigid

party.[83] In the reformed church, on the contrary, the

Supra-lapsarian tenets of Calvin, or the immutable decrees of election

and reprobation from all eternity, were obviously incompatible

with any hypothesis that made the salvation of a sinner depend upon

himself. But towards the close of the sixteenth century, these severer

notions (which it may be observed by the way, had always been entirely

rejected by the Anabaptists, and by some of greater name, such as

Sebastian Castalio) began to be impugned by a few learned men. This

led in England to what are called the Lambeth articles, drawn up by

Whitgift, six of which assert the Calvinistic doctrine of

predestination, and three deny that of the Semi-pelagians. But these,

being not quite approved by the queen, or by Lord Burleigh, were never

received by authority in our church. There can nevertheless be no

reasonable or even sincere doubt that Calvinism, in the popular sense,

was at this time prevalent; even Hooker adopted the Lambeth articles

with verbal modifications that do not affect their sense.

[83] Le Clerc says that the doctrine of Melanchthon, which

Bossuet stigmatises as Semi-pelagian, is that of the council of

Trent. Bibl. Choisie, v. 341. I should put a different

construction upon the Tridentine canons; but of course my

practice in these nice questions is not great.

|Rise of Arminianism.|

|Episcopius.|

33. The few who, in England or in the reformed churches upon the

Continent, embraced these novel and heterodox opinions, as they were

then accounted, within the sixteenth century, excited little attention

in comparison with James Arminius, who became professor of theology at

Leyden in 1604. The controversy ripened in a few years; it was

intimately connected, not, of course, in its own nature, but by some

of those collateral influences which have so often determined the

opinions of mankind, with the political relations between the Dutch

clergy and the States of Holland, as it was afterwards with the still

less theological differences of that government with its Stadtholder;

it appealed, on one side to reason, on the other to authority and to

force; an unequal conflict, till posterity restore the balance.

Arminius died in 1609; he has left works on the main topics of debate;

but in theological literature, the great chief of the Arminian or

Remonstrant church is Simon Episcopius. The principles of Episcopius

are more widely removed from those of the Augustinian school than the

five articles, so well known as the leading tenets of Arminius, and

condemned at the synod of Dort. Of this famous assembly it is

difficult to speak in a few words. The copious history of Brandt is

perhaps the best authority; though we must own that the opposite party

have a right to be heard. We are here, however, on merely literary

ground, and the proceedings of ecclesiastical synods are not strictly

within any province of literary history.

|His writings.|

34. The works of Episcopius were collectively published in 1650, seven

years after his death. They form two volumes in folio, and have been

more than once reprinted. The most remarkable are the Confessio

Remonstrantium, drawn up about 1624, the Apology for it against a

censure of the opposite party, and what seems to have been a later

work, and more celebrated, his Institutiones Theologicæ. These contain

a new scheme of religion, compared with that of the established

churches of Europe, and may justly be deemed the representative of the

liberal or latitudinarian theology. For though the writings of

Erasmus, Cassander, Castalio, and Acontius had tended to the same

purpose, they were either too much weakened by the restraints of

prudence, or too obscure and transitory, to draw much attention, or to

carry any weight against the rigid and exclusive tenets which were

sustained by power.

|Their spirit and tendency.|

35. The earlier treatises of Episcopius seem to speak on several

subjects less unequivocally than the Theological Institutions; a

reserve not perhaps to be censured, and which all parties have thought

themselves warranted to employ, so long as either the hope of

agreement with a powerful adversary, or of mitigating his severity,

should remain. Hence the Confession of the Remonstrants explicitly

states that they decline the Semi-pelagian controversy, contenting

themselves with asserting that sufficient grace is bestowed on all who

are called by the gospel, to comply with that divine call and obey its

precepts.[84] They used a form of words, which might seem equivalent

to the tenet of original sin, and they did not avoid or refuse that

term. But Episcopius afterwards denies it, at least in the extended

sense of most theologians, almost as explicitly as Jeremy Taylor.[85]

It was common in the seventeenth century to charge the Arminians, and

especially Episcopius, with Socinianism. Bossuet, who seems to have

quarrelled with all parties, and is neither Molinist nor Jansenist,

Calvinist nor Arminian, never doubting that there is a firm footing

between them, having attacked Episcopius and Grotius particularly for

Semi-pelagianism and Socinianism, Le Clerc entered on their defence.

But probably he would have passed with Bossuet, and hardly cared if he

did pass, for a heretic, at least of the former denomination

himself.[86]

[84] Episcop. Opera, vol. i., p. 64. De eo nemini litem movent

Remonstrantes. I am not sure that my translation is right; but I

think it is what they meant. By prevenient grace they seemed to

have meant only the exterior grace of the gospel’s promulgation,

which is equivalent to the Semi-pelagian scheme, p. 189. Grotius

latterly came into this opinion, though he had disclaimed

everything of the kind in his first dealings with theology. I

have found the same doctrine in Calixtus; but I have preserved no

reference as to either.

[85] Instit. Theolog., lib. iv., sect. v., c. 2. Corruptionis

istius universalis nulla sunt indicia nec signa; imo non pauca

sunt signa ex quibus colligitur naturam totam humanam sic

corruptam non esse. The whole chapter, Ubi de peccato, quod

vocant, originis agitur, et præcipua S. S. loca quibus inniti

creditur, examinantur, appears to deny the doctrine entirely; but

there may be some shades of distinction which have escaped me.

Limborch (Theolog. Christiana lib. iii., c. 4.) allows it in a

qualified sense.

[86] Bibl. Choisie, vol. v.

|Great latitude allowed by them.|

36. But the most distinguishing peculiarity in the writings of

Episcopius was his reduction of the fundamental doctrines of

Christianity far below the multitudinous articles of the churches;

confining them to propositions which no Christian can avoid

acknowledging without manifest blame; such, namely, wherein the

subject, the predicate, and the connexion of the two are declared in

Scripture by express or equivalent words.[87] He laid little stress on

the authority of the church; notwithstanding the advantage he might

have gained by the Anti-Calvinistic tenets of the fathers, admitting

indeed the validity of the celebrated rule of Vincentius Lirinensis,

in respect of tradition, which the upholders of primitive authority

have always had in their mouths, but adding that it is utterly

impossible to find any instance wherein it can be usefully

applied.[88]

[87] Necessaria quæ scripturis continentur talia esse omnia, ut

sine manifesta hominis culpa ignorari, negari aut in dubium

vocari nequeant; quia videlicet tum subjectum, tum prædicatum,

tum subjecti cum prædicato connexio necessaria in ipsis

scripturis est, aut expressè, aut æquipollenter. Inst. Theol.

l. iv., c. 6.

[88] Instit. Theolog. l. iv., sect. i., c. 15. Dupin says of

Episcopius: Il n’a employé dans ses ouvrages que des passages de

l’écriture sainte qu’il possédoit parfaitement. Il avoit aussi lu

les Rabbins, mais on ne voit pas qu’il eût étudié les pères ni

l’antiquité ecclésiastique. Il écrit nettement et méthodiquement,

pose des principes, ne dissimule rien des objections qu’on peut

faire contre, et y repond du mieux qu’il peut. On voit en lui une

tolérance parfaite pour les Sociniens quoiqu’il se déclare contre

eux; pour le parti d’Arminius, jamais il n’a eu de plus zélé et

de plus habile défenseur, Bibliothèque des Auteurs séparés de

l’Eglise Romaine, ii. 495.

The life of Episcopius has been written by Limborch. Justice has

been done to this eminent person and to the Arminian party which

he led, in two recent English works, Nicholls’ Calvinism and

Arminianism displayed, and Calder’s Life of Episcopius (1835).

The latter is less verbose and more temperate than the former,

and may be recommended, as a fair and useful production, to the

general reader. Two theological parties in this country, though

opposite in most things, are inveterately prejudiced against the

Leyden school.

|Progress of Arminianism.|

|Cameron.|

37. The Arminian doctrine spread, as is well known, in despite of

obloquy and persecution, over much of the protestant region of Europe.

The Lutheran churches were already come into it; and in England there

was a predisposing bias in the rulers of the church towards the

authority of the primitive fathers, all of whom, before the age of

Augustin, and especially the Greek, are acknowledged to have been on

that side, which promoted the growth of this Batavian theology.[89]

Even in France, it was not without considerable influence. Cameron, a

divine of Saumur, one of the chief protestant seminaries, devised a

scheme of syncretism, which, notwithstanding much opposition, gained

ground in those churches. It was supported by some highly

distinguished for learning, Amyraut, Daillé, and Blondel. Of this

scheme it is remarkable, that while in its literal purport it can only

seem a modification of the Augustinian hypothesis, with an awkward and

feeble admixture of the other, yet its tendency was to efface the

former by degrees, and to slide into the Arminian hypothesis, which

ultimately became almost general in the reformed church.

[89] General Vossius, in his Historia Pelagiana, the first

edition of which, in 1618, was considerably enlarged afterwards,

admitted that the first four centuries did not countenance the

predestinarian scheme of Augustin. This gave offence in Holland;

his book was publicly censured, he was excommunicated and

forbidden to teach in public or private. Vossius, like others,

remembered that he had a large family, and made, after some

years, a sort of retractation, which, of course, did not express

his real opinion. Le Clerc seems to doubt whether he acted from

this motive or from what he calls simplicity, an expression for

weakness. Vossius was, like his contemporary Usher, a man of much

more learning than strength of intellect. Bibliothèque

Universelle, xvii. 312, 329. Niceron, vol. xiii.

|Rise of Jansenism.|

38. These perplexities were not confined to protestant theology. The

church of Rome, strenuous to maintain the tenets of Augustin, and

yet to condemn those who did the same, has been charged with

exerting the plenitude of her infallibility to enforce the belief of

an incoherent syncretism. She had condemned Baius, as giving too much

efficacy to grace; she was on the point of condemning Molina for

giving too little. Both Clement VIII. and Paul V. leaned to the

Dominicans against the Jesuits in this controversy; but the great

services and influence of the latter order prevented a decision which

would have humbled them before so many adversaries. It may,

nevertheless be said that the Semi-pelagian, or Arminian doctrine,

though consonant to that of the Jesuits, was generally ill received in

the church of Rome, till the opposite hypothesis, that of Augustin and

Calvin, having been asserted by one man in more unlimited propositions

than had been usual, a reaction took place, that eventually both gave

an apparent triumph to the Molinist party, and endangered the church

itself by the schism to which the controversy gave rise. The

Augustinus of Jansenius, bishop of Ypres, was published in 1640, and

in the very next year was censured at Rome. But, as the great

controversy that sprung out of the condemnation of this book belongs

more strictly to the next period, we shall defer it for the present.

|Socinus. Volkelius.|

39. The Socinian academy at Racow which drew to itself several

proselytes from other countries, acquired considerable importance in

theological literature after the beginning of the century. It was not

likely that a sect, regarded with peculiar animosity, would escape in

the general disposition of the catholic party in Poland to oppress the

dissidents whom they had long feared; the Racovian institution was

broken up and dispersed in 1638, though some of its members continued

to linger in Poland for twenty years longer. The Bibliotheca Fratrum

Polonorum, published at Amsterdam (in the title-page, Irenopolis), in

1658, contains chiefly the works of Socinian theologians who belong to

this first part of the century. The Prælectiones Theologicæ of Faustus

Socinus himself, being published in 1609, after his death, fall within

this class. They contain a systematic theology according to his

scheme, and are praised by Eichhorn for the acuteness and depth they

often display.[90] In these, among his other deviations from the

general orthodoxy of Christendom, Socinus astonished mankind by

denying the evidences of natural religion, resolving our knowledge

even of a deity into revelation. This paradox is more worthy of those

who have since adopted it, than of so acute a reasoner as Socinus.[91]

It is, in fact, not very congenial to the spirit of his theology,

which, rejecting all it thinks incompatible with reason as to the

divine attributes, should at least have some established notions of

them upon rational principles. The later Socinians, even those nearest

to the time, did not follow their master in this part of his

tenets.[92] The treatise of Volkelius, son-in-law of Socinus, De vera

Religione, is chiefly taken from the latter. It was printed at Racow

in 1633, and again in Holland in 1641; but most of the latter

impression having been burned by order of the magistrates, it is a

very scarce book, and copies were formerly sold at great prices. But

the hangman’s bonfire has lost its charm, and forbidden books, when

they happen to occur, are no longer in much request. The first book

out of five in this volume of Volkelius, on the attributes of God, is

by Crellius.

[90] Eichhorn, vi. part 1, p. 283. Simon, however, observes that

Socinus knew little Greek or Hebrew, as he owns himself, though

he pretends to decide questions which require a knowledge of

these languages. I quote from Bibliothèque Universelle, vol.

xxiii., p. 498.

[91] Tillotson, in one of his sermons (I cannot give the

reference, writing from memory), dissents, as might be expected,

from this denial of natural religion, but with such encomiums on

Socinus as some archbishops would have avoided.

[92] Socinum sectæ ejus principes nuper Volkelius, nunc Ruarus

non probant, in eo quod circa Dei cognitionem petita e natura

rerum argumenta abdicaverit. Grot. Epist. 964. See too Ruari

Epist., p. 210.

|Crellius. Ruarus.|

40. Crellius was, perhaps, the most eminent of the Racovian school in

this century.[93] Many of its members, like himself, were Germans,

their sect having gained ground in some of the Lutheran states about

this time, as it did also in the United Provinces. Grotius broke a

lance with him in his treatise De Satisfactione Christi, to which he

replied in another with the same title. Each retired from the field

with the courtesies of chivalry towards his antagonist. The Dutch

Arminians in general, though very erroneously, supposed to concur in

all the leading tenets of the Racovian theologians, treated them with

much respect.[94] Grotius was often reproached with the

intimacies he kept up among these obnoxious sectaries; and many of his

letters, as well as those of Curcellæus and other leading Arminians,

bear witness to the personal regard they felt for them.[95] Several

proofs of this will be also found in the epistles of Ruarus, a book

which throws much light on the theological opinions of the age. Ruarus

was a man of acuteness, learning, and piety, not wholly concurring

with the Racovians, but not far removed from them.[96] The

commentaries of Grotius on the Scriptures have been also charged with

Socinianism; but he pleaded that his interpretations were those of the

fathers.

[93] Dupin praises Volkelius highly, but says of Crellius: il

avoit beaucoup étudié, mais il n’étoit pas un esprit fort élevé.

Bibl. des Auteurs separés, ii. 614 v. 628. Simon, on the

contrary, (ubi suprà) praises Crellius highly, and says no other

commentator of his party is comparable to him.

[94] The Remonstrants refused to anathematize the Socinians,

Episcopius says, on account of the apparent arguments in their

favour, and the differences that have always existed on that

head. Apologia Confessionis. Episc. Op. vol. i. His own tenets,

were probably what some would call Arian; thus he says, personis

his tribus divinitatem tribui, non collateraliter aut

co-ordinatè, sed subordinatè. Inst. Theol. 1. iv., c. 2, 32.

Grotius says, he finds the Catholics more _tractable_ about the

Trinity than the Calvinists.

[95] Grotius never shrunk from defending his intimacy with Ruarus

and Crellius, and after praising the former, concludes, in one of

his letters, with this liberal and honest sentiment. Ego vero

ejus sum animi, ejusque instituti, ut mihi cum hominibus cunctis,

præcipue cum Christianis quantumvis errantibus necessitudinis

aliquid putem intercedere, idque me neque dictis neque factis

pigeat demonstrare. Epist. 860. Hæretici nisi aliquid haberent

veri ac nobiscum commune, jam hæretici non essent. 2da Series, p.

873. Nihil veri eo factum est deterius, quod in id Socinus

incidit. p. 880. This, he thought, was the case in some

questions, where Socinus, without designing it, had agreed with

antiquity. Neque me pudeat consentire Socino, si quando is in

veram veteremque sententiam incidit, ut sanè fecit in

controversia de justitia per fidem, et aliis nonnullis. Id. p.

797. Socinus hoc non agens in atiquæ ecclesiæ sensus nonnunquam

incidit, et eas partes, ut ingenio valebat, percoluit feliciter.

Admiscuit alia quæ etiam vera dicenti auctoritatem detraxere.

Epist. 966. Even during his controversy with Crellius he wrote to

him in a very handsome manner. Bene autem in epistola tua, quæ

mihi longè gratissimi advenit, de me judicas, non esse me eorum

in numero, qui ob sententias salva pietate dissentientes, alieno

a quoquam sim animo, aut boni alicujus amicitiam repudiare. Etiam

in libro de vera religione, [Volkelii] quem jam percurri,

relecturus et posthac, multa invenio summo cum judicio observata;

illud vero sæculo gratulor, repertos homines, qui neutiquam in

controversiis subtilibus tantum ponunt, quantum in vera vitæ

emendatione, et quotidiano ad sanctitatem profectu. Epist. 280

(1631). He wrote with kindness and regret on the breaking up of

the establishment at Racow in 1638. Ep. 1006: Grotius has been as

obnoxious on the score of Socinianism as of Popery. His

Commentaries on the Scriptures are taxed with it, and in fact he

is not in good odour with any but the Arminian divines, nor do

they, we see, wholly agree with him.

[96] Ruarus nearly agreed with Grotius as to the atonement; at

least the latter thought so. De satisfactione ita mihi respondit,

ut nihil admodum controversiæ relinqueretur. Grot. Epist. 2da

series, p. 881. See also Ruari Epistolæ, p. 148, 282. He paid

also more respect to the second century than some of his

brethren, p. 100, 439, and even struggles to agree with the

Ante-Nicene fathers, though he cannot come up to them, p. 275,

296. But in answer to some of his correspondents who magnified

primitive authority, he well replies: Deinde quæro quis illos

fixit veritati terminos? quis duo illa prima sæcula ab omni

errore absolvit? Annon ecclesiastica historia satis testatur,

nonnullas opiniones portentosas jam tum inter eos qui nomen

Christi dederant, invaluisse? Quin ut verum fatear, res ipsa

docet nonnullos posterioris sevi acutius in enodandis Scripturis

versatos; et ut de nostra ætate dicam, valde me pœniteret Calvini

vestri ac Bezæ si nihilo solidius sacras literas

interpretarentur, quam video illos ipsos, quos tu mihi obducis,

fecisse, p. 183. He lamented the fatal swerving from

protestantism into which reverence for antiquity was leading his

friend Grotius: fortassis et antiquitatis veneratio, quæ gravibus

quibusdam Pontificiorum erroribus præluxit, ultra lineam eum

perduxit, p. 277 (1642); and in answer to Mersenne, who seems to

have had some hopes of his conversion, and recommended to him the

controversy of Grotius with Rivet, he plainly replies that the

former had extenuated some things in the church of Rome which

ought to be altered, p. 258. This he frequently laments in the

course of his letters, but treats him with gentleness in

comparison with some of the sterner Socinians. It is remarkable

that even he and Crellius seem to have excluded the members of

the church of Rome, except the “vulgus ineruditum et Cassandri

gregales,” from salvation; and this while almost all churches

were anathematizing themselves in the same way. Ruar. Epist., p.

9 and p. 167.

This book contains two centuries of epistles, the second of which

is said to be very scarce, and I doubt whether many have read the

first, which must excuse my quotations. The learning, sense, and

integrity of Ruarus, as well as the high respect which Calixtus,

Curcellæus, and other great men felt for him, render the book of

some interest. He tells us that while he was in England, about

1617, a professorship at Cambridge was offered to him, worth

100_l_. per annum, besides as much more from private pupils, p.

71. But he probably mistook the civil speeches of individuals for

an offer: he was not eminent enough for such a proposal on the

part of the university; and at least he must have been silent

about his Socinianism. The morality of the early Socinians was

very strict and even ascetic, proofs of which appear in these

letters, p. 306 et alibi.

|Erastianism.|

41. Two questions of great importance which had been raised in the

preceding century, became still more interesting in the present, on

account of the more frequent occasion that the force of circumstances

gave for their investigation, and the greater names that were engaged

in it. Both of these arose out of the national establishment of

churches, and their consequent relation to the commonwealth. One

regarded the power of the magistrate over the church he recognized;

the other involved the right of his subjects to dissent from it by

non-conformity, or by a different mode of worship.

|Maintained by Hooker.|

|And Grotius.|

42. Erastus, by proposing to substitute for the ancient discipline of

ecclesiastical censures, and especially for excommunication, a

perpetual superintendence of the civil power over the faith and

practice of the church, had given name to a scheme generally

denominated Erastianism, though in some respects far broader than

anything he seems to have suggested. It was more elaborately

maintained by Hooker in his Ecclesiastical Polity, and had been, in

fact, that on which the English reformation under Henry was originally

founded. But as it was manifestly opposed to the ultra-montane

pretensions of the See of Rome, and even to the more moderate theories

of the catholic church, being, of course, destructive of her

independence, so did it stand in equal contradiction to the

Presbyterian scheme of Scotland and of the United Provinces. In the

latter country, the states of Holland had been favourable to the

Arminians, so far at least as to repress any violence against them;

the clergy were exasperated and intolerant; and this raised the

question of civil supremacy, in which Grotius, by one of his early

works entitled Pietas Ordinum Hollandiæ, published in 1613, sustained

the right of the magistrate to inhibit dangerous controversies.

|His Treatise on ecclesiastical power of the state.|

43. He returned, after the lapse of some years, to the same theme in a

larger and more comprehensive work, De Imperio Summarum Potestatum

circa Sacra. It is written upon the Anglican principles of regal

supremacy, which had, however, become far less popular with the rulers

of our church, than in the days of Cranmer, Whitgift, and Hooker.

After stating the question, and proving the ecclesiastical power of

the magistrate by natural law, Scripture, established usage, agreement

of Heathen and Christian writers, and the reason of the thing, he

distinguishes control over sacred offices from their exercise, and

proceeds to inquire whether the magistrate may take the latter on

himself; which, though practised in the early ages of the world, he

finds inconvenient at present, the manners required for the regal and

sacerdotal character being wholly different.[97]

[97] Cap. 4.

44. Actions may be prescribed or forbidden by natural divine law,

positive divine law, or human law; the latter extending to nothing but

what is left indefinite by the other two. But though we are bound not

to act in obedience to human laws which contradict the divine, we are

also bound not forcibly to resist them. We may defend ourselves by

force against an equal, not against a superior, as he proves first

from the Digest, and secondly from the New Testament.[98] Thus the

rule of passive obedience is unequivocally laid down. He meets the

recent examples of resistance to sovereigns, by saying that they

cannot be approved where the kings have had an absolute power; but

where they are bound by compact or the authority of a senate or of

estates, since their power is not unlimited, they may be resisted on

just grounds by that authority.[99] “Which I remark,” he proceeds to

say, “lest any one, as I sometimes have known, should disgrace a good

cause by a mistaken defence.”

[98] Cap. 3.

[99] Sin alicubi reges tales fuere, qui pactis sive positivis

legibus et senatus alicujus aut ordinum decretis adstringerentur,

in hos, ut summum imperium non obtinent, arma ex optimatum

tanquam superiorum sententia sumi justis de causis potuerunt.

Ibid.

45. The magistrate can alter nothing which is definitely laid down by

the positive law of God; but he may regulate the circumstantial

observance even of such; and as to things undefined in Scripture he

has plenary jurisdiction; such as the temporalities of the church, the

convocation of synods, the election of pastors. The burthen of proof

lies on those who would limit the civil power by affirming anything to

be prescribed by the divine law.[100] The authority attributed in

Scripture to churches does not interfere with the power of the

magistrate, being persuasive and not coercive. The whole church has no

coercive power by divine right.[101] But since the visible church is a

society of divine institution, it follows that whatever is naturally

competent to a lawful society, is competent also to the

church, unless it can be proved to be withdrawn from it.[102] It has,

therefore, a legislative government (regimen constitutivum), of which

he gives the institution of the Lord’s day as an example. But this

does not impair the sovereign’s authority in ecclesiastical matters.

In treating of that supremacy, he does not clearly show what

jurisdiction he attributes to the magistrate; most of his instances

relating to the temporalities of the church, as to which no question

is likely to arise.[103] But, on the whole, he means undoubtedly to

carry the supremacy as far as is done in England.

[100] Ibid.

[101] Cap. 4.

[102] Quandoquidem ecclesia cœtus est divina lege non permissus

tantum sed et institutus, de aspectabili cœtu loquor, sequitur ea

omnia quæ cœtibus legitimis naturaliter competunt, etiam ecclesiæ

competere, quatenus adempta non probantur. Ibid.

[103] Cap. 5.

46. In a chapter on the due exercise of the civil supremacy over the

church, he shows more of a protestant feeling than would have been

found in him when he approached the latter years of his life;[104] and

declares fully against submission to any visible authority in matters

of faith, so that sovereigns are not bound to follow the ministers of

the church in what they may affirm as doctrine. Ecclesiastical synods

he deems often useful, but thinks the magistrate is not bound to act

with their consent, and that they are sometimes pernicious.[105] The

magistrate may determine who shall compose such synods;[106] a strong

position which he endeavours to prove at great length. Even if the

members are elected by the church, the magistrate may reject those

whom he reckons unfit; he may preside in the assembly, confirm,

reject, annul its decisions. He may also legislate about the whole

organisation of the established church.[107] It is for him to

determine what form of religion shall be publicly exercised; an

essential right of sovereignty as political writers have laid it down.

And this is confirmed by experience; “for if any one shall ask why the

Romish religion flourished in England under Mary, the protestant under

Elizabeth, no cause can be assigned but the pleasure of these queens,

or, as some might say, of the queens and parliaments.” In this manner

Grotius disposes of a great question of casuistry by what has been

done; as if murder and adultery might not be established by the same

logic. Natural law would be resolved into history, were we always to

argue in a similar way. But this, as will appear more fully hereafter,

is not the usual reasoning of Grotius. To the objection from the

danger of abuse in conceding so much power to the sovereign, he

replies that no other theory will secure us better. On every

supposition the power must be lodged in men, who are all liable to

error. We must console ourselves by a trust in divine providence

alone.[108]

[104] Cap. 6. He states the question to be this: An post

apostolorum ætatem aut persona aut cœtus sit aliquis

aspectabilis, de quâ quove certi esse possimus ac debeamus,

quæcunque ab ipsis proponantur, esse indubitatæ veritatis. Negant

hoc Evangelici; aiunt Romanenses.

[105] Cap. 7.

[106] Designare eos, qui ad synodum sunt venturi.

[107] Cap. 8. Nulla in re magis elucescit vis summi imperii, quam

quod in ejus arbitrio est quænam religio publicè exerceatur,

idque præcipuum inter majestatis jura ponunt omnes qui politicè

scripserunt. Docet idem experientia; si enim quæras cur in Anglia

Maria regnante Romana religio, Elizabetha vero imperante,

Evangelica viguerit, causa proxima reddi non poterit, nisi ex

arbitrio reginarum, aut, ut quibusdam videtur, reginarum ac

parlamenti, p. 242.

[108] Cap. 8.

47. The sovereign may abolish false religions and punish their

professors, which no one else can. Here again we find precedents

instead of arguments; but he says that the primitive church

disapproved of capital punishments for heresy, which seems to be his

main reason for doing the same. The sovereign may also enjoin silence

in controversies, and inspect the conduct of the clergy without

limiting himself by the canons, though he will do well to regard them.

Legislation and jurisdiction, that is, of a coercive nature, do not

belong to the church, except as they may be conceded to it by the

civil power.[109] He fully explains the various kinds of

ecclesiastical law that have been gradually introduced. Even the power

of the keys, which is by divine right, cannot be so exercised as to

exclude the appellant jurisdiction of the sovereign; as he proves by

the Roman law, and by the usage of the parliament of Paris.[110]

[109] Ibid.

[110] Cap. 9.

48. The sovereign has a control (inspectionem cum imperio) over the

ordination of priests, and certainly possesses a right of

confirmation, that is, the assignment of an ordained minister to a

given cure.[111] And though the election of pastors belongs to the

church, this may, for good reasons, be taken into the hands of the

sovereign. Instances in point are easily found, and the

chapter upon the subject contains an interesting historical summary of

this part of ecclesiastical law. In every case, the sovereign has a

right of annulling an election, and also of removing a pastor from the

local exercise of his ministry.[112]

[111] Cap. 10. Confirmationem hanc summæ potestati acceptam

ferendam nemo sanus negaverit.

[112] Cap. 10.

|Remark upon this theory.|

49. This is the full development of an Erastian theory, which Cranmer

had early espoused, and which Hooker had maintained in a less

extensive manner. Bossuet has animadverted upon it, nor can it appear

tolerable to a zealous churchman.[113] It was well received in England

by the lawyers, who had always been jealous of the spiritual

tribunals, especially of late years, when, under the patronage of

Laud, they had taken a higher tone than seemed compatible with the

supremacy of the common law. The scheme, nevertheless, is open to some

objections when propounded in so unlimited a manner, none of which is

more striking than that it tends to convert differences of religious

opinion into crimes against the state, and furnishes bigotry with new

arguments as well as new arms, in its conflict with the free exercise

of human reason. Grotius, however, feared rather that he had given too

little power to the civil magistrate than too much.[114]

[113] See Le Clerc’s remarks on what Bossuet has said.

Bibliothèque Choisie, v. 349.

[114] Ego multo magis vereor, ne minus quam par est

magistratibus, aut plusquam par est pastoribus tribuerim, quam ne

in alteram partem iterum (?) excesserim, nec sic quidem illis

satisfiet qui se ecclesiam vocant. Epist. 42. This was in 1614,

after the publication of the Pietas Ordinum Hollandiæ. As he drew

nearer to the church of Rome, or that of Canterbury, he must

probably have somewhat modified his Erastianism. And yet he seems

never to have been friendly to the temporal power of bishops. He

writes in August, 1641, Episcopis Angliæ videtur mansurum nomen

prope sine re, accisa et opulentia et auctoritate. Mihi non

displicet ecclesiæ pastores et ab inani pompa et a curis

sæcularium rerum sublevari, p. 1011. He had a regard for Laud, as

the restorer of a reverence for primitive antiquity, and

frequently laments his fate; but had said, in 1640, Doleo quod

episcopi nimium intendendo potentiæ suæ nervos odium sibi potius

quam amorem populorum pariunt. Ep. 1390.

|Toleration of religious tenets.|

50. Persecution for religious heterodoxy, in all its degrees, was in

the sixteenth century the principle, as well as the practice of every

church. It was held inconsistent with the sovereignty of the

magistrate to permit any religion but his own; inconsistent with his

duty to suffer any but the true. The edict of Nantes was a compromise

between belligerent parties; the toleration of the dissidents in

Poland was nearly of the same kind; but no state, powerful enough to

restrain its sectaries from the exercise of their separate worship,

had any scruples about the right and obligation to do so. Even the

writers of that century, who seemed most strenuous for toleration,

Castalio, Celso, and Koornhert, had confined themselves to denying the

justice of penal and especially of capital inflictions for heresy; the

liberty of public worship had but incidentally, if at all, been

discussed. Acontius had developed larger principles, distinguishing

the fundamental from the accessory doctrines of the gospel; which, by

weakening the associations of bigotry, prepared the way for a catholic

tolerance. Episcopius speaks in the strongest terms of the treatise of

Acontius, de Stratagematibus Satanæ, and says that the Remonstrants

trod closely in his steps, as would appear by comparing their

writings; so that he shall quote no passages in proof, their entire

books bearing witness to the conformity.[115]

[115] Episcop. Opera, i. 301 (edit. 1665.)

|Claimed by the Arminians.|

51. The Arminian dispute led by necessary consequence to the question

of public toleration. They sought at first a free admission to the

pulpits, and in an excellent speech of Grotius, addressed to the

magistrates of Amsterdam in 1616, he objects to a separate toleration

as rending the bosom of the church. But it was soon evident that

nothing more could be obtained; and their adversaries refused this.

They were driven therefore to contend for religious liberty, and the

writings of Episcopius are full of this plea. Against capital

punishment for heresy he raises his voice with indignant severity, and

asserts that the whole Christian world abhorred the fatal precedent of

Calvin in the death of Servetus.[116] This indicates a remarkable

change already wrought in the sentiments of mankind. Certain it is

that no capital punishments for heresy were inflicted in protestant

countries after this time; nor were they as frequently or as

boldly vindicated as before.[117]

[116] Calvinus signum primus extulit supra alios omnes, et

exemplum dedit in theatro Gebennesi funestissimum, quodque

Christianus orbis merito execratur et abominatur; nec hoc

contentus tam atroci ficinore, cruento simul animo et calamo

parentavit. Apologia pro Confess. Remonstrantium, c. 24, p. 241.

The whole passage is very remarkable, as an indignant reproof of

a party, who, while living under popish governments, cry out for

liberty of conscience, and deny the right of punishing opinions;

yet, in all their writings and actions when they have the power,

display the very opposite principles.

[117] De hæreticorum pœnis quæ scripsi, in iis mecum sentit

Gallia et Germania, ut puto, omnis. Grot. Epist., p. 941 (1642.)

Some years sooner there had been remains of the leaven in France.

Adversus hæreticidia, he says, in 1626, satis ut arbitror plane

locutus sum, certè ita ut hic multos ob id offenderim, p. 789.

Our own Fuller, I am sorry to say, in his Church History, written

about 1650, speaks with some disapprobation of the sympathy of

the people with Legat and Wightman, burned by James I., in 1614;

and this is the more remarkable, as he is a well-natured and not

generally bigoted writer. I should think he was the latest

protestant who has tarnished his name by such sentiments. James,

who in some countries would have had certain reasons for dreading

the fire himself, designed to have burned a third heretic, if the

humanity of the multitude had not been greater than his own.

|By the independents.|

|And by Jeremy Taylor.|

52. The Independents claim to themselves the honour of having been the

first to maintain the principles of general toleration, both as to

freedom of worship, and immunity from penalties for opinion. But that

the Arminians were not as early promulgators of the same noble tenets,

seems not to have been proved. Crellius in his Vindiciæ pro Religionis

Libertate, 1636, contended for the Polish dissidents, and especially

for his own sect.[118] The principle is implied, if not expressed, in

the writings of Chillingworth, and still more of Hales; but the first

famous plea, in this country, for tolerance in religion, on a

comprehensive basis and on deep-seated foundations, was the liberty of

Prophesying by Jeremy Taylor. This celebrated work was written

according to Taylor’s dedication, during his retirement in Wales,

wither he was driven, as he expresses it, “by this great storm which

hath dashed the vessel of the church all in pieces,” and published in

1647. He speaks of himself as without access to books; it is evident,

however, from the abundance of his quotations, that he was not much in

want of them: and from this, as well as other strong indications, we

may reasonably believe, that a considerable part of this treatise had

been committed to paper long before.

[118] This short tract, which will be found among the collected

works of Crellius, in the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, contains

a just and temperate pleading for religious liberty, but little

which can appear very striking in modern times. It is said,

nevertheless, to have been translated and republished by

D’Holbach about 1760. This I have not seen, but there must, I

presume, have been a good deal of _condiment_ added to make it

stimulating enough for that school.

|His Liberty of Prophesying.|

53. The argument of this important book rests on one leading maxim,

derived from the Arminian divines, as it was in them from Erasmus and

Acontius, that the fundamental truths of Christianity are comprised in

narrow compass, not beyond the Apostles’ creed in its literal meaning;

that all the rest is matter of disputation, and too uncertain, for the

most part, to warrant our condemning those who differ from us, as if

their error must be criminal. This one proposition, much expanded,

according to Taylor’s diffuse style, and displayed in a variety of

language, pervades the whole treatise; a small part of which, in

comparison with the rest, bears immediately on the point of political

toleration, as a duty of civil governments and of churches invested

with power. In the greater portion, Taylor is rather arguing against

that dogmatism of judgment, which induces men, either singly or

collectively, to pronounce with confidence where only a varying

probability can be attained. This spirit is the religious, though not

entirely the political, motive of intolerance; and, by chasing this

from the heart, he inferred not that he should lay wide the door to

universal freedom, but dispose the magistrate to consider more

equitably the claims of every sect. “Whatsoever is against the

foundation of faith, or contrary to good life and the laws of

obedience, or destructive to human society and the public and just

interests of bodies politic, is out of the limits of my question, and

does not pretend to compliance or toleration; so that I allow no

indifferency, nor any countenance to those religions whose principles

destroy government, nor to those religions, if there be any such, that

teach ill life.”

|Boldness of his doctrines.|

54. No man, as Taylor here teaches, is under any obligation to believe

that in revelation, which is not so revealed, but that wise men and

good men have differed in their opinions about it. And the great

variety of opinions in churches, and even in the same church, “there

being none that is in prosperity,” as he, with rather a startling

boldness puts it, “but changes her doctrines every age, either by

bringing in new doctrines, or by contradicting her old,” shows that we

can have no term of union, but that wherein all agree, the creed of

the apostles.[119] And hence, though we may undoubtedly carry

on our own private inquiries as much farther as we see reason, none

who hold this fundamental faith are to be esteemed heretics, nor

liable to punishment. And here he proceeds to reprove all those

oblique acts which are not direct persecutions of men’s persons, the

destruction of books, the forbidding the publication of new ones, the

setting out fraudulent editions and similar acts of falsehood, by

which men endeavour to stifle or prevent religious inquiry. “It is a

strange industry and an importune diligence that was used by our

forefathers; of all those heresies which gave them battle and

employment, we have absolutely no record or monument, but what

themselves, who are adversaries, have transmitted to us; and we know

that adversaries, especially such who observed all opportunities to

discredit both the persons and doctrines of the enemy, are not always

the best records or witnesses of such transactions. We see it now in

this very age, in the present distemperatures, that parties are no

good registers of the actions of the adverse side; and, if we cannot

be confident of the truth of a story now, now I say that it is

possible for any man, and likely that the interested adversary will

discover the imposture, it is far more unlikely that after ages should

know any other truth, but such as serves the ends of the

representers.”[120]

[119] “Since no churches believe themselves infallible, that only

excepted which all other churches say is most of all deceived, it

were strange if, in so many articles, which make up their several

bodies of confessions, they had not mistaken, every one of them,

in some thing or other.” This is Taylor’s fearless mode of

grappling with his argument; and any other must give a church

that claims infallibility the advantage.

[120] Vol. vii, p. 424. Heber’s edition of Taylor.

|His notions of uncertainty in theological tenets.|

55. None were accounted heretics by the primitive church, who held by

the Apostles’ creed, till the council of Nice defined some things,

rightly indeed, as Taylor professes to believe, but perhaps with too

much alteration of the simplicity of ancient faith, so that “he had

need be a subtle man who understands the very words of the new

determinations.” And this was carried much farther by later councils,

and in the Athanasian creed, of which, though protesting his own

persuasion in its truth, he intimates not a little disapprobation. The

necessary articles of faith are laid down clearly in Scripture; but no

man can be secure, as to mysterious points, that he shall certainly

understand and believe them in their true sense. This he shows first

from the great discrepancy of reading in manuscripts, (an argument

which he over-states in a very uncritical and incautious manner);

next, from the different senses the words will bear, which there is no

certain mark to distinguish, the infinite variety of human

understandings, swayed, it may be, by interest, or determined by

accidental and extrinsical circumstances, and the fallibility of those

means, by which men hope to attain a clear knowledge of scriptural

truth. And after exposing, certainly with no extenuation, the

difficulties of interpretation, he concludes that since these ordinary

means of expounding Scripture are very dubious, “he that is the

wisest, and by consequence the likeliest to expound truest, in all

probability of reason, will be very far from confidence; and,

therefore, a wise man would not willingly be prescribed to by others;

and if he be also a just man, he will not impose upon others; for it

is best every man should be left in that liberty, from which no man

can justly take him, unless he could secure him from error; so here

there is a necessity to conserve the liberty of prophesying and

interpreting Scripture; a necessity derived from the consideration of

the difficulty of Scripture in questions controverted, and the

uncertainty of any internal medium of interpretation.”

|His low opinion of the fathers.|

56. Taylor would in much of this have found an echo in the advocates

of the church of Rome, and in some protestants of his own communion;

but he passed onward to assail their bulwarks. Tradition or the

testimony of the church, he holds insufficient and uncertain, for the

reasons urged more fully by Daillé; the authority of councils is

almost equally precarious, from their inconsistency, their liability

to factious passions, and the doubtful authenticity of some of their

acts; the pope’s claim to infallibility is combated on the usual

grounds; the judgment of the fathers is shown to be inconclusive by

their differences among themselves, and their frequent errors; and

professing a desire that “their great reputation should be preserved

as sacred as it ought,” he refers the reader to Daillé for other

things; and, “shall only consider that the writings of the fathers

have been so corrupted by the intermixture of heretics, so many false

books put forth in their names, so many of their writings lost which

would more clearly have explicated their sense, and, at last, an open

profession made and a trade of making the fathers speak not

what themselves thought, but what other men pleased, that it is a

great instance of God’s providence and care of his church, that we

have so much good preserved in the writings which we receive from the

fathers, and that all truth is not as clear gone as is the certainty

of their great authority and reputation.”[121]

[121] It seems not quite easy to reconcile this with what Taylor

has just before said of his desire to preserve the reputation of

the fathers sacred. In no writer is it more necessary to observe

the _animus_ with which he writes; for, giving way to his

impetuosity, when he has said anything that would give offence,

or which he thought incautious, it was not his custom, so far as

we can judge, to expunge or soften it, but to insert something

else of an opposite colour, without taking any pains to harmonize

his context. He probably revised hardly at all what he had

written before it went to the press. This makes it easy to quote

passages, especially short ones, from Taylor, which do not

exhibit his real way of thinking; if, indeed, his way of thinking

itself did not vary with the wind that blew from different

regions of controversy.

|Difficulty of finding out truth.|

57. The authority of the church cannot be any longer alleged when

neither that of popes and councils, nor of ancient fathers is

maintainable; since the diffusive church has no other means of

speaking, nor can we distinguish by any extrinsic test the greater or

better portion of it from the worse. And thus, after dismissing

respectfully the pretences of some to expound Scripture by the Spirit,

as impertinent to the question of dictating the faith of others, he

comes to the reason of each man, as the best judge for himself, of

religious controversies; reason, that may be exercised either in

choosing a guide, if it feel its own incompetency, or in examining the

grounds of belief. The latter has great advantages, and no man is

bound to know anything of that concerning which he is not able to

judge for himself. But reason may err, as he goes on to prove, without

being culpable; that which is plain to one understanding being obscure

to another, and among various sources of error which he enumerates as

incidental to mankind, that of education being “so great and

invincible a prejudice, that he who masters the inconvenience of it is

more to be commended than he can justly be blamed that complies with

it.” And thus not only single men but whole bodies take unhesitatingly

and unanimously opposite sides from those who have imbibed another

kind of instruction, and “it is strange that all the Dominicans should

be of one opinion in the matter of predestination and immaculate

conception, and all the Franciscans of the quite contrary, as if their

understandings were formed in a different mould and furnished with

various principles by their very rule.” These and the like prejudices

are not absolute excuses to every one, and are often accompanied with

culpable dispositions of mind; but the impossibility of judging others

renders it incumbent on us to be lenient towards all, and neither to

be peremptory in denying that those who differ from us have used the

best means in their power to discover the truth, nor to charge their

persons, whatever we may their opinions, with odious consequences

which they do not avow.

|Grounds of toleration.|

58. This diffuse and not very well arranged vindication of diversity

of judgment in religion, comprised in the first twelve sections of the

Liberty of Prophesying, is the proper basis of the second part, which

maintains the justice of toleration as a consequence from the former

principle. The general arguments, or prejudices, on which punishment

for religious tenets had been sustained, turned on their criminality

in the eyes of God, and the duty of the magistrate to sustain God’s

honour and to guard his own subjects from sin. Taylor, not denying

that certain and known idolatry, or any sort of practical impiety, may

be punished corporally, because it is matter of fact, asserts that no

matter of mere opinion, no errors that of themselves are not sins, are

to be persecuted or punished by death or corporal infliction. He

returns to his favourite position, that “we are not sure not to be

deceived;” mingling this, in that inconsequent allocation of his

proofs which frequently occurs in his writings, with other arguments

of a different nature. The governors of the church, indeed, may

condemn and restrain as far as their power extends, any false doctrine

which encourages evil life, or destroys the foundations of religion;

but if the church meddles farther with any matters of question, which

have not this tendency, so as to dictate what men are to believe, she

becomes tyrannical and uncharitable; the Apostles’ creed being

sufficient to conserve the peace of the church and the unity of her

doctrine. And, with respect to the civil magistrate, he concludes that

he is bound to suffer the profession of different opinions, which are

neither directly impious and immoral, nor disturb the public peace.

|Inconsistency of one chapter.|

59. The seventeenth chapter, in which Taylor professes to consider

which among the sects of Christendom are to be tolerated and

in what degree, is written in a tone not easily reconciled with that

of the rest. Though he begins by saying that diversity of opinions

does more concern public peace than religion, it certainly appears in

some passages, that on this pretext of peace, which with the

magistrate has generally been of more influence than that of

orthodoxy, he withdraws a great deal of that liberty of prophesying

which he has been so broadly asserting. Punishment for religious

tenets is doubtless not at all the same as restraint of separate

worship; yet we are not prepared for the shackles he seems inclined to

throw over the latter. Laws of ecclesiastical discipline, which, in

Taylor’s age, were understood to be binding on the whole community,

cannot, he holds, be infringed by those who take occasion to disagree,

without rendering authority contemptible; and if there are any as

zealous for obedience to the church, as others may be for their

opinions against it, the toleration of the latter’s disobedience may

give offence to the former: an argument strange enough in this

treatise! But Taylor is always more prone to accumulate reasons than

to sift their efficiency. It is indeed, he thinks, worthy to be

considered in framing a law of church discipline, whether it will be

disliked by any who are to obey it; but, after it is once enacted,

there seems no further indulgence practicable than what the governors

of the church may grant to particular persons by dispensation. The

laws of discipline are for the public good, and must not so far

tolerate a violation of themselves as to destroy the good that the

public ought to derive from them.[122]

[122] This single chapter is of itself conclusive against the

truth of Taylor’s own allegation that he wrote his Liberty of

Prophesying in order to procure toleration for the episcopal

church of England at the hands of those who had overthrown it. No

one ever dreamed of refusing freedom of opinion to that church;

it was only about public worship that any difficulty could arise.

But, in truth, there is not one word in the whole treatise which

could have been written with the view that Taylor pretends.

|His general defence of toleration.|

60. I am inclined to suspect that Taylor, for some cause, interpolated

this chapter after the rest of the treatise was complete. It has as

little bearing upon, and is as inconsistent in spirit with, the

following sections as with those that precede. To use a familiar

illustration, the effect it produces on the reader’s mind is like that

of coming on deck at sea, and finding that, the ship having put about,

the whole line of coast is reversed to the eye. Taylor, however, makes

but a short tack. In the next section, he resumes the bold tone of an

advocate for freedom; and, after discussing at great length the

leading tenet of the Anabaptists, concludes that, resting as it does

on such plausible, though insufficient grounds, we cannot exclude it

by any means from toleration, though they may be restrained from

preaching their other notions of the unlawfulness of war, or of oaths,

or of capital punishment; it being certain that no good religion

teaches doctrines whose consequences would destroy all government. A

more remarkable chapter is that in which Taylor concludes in favour of

tolerating the Romanists, except when they assert the pope’s power of

deposing princes, or of dispensing with oaths. The result of all, he

says, is this: “Let the prince and the secular power have a care the

commonwealth be safe. For whether such or such a sect of Christians be

to be permitted, is a question rather political than religious.”

61. In the concluding sections he maintains the right of particular

churches to admit all who profess the Apostles’ creed to their

communion, and of private men to communicate with different churches,

if they require no unlawful condition. But “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.” “The guilt of

schism may lie on him who least thinks it; he being rather the

schismatic who makes unnecessary and inconvenient impositions, than he

who disobeys them, because he cannot do otherwise without violating

his conscience.”[123] The whole treatise on the Liberty of Prophesying

ends with the celebrated parable of Abraham, found, as Taylor says,

“in the Jews’ books,” but really in an Arabian writer. This story

Franklin, as every one now knows, rather unhandsomely appropriated to

himself; and it is a strange proof of the ignorance as to our earlier

literature which then prevailed, that for many years it continued to

be quoted with his name. It was not contained in the first

editions of the Liberty of Prophesying; and, indeed, the book from

which Taylor is supposed to have borrowed it was not published till

1641.

[123] This is said also by Hales, in his tract on Schism, which

was published some years before the Liberty of Prophesying. It

is, however, what Taylor would have thought without a prompter.

62. Such is this great pleading for religious moderation; a production

not more remarkable in itself than for the quarter from which it came.

In the polemical writings of Jeremy Taylor we generally find a staunch

and uncompromising adherence to one party; and from the abundant use

he makes of authority, we should infer that he felt a great veneration

for it. In the Liberty of Prophesying, as has appeared by the general

sketch, rather than analysis we have just given, there is a prevailing

tinge of the contrary turn of mind, more striking than the comparison

of insulated passages can be. From what motives, and under what

circumstances, this treatise was written, is not easily discerned. In

the dedication to Lord Hatton of the collective edition of his

controversial writings after the Restoration, he declares that “when a

persecution did arise against the church of England, he intended to

make a reservative for his brethren and himself, by pleading for a

liberty to our consciences to persevere in that profession, which was

warranted by all the laws of God and our superiors.” It is with regret

we are compelled to confess some want of ingenuousness in this part of

Taylor’s proceedings. No one reading the Liberty of Prophesying can

perceive that it had the slightest bearing on any toleration that the

episcopal church, in the time of the civil war, might ask of her

victorious enemies. The differences between them were not on

speculative points of faith, nor turning on an appeal to fathers and

councils. That Taylor had another class of controversies in his mind

is sufficiently obvious to the attentive reader, and I can give no

proof in this place to any other.

|Effect of this treatise.|

63. This was the third blow that the new latitudinarian school of

Leyden had aimed in England at the positive dogmatists, who, in all

the reformed churches, as in that of Rome, laboured to impose

extensive confessions of faith, abounding in inferences of scholastic

theology, as conditions of exterior communion, and as peremptory

articles of faith. Chillingworth and Hales were not less decisive; but

the former had but in an incidental manner glanced at the subject, and

the short tract on Schism had been rather deficient in proof of its

hardy paradoxes. Taylor, therefore, may be said to have been the first

who sapped and shook the foundations of dogmatism and pretended

orthodoxy; the first who taught men to seek peace in unity of spirit

rather than of belief; and, instead of extinguishing dissent, to take

away its sting by charity, and by a sense of human fallibility. The

mind thus freed from bigotry is best prepared for the public

toleration of differences in religion; but certainly the despotic and

jealous temper of governments is not so well combated by Taylor as by

later advocates of religious freedom.

|Its defects.|

64. In conducting his argument, he falls not unfrequently into his

usual fault. Endowed with a mind of prodigious fertility, which a vast

erudition rendered more luxuriant he accumulates without selection

whatever presents itself to his mind; his innumerable quotations, his

multiplied reasonings, his prodigality of epithets and appositions,

are poured along the interminable periods of his writings, with a

frequency of repetition, sometimes of the same phrases, which leaves

us to suspect that he revised but little what he had very rapidly

composed. Certain it is that, in his different works, he does not

quite adhere to himself; and it would be more desirable to lay this on

the partial views that haste and impetuosity produce, than on a

deliberate employment of what he knew to be insufficient reasoning.

But I must acknowledge that Taylor’s fairness does not seem his

characteristic quality.

65. In some passages of the Liberty of Prophesying, he seems to

exaggerate the causes of uncertainty, and to take away from

ecclesiastical antiquity even that moderate probability of truth which

a dispassionate inquirer may sometimes assign to it. His suspicions of

spuriousness and interpolation are too vaguely sceptical, and come ill

from one who has no sort of hesitation, in some of his controversies,

to allege as authority what he here sets aside with little ceremony.

Thus, in the Defence of Episcopacy, published in 1642, he maintains

the authenticity of the first fifty of the apostolic canons, all of

which, in the Liberty of Prophesying, a very few years afterwards, he

indiscriminately rejects. But this line of criticism was not then in

so advanced a state as at present; and, from a credulous admission of

everything, the learned had come sometimes to more sweeping charges of

interpolation and forgery than would be sustained on a more searching

investigation. Taylor’s language is so unguarded that he seems to

leave the authenticity of all the fathers precarious. Doubtless there

is a greater want of security as to books written before the invention

of printing than we are apt to conceive, especially where independent

manuscripts have not been found; but it is the business of a sagacious

criticism, by the aid of internal or collateral evidence, to

distinguish, not dogmatically as most are wont, but with a rational,

though limited assent, the genuine remains of ancient writers from the

incrustations of blundering or of imposture.

|Great erudition of this period.|

|Usher, Fetavius.|

66. A prodigious reach of learning distinguishes the theologians of

these fifty years, far greater than even in the sixteenth century; and

also, if I am not mistaken, more critical and pointed, though in these

latter qualities it was afterwards surpassed. And in this erudition

the Protestant churches we may perhaps say, were upon the whole more

abundant than that of Rome. But it would be unprofitable to enumerate

works which we are incompetent to appreciate. Blondel, Daillé, and

Salmasius on the continent, Usher in England, are the most conspicuous

names. Blondel sustained the equality of the apostolic church both

against the primacy of Rome, and the episcopacy for which the

Anglicans contended; Salmasius and Daillé fought on the same side in

that controversy. The writings of our Irish primate, Usher, who

maintained the antiquity of his order, but not upon such ground as

many in England would have desired, are known for their extraordinary

learning, in which he has perhaps never been surpassed by an English

writer. But for judgment and calm appreciation of evidence, the name

of Usher has not been altogether so much respected by posterity, as it

was by his contemporaries. The church of Rome had its champions of

less eminent renown: Gretser, perhaps the first among them, is not

very familiar to our ears; but it is to be remembered, that some of

the writings of Bellarmin fall within this period. The Dogmata

Theologica of the jesuit Petavius, though but a compilation from the

fathers and ancient councils, and not peculiarly directed against the

tenets of the reformed, may deserve mention as a monument of useful

labour.[124] Labbe, Sirmond, and several others, appear to range more

naturally under the class of historical than theological writers. In

mere ecclesiastical history--the records of events rather than

opinions--this period was far more profound and critical than the

preceding. The annals of Baronius were abridged and continued by

Spondanus.

[124] The Dogmata Theologica is not a complete work; it extends

only at far as the head of free will. It belongs to the class of

Loci Communes. Morhof, ii. 539.

|Sacred criticism.|

|Grotius, Coccejus.|

67. A numerous list of writers in sacred criticism might easily be

produced. Among the Romanists, Cornelius à Lapide has been extolled

above the rest by his fellow jesuit Andrès. His Commentaries,

published from 1617 to 1642, are reckoned by others too diffuse; but

he seems to have a fair reputation with protestant critics.[125] The

Lutherans extol Gerhard, and especially Glass, author of the

Philologia Sacra, in hermeneutical theology. Rivet was the highest

name among the Calvinists. Arminius, Episcopius, the Fratres Poloni,

and indeed almost every one who had to defend a cause, found no course

so ready, at least among protestants as to explain the Scriptures

consistently with his own tenets. Two natives of Holland, opposite in

character, in spirit, and principles of reasoning, and consequently

the founders of opposite schools of disciples, stand out from the

rest--Grotius and Coccejus. Luther, Calvin, and the generality of

protestant interpreters in the sixteenth century had, in most

instances, rejected with some contempt the allegorical and

multifarious senses of Scripture which had been introduced by the

fathers, and had prevailed through the dark ages of the church. This

adherence to the literal meaning was doubtless promoted by the tenet

they all professed, the facility of understanding Scripture. That

which was designed for the simple and illiterate, was not to require a

key to any esoteric sense. Grotius, however, in his Annotations on the

Old and New Testament, published in 1633--the most remarkable book of

this kind that had appeared, and which has had a more durable

reputation than any perhaps of its precursors--carried the system of

literal interpretation still farther, bringing great stores of

illustrative learning from profane antiquity, but merely to elucidate

the primary meaning, according to ordinary rules of criticism.

Coccejus followed a wholly opposite course. Every passage, in his

method, teemed with hidden senses; the narratives, least capable of

any ulterior application, were converted into typical allusions, so

that the Old Testament became throughout an enigmatical representation

of the New. He was also remarkable for having viewed, more than any

preceding writer, all the relations between God and man under the form

of covenants, and introduced the technical language of jurisprudence

into theology. This became a very usual mode of treating the subject

in Holland, and afterwards in England. The Coccejans were numerous in

the United Provinces, though not perhaps deemed quite so orthodox as

their adversaries, who, from Gisbert Voet, a theologian of the most

inflexible and polemical spirit, were denominated Voetians. Their

disputes began a little before the middle of the century, and lasted

till nearly its close.[126] The Summa Doctrinæ of Coccejus appeared in

1648, and the Dissertationes Theologicæ of Voet in 1649.

[125] Andrès, Blount. Simon, however, says he is full of an

erudition not to the purpose, which, as his Commentaries on the

Scriptures run to twelve volumes, is not wonderful.

[126] Eichhorn, vi. pt. i., p. 264. Mosheim.

|English Commentators.|

68. England gradually took a prominent share in this branch of sacred

literature. Among the divines of this period, comprehending the reigns

of James and Charles, we may mention Usher, Gataker, Mede, Lightfoot,

Jackson, Field, and Leigh.[127] Gataker stood, perhaps, next to Usher

in general erudition. The fame of Mede has rested, for the most part,

on his interpretations of the Apocalypse. This book had been little

commented upon by the reformers; but in the beginning of the

seventeenth century, several wild schemes of its application to

present or expected events had been broached in Germany. England had

also taken an active part, if it be true what Grotius tells us, that

eighty books on the prophecies had been published here before

1640.[128] Those of Mede have been received with favour by later

interpreters. Lightfoot, with extensive knowledge of the rabbinical

writers, poured his copious stores on Jewish antiquities, preceded in

this by a more obscure labourer in that region, Ainsworth. Jackson had

a considerable name, but is little read, I suppose, in the present

age. Field on the Church has been much praised by Coleridge; it is, as

it seemed to me, a more temperate work in ecclesiastical theory than

some have represented it to be, and written almost wholly against

Rome. Leigh’s Critica Sacra can hardly be reckoned, nor does it claim

to be, more than a compilation from earlier theologians: it is an

alphabetical series of words from the Hebrew and Greek Testaments, the

author candidly admitting that he was not very conversant with the

latter language.

[127] “All confess,” says Selden, in the Table-talk, “there never

was a more learned clergy--no man taxes them with ignorance.” In

another place, indeed, he is represented to say, “The jesuits and

the lawyers of France, and the Low Country-men have engrossed all

learning; the rest of the world make nothing but homilies.” As

far as these sentences are not owing to difference of humour in

the time of speaking, he seems to have taken learning in a larger

sense the second time than the first. Of learning, not

theological the English clergy had no extraordinary portion.

[128] Si qua in re libera esse debet sententia, certè in

vaticiniis præsertim cum jam Protestantium libri prodierint fermè

centum (in his octoginta in Anglia sola, ut mihi Anglici legati

dixere,) super illis rebus, inter se plurimum discordes. Grot.

Epist. 895.

|Style of preaching.|

|English sermons.|

69. The style of preaching before the Reformation had been often

little else than buffoonery, and seldom respectable. The German

sermons of Tauler, in the fourteenth century, are alone remembered.

For the most part, indeed, the clergy wrote in Latin what they

delivered to the multitude in the native tongue. A better tone began

with Luther. His language was sometimes rude and low, but persuasive,

artless, powerful. He gave many useful precepts, as well as examples,

for pulpit eloquence. Melanchthon and several others, both in the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as well in the Lutheran as the

reformed church, endeavoured, by systematic treatises, to guide the

composition of sermons. The former could not, however, withstand the

formal, tasteless, and polemical spirit that overspread their

theology. In the latter a superior tone is perceived. Of these,

according to Eichhorn, the Swiss preachers were most simple and

popular, the Dutch most learned and copious, the French had most taste

and eloquence, the English most philosophy.[129] It is more than

probable that in these characteristics he has meant to comprise the

whole of the seventeenth century. Few continental writers, as far as I

know, that belong to this its first moiety, have earned any remarkable

reputation in this province of theology. In England several might be

distinguished out of a large number. Sermons have been much more

frequently published here than in any other country; and, from the

beginning of the seventeenth century, form a large proportion of our

theological literature. But it is of course not requisite to mention

more than the very few which may be said to have a general

reputation.

[129] Eichhorn, t. vi., part ii., p. 219, et post.

|Of Donne.|

70. The sermons of Donne have sometimes been praised in late times.

They are undoubtedly the productions of a very ingenious and a very

learned man; and two folio volumes by such a person may be expected to

supply favourable specimens. In their general character, they will not

appear, I think, much worthy of being rescued from oblivion. The

subtlety of Donne, and his fondness for such inconclusive reasoning,

as a subtle disputant is apt to fall into, runs through all of these

sermons at which I have looked. His learning he seems to have

perverted in order to cull every impertinence of the fathers and

schoolmen, their remote analogies, their strained allegories, their

technical distinctions; and to these he has added much of a similar

kind from his own fanciful understanding. In his theology, Donne

appears often to incline towards the Arminian hypotheses, which, in

the last years of James and the first of his son, the period in which

these sermons were chiefly preached, had begun to be accounted

orthodox at court; but I will not vouch for his consistency in every

discourse. Much, as usual in that age, is levelled against Rome: Donne

was conspicuously learned in that controversy; and though he talks

with great respect of antiquity, is not induced by it, like some of

his Anglican contemporaries, to make any concession to the

adversary.[130]

[130] Donne incurred some scandal by a book entitled Biathanatos,

and considered as a vindication of suicide. It was published long

after his death, in 1651. It is a very dull and pedantic

performance, without the ingenuity and acuteness of paradox;

distinctions, objections, and quotations from the rabble of bad

authors whom he used to read, fill up the whole of it. It is

impossible to find a less clear statement of argument on either

side. No one would be induced to kill himself by reading such a

book, unless he were threatened with another volume.

|Of Jeremy Taylor.|

71. The sermons of Jeremy Taylor are of much higher reputation; far

indeed above any that had preceded them in the English church. An

imagination essentially poetical, and sparing none of the decorations

which, by critical rules, are deemed almost peculiar to verse; a warm

tone of piety, sweetness, and charity; an accumulation of

circumstantial accessories whenever he reasons, or persuades, or

describes; an erudition pouring itself forth in quotation, till his

sermons become in some places almost a garland of flowers from all

other writers, and especially from those of classical antiquity, never

before so redundantly scattered from the pulpit, distinguish Taylor

from his contemporaries by their degree, as they do from most of his

successors by their kind. His sermons on the Marriage Ring, on the

House of Feasting, on the Apples of Sodom, may be named without

disparagement to others, which perhaps ought to stand in equal place.

But they are not without considerable faults, some of which have just

been hinted. The eloquence of Taylor is great, but it is not eloquence

of the highest class; it is far too Asiatic, too much in the style of

Chrysostom and other declaimers of the fourth century, by the study of

whom he had probably vitiated his taste; his learning is ill placed,

and his arguments often as much so; not to mention that he has the

common defect of alleging nugatory proofs; his vehemence loses its

effect by the circuity of his pleonastic language; his sentences are

of endless length, and hence not only altogether unmusical, but not

always reducible to grammar. But he is still the greatest ornament of

the English pulpit up to the middle of the seventeenth century; and we

have no reason to believe, or rather much reason to disbelieve, that

he had any competitor in other languages.

|Devotional writings of Taylor.|

|And Hall.|

72. The devotional writings of Taylor, several of which belong to the

first part of the century, are by no means of less celebrity or less

value than his sermons. Such are the life of Christ, the Holy Living

and Dying, and the collections of meditations, called the Golden

Grove. A writer as distinguished in works of practical piety was Hall.

His Art of Divine Meditation, his Contemplations, and indeed many of

his writings, remind us frequently of Taylor. Both had equally pious

and devotional tempers; both were full of learning, both fertile of

illustration; both may be said to have had strong imagination and

poetical genius, though Taylor let his predominate a little more.

Taylor is also rather more subtle and argumentive; his copiousness has

more real variety. Hall keeps more closely to his subject, dilates

upon it sometimes more tediously, but more appositely. In his sermons

there is some excess of quotation and far-fetched illustration, but

less than in those of Taylor. These two great divines resemble each

other, on the whole, so much that we might for a short time not

discover which we were reading. I do not know that any third

writer comes close to either. The Contemplations of Hall are among his

most celebrated works. They are prolix, and without much of that

vivacity or striking novelty we meet with in the devotional writings

of his contemporary, but are perhaps more practical and generally

edifying.[131]

[131] Some of the moral writings of Hall were translated into

French by Chevreau in the seventeenth century, and had much

success. Niceron, xi. 348.

|In the Roman.|

73. The religious treatises of this class, even those which by their

former popularity, or their merit, ought to be mentioned in a regular

history of theological literature, are too numerous for these pages. A

mystical and ascetic spirit diffused itself more over religion,

struggling sometimes, as in the Lutherans of Germany, against the

formal orthodoxy of the church, but more often in subordination to its

authority, and cooperating with its functions. The writings of St.

Francis de Sales, titular Bishop of Geneva, especially that on the

Love of God, published in 1616, make a sort of epoch in the devotional

theology of the church of Rome. Those of St. Teresa, in the Spanish

language, followed some years afterwards; they are altogether full of

a mystical theopathy. But De Sales included charity in his scheme of

divine love; and it is to him, as well as others of his age, that not

only a striking revival of religion in France, which had been

absolutely perverted or disregarded in the sixteenth century, was due,

but a reformation in the practices of monastic life, which became more

active and beneficent, with less of useless penance and asceticism

than before. New institutions sprung up with the spirit of

association, and all other animating principles of conventual orders,

but free from the formality and torpor of the old.[132]

[132] Ranke, ii. 430.

|And Lutheran church.|