Cambridge; and Walter Balcanqual, a presbyter of the Scottish Church.

Into the history of this Council, it would be irrelevant to our present purpose to enter. It is but justice, however, to the Editor and Translator of these works of Davenant, to remark, that, in the biographical account of the Prelate's life which he has prefixed to them, the reader will find a short history of the Synod of Dort, written with great clearness, ability, and moderation. Though himself a Calvinist, Mr. Allport does not hesitate to denounce both the constitution of the Council and the manner in which its proceedings were conducted. The Remonstrants (that is, as our readers are aware, the Arminian party) were summoned, he justly remarks, 'not to be heard, but to be 'condemned; and this was scarcely attempted to be con'cealed. The Council consisted of those alone whose views were 'well known.' The Council was, in fact, a packed jury, who had already prejudged the cause, and resolved upon their decision. While admitting with exemplary candour the overbearing and unjust character of the Synod of Dort, the Editor has, at the same time, volunteered an able vindication of its proceedings from those calumnious attacks which have repeatedly been made by its theological adversaries. The arbitrary and unfair constitution of the assembly, both facilitated and provoked misrepresentation and slander. Some of these malignant aspersions, Mr. Allport traces with great acuteness to their source; and he exposes the uncandid manner in which the enemies of Calvinism have reiterated them, either in a criminal defiance of known truth or in a scarcely less criminal neglect of the means of ascertaining what was the truth. They have for the most part originated in a wilfully mutilated copy of the decrees of the Council, purporting to be above all things a 'favourable abridgement' of them, published by a Remonstrant named Daniel Tilenus, who took this dishonest mode of avenging his own and his party's wrongs. Our readers will find some very curious statements on this subject at pp. xviii., xix., xx., of the "Life";-statements highly illustrative of the dishonesty of theological animosity, of the blind eagerness with which men take up whatsoever makes for their own cause, and of the reluctance with which they surrender it. They also place in a very fair light, the honesty, impartiality, and diligence of the Editor.

Of Davenant's conduct at Dort, suffice it to say, that he and his colleagues displayed so much ability, learning, and temper, that they greatly facilitated the proceedings of the council, and received the thanks of its members at its termination. Throughout the whole of its discussions, they manifested a jealous regard to the interests of the Church of England, and stubbornly refused to give even an apparent assent to any thing which seemed to

contravene her doctrines or her discipline. So far did they carry this, that, in many instances, there was great reason to fear that their pertinacity would lead to their suddenly withdrawing themselves from the council altogether. But such was the respect in which they were held, that strenuous efforts were uniformly made to accommodate differences, and always with success.

Yet, notwithstanding this scrupulous, and, in our opinion, sometimes ludicrous vigilance, they were, when they returned home, accused by some enemies to Calvinism, of having compromised the dignity of the Church of England! Their reply was, of course, abundantly triumphant.

In 1621, Davenant was nominated to the see of Salisbury. His consecration was delayed, as well as that of some other bishops-elect, by an unhappy accident which happened to Archbishop Abbot.

'As he was using a cross-bow in Lord Zouch's park, he accidentally shot the keeper. Four Bishops-elect were then waiting for consecration. Of these, Williams, elect of Lincoln, who, as Heylin says, had an eye to the Primacy in case it had been declared vacant; and Laud, elect of St. David's, who had a personal hatred to Abbot; stated an insuperable aversion to being consecrated by a man whose hands were stained with blood. Davenant did not join in this unworthy cavil; but kept altogether aloof, lest he should be thought to act from private feelings of obligation to the afflicted Primate: but despising the groundless objection of those who, from motives of personal pique and ambition, were willing to give up their own high views of the indelibility of the Episcopal character, and act upon the principle that it became vitiated and abortive in its operations, by an accident which, as the King justly remarked, might have happened to an angel. The rest, however, made so much of their scruples, that a commission was at length granted to the Bishop of London and four others, to discharge the Archiepiscopal function in this case: and by these, Williams was consecrated on Nov. 11; and Davenant, Laud, and Cary of Exeter, on Nov. 18.' Vol. I. pp. xxxi-xxxii.

This was exactly like Laud; a man who knew as well as any frivolous ceremonialist who ever lived, how to strain out a gnat and swallow a camel, and who knew too how to make all his scrupulosity subserve the purposes of his ambition.

In this dignified situation, Davenant, it is universally admitted, conducted himself with singular discretion, blamelessness, and integrity. Of this, his Biographer remarks, it would not be easy to find a testimony stronger than that of the Lord Keeper Williams, who, upon resigning the Great Seal, and retiring to the more congenial duties of the see of Lincoln, avowedly adopted Davenant as his model. For several very interesting anecdotes, strongly characteristic of the elevated principle and purity of character which distinguished him, we refer our readers to Mr. Allport's memoir. Davenant died in 1641, at the age of 71.

It was the misfortune of Davenant, to outlive the attachment of the bulk of the clergy of the Church of England to its early Calvinism; the Calvinism of its founders, and which still survives in the Articles of that church. The venerable Prelate even fell under the displeasure of the King for venturing to preach on the forbidden subject of predestination. Charles, by the advice of Laud, had enjoined that all curious search' on that subject should be abandoned. By the bye, we are truly glad to find that, on all occasions, Mr. Allport speaks of the conduct of that tyrannical and narrow-minded bigot in terms of the strongest reprobation.

The works of Davenant make about two volumes folio. Compared with some of his contemporaries, he was far from a voluminous writer; nay, he might be almost considered as a mere pamphleteer; albeit in our degenerate times, folio volumes appear formidable things. His compositions were for the most part in Latin; and in the revision and publication of them, he employed almost all the leisure which the arduous duties of his episcopate afforded him. They are all theological, and most of them controversial. The most important is the Exposition of the Epistle to the Colossians, which occupies the principal part of the present volumes. None can look into them without being convinced, that the author was a man of very acute powers of reasoning, and of various and profound erudition. He was, in fact, one of that race of men-a race, by the bye, which a little more than a century extinguished-who combined the curious and profound learning of the schoolmen, and a perfect mastery of all the subtilties of the scholastic logic, with much of that spirit of free inquiry which the Reformation necessarily originated and fostered; and who therefore escaped the timid and narrow spirit which had previously spell-bound the faculties of men. On the other hand, he did not live so long after that great event, as not to have received the full impress of the ancient system of education and intellectual discipline. All his mental habits were formed under the influence of the school-logic and school-metaphysics. Thus, nothing is more common than to see the Protestants of that age defeating Rome with her own weapons; calling into question all her doctrines, but retaining all those ingenious modes of assault and battery which had been devised and perfected in the cloister. Nor is the scholastic logic and metaphysics, merely considered as a system of intellectual discipline, by any means to be despised. The mischief was, that, instead of being used solely, or principally, as an exercise of the reasoning powers, or used as a test to examine the validity of any train of reasoning, it was substituted for every other mode of mental discipline;-nay, and as the great, the only instrument for the discovery of truth. We need not wonder that, thus abused, it was a source of far greater

evils than advantages. In its appropriate sphere, however, it tended more than any other system, to improve the powers of the mind upon which it was particularly adapted to operate. It is true, that it often disguised what was obvious, and mystified what was simple; that it often engendered a love of eternal and universal disputation; that it delighted in making subtile distinctions, when there were no real differences; that it often wasted scores of pages in the most idle logomachy. It is true also, that its incessant iteration of the phraseology and the forms of logic, gave to the books of its votaries an unutterably repulsive appearance ; generally sufficient to overcome the most valiant resolutions of the doughtiest student of modern times. This last defect, indeed, this needless, pertinacious obtrusion of all the barbarous technicalities of the scholastic logic and metaphysics, when, in many cases, not only is there no necessity for explication, but nothing except such explication needs to be explained,-is frequently perfectly gratuitous, and therefore the more vexatious. Still, in spite of all this, the perpetual conversance with these logical and metaphysical subtilties engendered a power of patient abstraction, and an acuteness of reasoning, seldom witnessed in modern times. Many of the schoolmen were no children.

In the "life" of his author, Mr. Allport gives from Bishop Hacket's life of Williams, an amusing description of those chivalrous disputations in which the heroic divines of England exercised their faculties and their logical weapons for the battlefields of mightiest controversies. Not Froissart himself could describe some valiant passage of arms, or the achievement of some splendid tournament, with greater enthusiasm than that with which the worthy Bishop records the mighty shock of syllogisms. Nay, these disputations were often got up for the express amusementnot to say edification-of some learned Queen Bess or some theological King Jamie, just as tournaments and games of chivalry had been the royal pastimes of a preceding age, and in some measure even of that of which we speak. The reader, therefore, needs not wonder that, when beauty or power rained down its influences on the doughty champions, and added the fire of emulation to that of valour, the combatant often Bishop Hacket says, " with all quickness and whole passage is so entertaining that we must by transcribing it.

It is amusing to hear the con amore excellent, but pedantic Bishop Hacket, Williams, p. 26, records these academ super-eminent disputant, Dr. Collins, b firm bank of earth, able to receive th His works in print, against Eudæm among the Jesuits, do noise him f

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him speak would most admire him. No flood can be compared to the spring-tide of his language and eloquence, but the milky river of Nilus, with his seven mouths all at once disemboguing into the sea. O how voluble! how quick! how facetious he was! What a Vertumnus, when he pleased to argue on the right side, and on the contrary. Those things will be living to the memory of the longest survivor that ever heard him. In this trial, wherein he stood now to be judged by so many attic and exquisite wits, he strived to exceed himself, and shewed his cunning marvellously that he could invalidate every argument brought against him with variety of answers. It was well for all sides, that the best divine, in my judgement, that ever was in that place, Dr. Davenant, held the reins of the disputation. He kept him within the even boundals of the cause; he charmed him with the Caducæan wand of dialectical prudence; he ordered him to give just weight, and no more. Horat. 1. 1. Od. 3. Quo non arbiter Adria major, tollere seu ponere vult freta. Such an arbiter as he was now, such he was and no less, year by year, in all comitial disputations; wherein whosoever did well, yet constantly he had the greatest acclamation. To the close of all this Exercise, I come. The grave elder opponents having had their course, Mr. Williams, a new admitted Bachelor of Divinity, came to his turn, last of all. Presently, there was a smile in the face of every one that knew them both, and a prejudging that between these two there would be a fray indeed. Both jealous of their credit, both great masters of wit; and as much was expected from the one as from the other. So they fell to it with all quickness and pertinency; yet, thank the Moderator, with all candour: like Fabius and Marcellus, the one was the buckler, the other the sword of that learned exercise. No greyhound did ever give a hare more turns upon Newmarket heath, than the replier with his subtleties gave to the respondent. A subject fit for the verse of Mr. Abraham Hartwell, in his Regina Literata, as he extols Dr. Pern's arguments made before Queen Elizabeth: Quis fulmine tanto tela jacet? tanto fulmine nemo jacel. But when they had both done their best with equal prowess, the Marshal of the Field, Dr. Davenant, cast down his warder between them, and parted them." Vol. I. pp. x-xi.

By this long process, by this severe logical discipline, was Davenant prepared for the services which he afterwards rendered to the cause of religion. His 'Exposition', as well as all his works, bears marks of the character thus impressed upon his mind.

There is a letter of Davenant's to Bishop Hall, so curiously illustrative of the character of his mind, as well as of the spirit of the age, that we cannot refrain from referring to it. Bishop Hall, in his treatise entitled, "The Old Religion", had ventured to designate the Church of Rome, though so sadly corrupt, as yet a 66 true visible church." For this he was most severely censured: whereupon he writes to Davenant, requesting him to give his most logical consideration upon this perplexing matter, and to compurgate' him from all taint of heresy. One might think that this matter might have been very easily disposed of; that the

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