similarity exists between the times of Dr. Fuller and our own. The same extremes are observable, and unhappily, the same aversion to profit from experience, and to reduce all things to the only unerring standard, the rules of the New Testament; those rules, which, whilst they give but an outline of ecclesiastical discipline, are sufficiently copious in enforcing the Christian spirit, and thus pointing out the true and only apostolic means of securing the spiritual unity of the church.

In these pages may be seen the true Via Media between Popery and Puritanism, exemplified in the life of one who was acknowledged and respected by Bishops Hacket and Hall, Morton and Gunning; and who continued the same through good report, and through evil report, representing to the last, the school of Hooker, rather, the original party and state of the Church of England, as established under the auspices of Queen Elizabeth. That state has long since passed away, but if ever our Church shall recover its former greatness and strength, it will be in an age in which not Laud but Hooker, not Heylyn but Fuller, will be regarded as the faithful representatives of the English Church-system.

All false principles are doomed to work themselves out, and to end in dishonour and oblivion. Thus the present generation may live in assured hope of a period that shall revive the Catholicity

of an uncorrupt Christianity, and that shall unite the scattered remains of truth in one body as it existed in the Apostolic age; and array it in such a vesture of external discipline as may best suit with the altered circumstances of the period to which it shall give a name.

It may be, that the development of truth required those late developments of error which have, under colour of restoring catholicity, rent our age with the most effectual of all divisions, those which neither assume an external form, nor result in open separation.

In such a period as the present, a period of theological and ecclesiastical transition, it seemed best to accord with my duty as a servant of the Lord and of his church, not to confine myself too closely to antiquarian and biographical detail, but to glance at least, at whatsoever topics could profitably connect the memorials of the past with the events of the present times.

This must be my apology for an occasional excursus; an apology, which I cannot, indeed, expect all who may look into these pages to accept; but my object has been, to write in the character not merely of the biographer, but of the divine. Those who can appreciate the motive, will rest satisfied with the apology.

That you, my dear Sir, may long enjoy that do

mestic happiness by which you are so eminently distinguished amongst your neighbours, and that you may be spared to bless your generation by a long continued course of public usefulness, is the hearty desire and prayer of your

Very grateful friend and servant,

N preparing the following Memorials the Author has at various intervals resumed his inquiries through the space of three years, during which period he has been indebted to the kindness of the Reverend Dr. Wordsworth, late Master of Trinity College; of Dr. Phelps, Master of Sidney Sussex College; Dr. King, President of Queen's College; Mr. Romilly, the University Registrar; his worthy friends, Mr. Phillips, Fellow and Tutor of Queen's College, and Mr. Bunch, Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge; also to the kindness of his friends the Rev. C. Gorham, formerly of Queen's College, now of Fawley, near Henley upon Thames; of the Rev. Thomas

Hartwell Horne; and also to Mr. Baker the Historian of Northamptonshire; to Mr. Coulcher, the Incumbent of St. Benet's, Cambridge; to Mr. Denison, Rector of Broad Windsor, Dorset; to Mr. Wall, Curate of Feltham, Middlesex; to Mr. Pickering, the Publisher; and for the letters from Bishop Davenant to Dr. Ward, he is indebted to Mr. Brewer, of Queen's College, Oxford, the editor of Bishop Goodman's Autobiography, who kindly transcribed them from the ample stores of the Bodleian Library.