A.D. 1655]

JEREMY TAYLOR AND JOHN MILTON.

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because more and more attached to the prerogatives of monarchy. From Calvinism, with a still decreasing respect for Fathers, Councils, and for Church-antiquity in general, Milton seems to have ended in an indifference, if not a dislike, to all forms of ecclesiastical government, and to have retreated wholly into the inward and spiritual church-communion of his own spirit with the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Taylor, with a growing reverence for authority, an increasing sense of the insufficiency of the Scriptures without the aids of tradition, and the consent of authorized interpreters, advanced as far in his approaches (not indeed to Popery, but) to Roman Catholicism, as a conscientious minister of the English Church could well venture. Milton would be, and would utter the same, to all, on all occasions : he would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Taylor would become all things to all men, if by any means he might benefit any. Hence he availed himself, in his popular writings, of opinions and representations which stand often in striking contrast with the doubts and convictions expressed in his more philosophical works. He appears, indeed, not too severely to have blamed that management of truth (istam falsitatem dispensativum) authorized and exemplified by almost all the Fathers."

THIS antithesis is carried on through the characters of these illustrious and inspired men, with great ability, by this emiment critic and poet. Milton," he says, "austere, condensed, imaginative. Taylor, eminently

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discursive, accumulative, and (to use one of his own words) agglomerative. Still more rich in images than Milton himself, but presented to the common and passive eye, rather than to the eye of the imagination."

HE describes this distinguished ornament of the English Prelacy, whether supporting or assailing, as making his way "either by argument or by appeals to affections, unsurpassed even by the schoolmen in subtlety, agility and logical wit, and unrivalled by the most rhetorical of the Fathers in the copiousness and vividness of his expressions and illustrations." Of Milton's, Mr. Coleridge says, that "it supports truth by direct enunciation of lofty moral sentiment, and by direct visual representations, and, in the same spirit, overwhelming what he deemed falsehood, by moral denunciation, and a succession of pictures appalling or repulsive ;" and says, happily, "in his prose, so many metaphors, so many allegorical miniatures." Ir these distinguished men differed so far, wherein, it be asked did they agree? Coleridge answers, "In genius, in learning, in unfeigned piety, in blameless purity of life, and in benevolent aspirations and purposes for the moral and temporal improvement of their fellow creatures! Both of them," he says,

may

"wrote a Latin Accidence*, to render education less

* Milton also wrote a Latin Dictionary, as the learned lexicographer, Dr. Adam Littleton, gratefully acknowledges his obligation to. He describes it as a manuscript collection, in three large folio volumes, digested into an alphabetical order, made out of Tully, Livy, Cæsar, Sallust, Quintus Curtius, Justin, Plautus, Terence, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Manilius, Celsus, Columella, Varro, Palladius; in short, out of all the best and purest Roman authors. What became of these three folios?-J. E.

A. D. 1655]

BISHOP BOSSUET.

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painful to children; both of them composed hymns and psalms proportioned to the capacity of common congregations; both, nearly at the same time, set the glorious example of publicly recommending and supporting general toleration, and the liberty both of the pulpit and the press.

To these antitheses and coincidences others may be added. The prelate, in his younger days, approached Roman Catholicity in religion with as much sincerity and ability as Bossuet, in the same age, approached Protestantism in his "Exposition of the Roman Catholic Faith," both with the view of reconciling differences, and restoring the purity of the Christian Church. Milton, on the contrary, who wore "his heart upon "his sleeve," could so little disguise his hatred of Popery, during his travels through Italy, that it hindered him from receiving the full share of honours that his congenial soul inspired in that land of fine art and poetry. Nay, when his politic friend, Sir Henry Wotton, who, to use his own words, was "a man sent

abroad to lie for the good of his country," could not dissuade him from avowing his principles of reform among a people with whom Atheism was more pardonable than Protestant heresy.

TAYLOR, however, detested Popery as cordially as Milton, who has been charged with being a Papist in

*The Bishop's work is entitled "THEOLOGIA ECLECTICA, a Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying," that is preaching, in which he shows the folly of persecuting other men's faith, and the iniquity of persecuting different opinions.

disguise, a Pyrrhonist, a Calvinist, a Socinian, a Deist, an Atheist; but Milton knew that calling names did but a temporary injury; for, according to their notions, he says, in his recently-recovered treatise ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE," to have branded any one at random with this opprobrious mark" (heresy, which, in another work he calls "a Greek apparition," and railing in an unknown tongue), "is to have refuted him, without any trouble, by a single word."

OF MILTON'S antipapistical feelings, take but one instance out of the many. In his treatise on true Religion (Prose works vol. iv. p. 226), he says, "the Papal antichristian Church permits not her laity to read the Bible in their own tongue; our Church, on the contrary, hath proposed it to all men. Neither let the countryman, the tradesman, the lawyer, the physician, the statesman excuse himself, by his much business, from the studious reading thereof." Although, from Bishop's Taylor's tendencies to HighChurch and Monarchical principles, and his desire to promote the unity of the Christian Church, we must not expect to find in any of his writings, violent language towards the Roman Catholic Church, yet we can readily perceive an evident repugnance to many of its forms and doctrines. Speaking, in his Life of Christ, of the danger of riches to the Church, he thus admonishes his brethren of the Church of Rome, " if it be dangerous in any man to be rich, which discomposes his steps, in his journey to Eternity; it is not so proportionate to Christ's poverty and the inheritance of the

A. D. 1655

JEREMY TAYLOR'S RELIGION.

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Church to be sedulous in acquiring great temporalities, and putting Princes in jeopardy, and States into care for securities, lest all the temporal should run into ecclesiastical possessions." In the chapter on the Last Supper, he calls it emphatically the Sacrament, not one of the Sacraments, and says, some so observe the literal sense of the words, that they understand them also in a natural; some so alter them by metaphors and preternatural significations, that they will not understand them in a proper sense." And adds,

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we see it, we feel it, we taste it, and we smell it to be bread; and by Philosophy we are led into a belief of that substance, whose accidents these are, as we are to believe that to be fire, which burns and flames and shines." This is neither calling hard names, nor merely repudiating a doctrine; it is better, for by argument founded on reason, he disproves it. In another place he tells them, that this question hath divided the Church, almost as much as the Sacrament hath united it, and which can only serve the purposes of the Schools, and of evil men, to make questions for that, and factions for these." And still more emphatically, he says, "they that are forward to believe the change of substance, can intend no more, but that it be believed verily to be the body of our Lord. And if they think it impossible to reconcile its being bread, with the verity of being Christ's body, let them remember, that themselves are put to more difficulties, and to admit of more miracles, and to contradict more sciences, and to

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