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"The first professed English satirist is Bishop Hall. His satires are marked with a classical precision to which English poetry had yet rarely attaing They are replete with animation of style and sentiment. The indignation of the satirist is always the result of good sense. Nor are the thorns of severe invective unmixed with the flowers of pure poetry. The characters are delineated in strong and lively coloring, and their discriminations are touched with the masterly traces of genuine humor. The versification is equally energetic and elegant, and the fabric of the couplets approaches to the modern standard."- Warton.

"The Contemplations of Bishop 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 [Jeremy Taylor], but are perhaps more practical and more generally edifying."— Hallam.

"He was not uncommonly called our English Seneca, for the pureness, plainness, and fulness of his style. Not unhappy at controversies, more happy at comments, very good in his characters, better in his sermons, and best of all in his meditations. A witty poet when young, a painful preacher and solid divine in his middle, a patient sufferer in his old age." -Thomas Fuller.

Usher.

James Usher, 1580-1656, is one of the most distinguished names in the annals of the English Church.

Career. - Usher was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and after filling various ecclesiastical offices was made Bishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, in 1624. During the civil war Usher took sides with the King, and preached a number of very bitter sermons at Oxford against the Presbyterians and Independents. After the King's overthrow, Usher was obliged to leave Oxford, and his property in Ireland was confiscated. His popularity and personal qualities, however, obtained for him the position of preacher of Lincoln's Inn. Such was Usher's fame for learning that Richelieu is said to have offered him a high position in France, with protection in the exercise of his religion. Cromwell also entertained the greatest respect for Usher's scholarship, and had him interred in Erasmus Chapel in Westminster Abbey, with the full service of the Church of England,

Works.-Usher's works are numerous, and were regarded by his contemporaries as marvels of research. It may be said of the majority of them, however, that the growth of knowledge has thrown them decidedly into the shade. They are written mostly in Latin. The best known are his Veterarum Epistolarum Hibernicarum Sylloge, a collection of documents illustrative of the Ancient Irish Church, his Britannicarum Ecclesiasticarum Antiquitates, a history of the British Church from the earliest times, his Original of Bishops, his De Romance Ecclesiæ Symbolo, his Annals of the Old Testament, and his Sacred Chronology, published posthumously. These last two were for a long time the standards of ecclesiastical chronology, and are even still followed in the marginal dates inserted in the Authorized Version of the English Bible.

Usher's Chronology.—Whatever merit this work may once have possessed has long since vanished. Usher's chronology is completely superseded by the investigations of modern science. The system has now no value except a historical one, serving as a landmark in the progress of science.

Usher himself was personally a man of the most amiable, happy temperament, but it may be questioned whether his works do not evince more extent of reading than judgment in deciding and originality in investigating.

Fuller.

Thomas Fuller, 1608-1661, the ecclesiastical historian of Great Britain, is about as much known for his wit as for his learning.

Fuller's voluminous works on church history, instead of being the dull, heavy reading that such works usually are, abound in a quaint, epigrammatic wit that makes them in a high degree entertaining and lively.

Fuller was a graduate of Cambridge, and was noted from boyhood for his scholarship. He entered the University at the age of twelve, took his Bachelor's degree at sixteen, the Master's at twenty, and was chosen Fellow at twenty-three. He was noted also for his eloquence as a pulpit orator. In the controversy between the Parliament and the King, he took the loyalist side.

Works.- His principal works are the following: The Church History of Great Britain, from the Birth of Christ to 1648, fol.; History of the Worthies of England, fol.; The Holy and the Profane State, fol.; The History of the Holy War; Good Thoughts in Bad Times; Good Thoughts in Worse Times; Mixed Contemplations in Better Times; Andronicus, or the Unfortunate Politician; David's Heinous Sin, a Poem, &c.

Character of his Works.-The Church History is perhaps too gossipy for the dignity of the subject, but it is at least not dull. The Worthies is a collection of biographies, often from original sources, and is a storehouse of valuable knowledge. The Holy and Profane State is likewise mainly biographical,—the first part, or Holy State, giving historical examples for imitation, and the second part, or Profane State, giving examples to be avoided. All his writings give evidence of varied learning, and all have the peculiar, epigrammatic turn already noticed. He has been censured by some for want of sound judgment as a historian. The criticism has some foundation. At the same time, it is hard to read a page of his writings and not to give him credit for entire honesty and good faith.

"His Worthies is, we believe, more generally perused than any of his productions, and is perhaps the most agreeable; suffice to say of it, that it is the most fascinating storehouse of gossiping anecdote, and quaintness; a most delightful medley of inter

changed amusement, presenting entertainment as varied as it is inexhaustible. His Good Thoughts in Bad Times, and lesser works, are all equally excellent in their way, full of admirable maxims and reflections, agreeable stories, and ingenious moralizations. It was, however, in biography that Fuller excelled."-London Retrospective Review.

"Fuller was incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced great man of an age that boasted of a galaxy of great men. In all his numerous volumes on so many different subjects, it is scarcely too much to say that you will hardly find a page in which some one sentence out of every three does not deserve to be quoted for itself as a motto or as a maxim. Fuller, whose wit (alike in quantity, quality, and perpetuity, surpassing that of the wittiest in a witty age) robbed him of the praise not less due to him for an equal superiority in sound, shrewd, good sense, and freedom of intellect." Coleridge.

Jeremy Taylor.

Jeremy Taylor, D. D., 1613-1667, is, by general consent, one of the greatest glories of the English pulpit.

Career. Taylor was born and educated at Cambridge, where his father was a barber. In the fierce conflicts then going on, it was in keeping with the whole bent of Taylor's mind that he should side with the Royalists. He adhered to their party accordingly, and shared their fortunes. He was chaplain to Laud and to Charles I., and Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford. On the downfall of the Royalists, he was not only deprived of his offices and emoluments, but frequently imprisoned. During the Protectorate, he kept school, for a time, in Wales, and officiated as chaplain to the Earl of Carberry. At the Restoration, he came in with his party, and was made Bishop of Down and Connor, in Ireland. He became also a member of the Privy Council of Ireland, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dublin. His diocese was a troublous one, owing to the alienations and heart-burnings between the Catholics and the Protestants, and his life consequently was full of vexations and distresses. Yet amid all the turmoil of the times, and of his own position, he maintained a cheerful serenity of soul, worthy of the lofty ideal which he has pictured in his writings.

Character of his Writings. —Jeremy Taylor is the Spenser of theological literature. He has the same boundless affluence of imagination as Spenser, the same tendency to rambling discursiveness in style, pardonable for the many exquisite nooks and corners of thought to which it so often leads, the same veneration for kingly and ecclesiastical pomp and state. It seems a pity that Taylor could not have been born half a century earlier, and formed, with Spenser and Sidney, a part of the retinue of the stately Elizabeth. His writings, certainly, if grouped

at all, belong generically to the same class as The Fairy Queen, The Arcadia, and The Defence of Poesie.

Works. -While in his seclusion in Wales, Taylor wrote his best known works: Holy Living, Holy Dying, Liberty of Prophesying, The Great Exemplar, or a life of Christ, and a collection of prayers, called The Golden Grove. His pen, however, was always busy, and his writings are enough to fill several large folios. They have been published, with a life by Heber, in 15 vols., 8vo.

"These works were not of the kind which an ingenious person, with a sufficient command of words, may produce almost at will; they almost all involved careful research and reflection. His studies and writings ranged over the whole field of theology. There is hardly a doctrinal point on which he has not expressed an opinion, generally one which marks him as beyond his age in vigor and independence of thought."London Quarterly Review.

"The work of Taylor's, which is, on the whole, most original and characteristic, is undoubtedly the Liberty of Prophesying,' his great plea for freedom in the formation and expression of opinion. In other works Taylor did but adorn forms of literature which were common before his time; but in his plea for toleration he is epochmaking; few had risen to that height of contemplation at which the fainter lines vanished from the surface of the ecclesiastical world- none had expressed with so much vigor and eloquence the thoughts of a large and charitable heart on the divisions of Christendom. In ages to come, Taylor's fame will, perhaps, rest even more on his 'Liberty of Prophesying' than on his incomparable sermons.

"In respect of his similes, Taylor is the very Homer of preachers. His style is commonly metaphorical and allusive, but here and there, when he hits upon an image of unusual beauty, he seems unwilling to leave it with a mere touch, and elaborates it into a distinct and glowing picture. Sometimes his similes are wrought out from an anecdote in some recondite book, and these certainly, however they may adorn, do not render the subject more easy of apprehension to an ordinary intelligence; but the more beautiful are those which are drawn from natural objects. He evidently delighted in the varied beauty of country scenes; the sky and the clouds, the woods and vales and streams, the ever-new phenomena of the growth and decay of plants, filled his soul with admiration and love.

"The following comparison, illustrating the blessing of God's chastisements, which seems to us nearly perfect in all its parts, is besides worthy of note from the fact that Southey transferred it entire to "Thalaba':

"I have known a luxuriant vine swell into irregular twigs and bold excrescences, and spend itself in leaves and little rings, and afford but trifling clusters to the winepress, and a faint return to the heart which longed to be refreshed with a full vintage; but when the Lord of the vineyard had caused the dressers to cut the wilder plant and make it bleed, it grew temperate in its vain expense of useless leaves, and made account of the loss of blood by return of fruit.'

"Here is Southey's version:

"Repine not, O my son, the old man replied,

That Heaven has chastened thee! Behold this vine!

I found it a wild tree, whose wanton strength

Had swoln into irregular twigs

And bold excrescences,

And spent itself in leaves and little rings;

So in the flourish of its wantonness

Wasting the sap and strength

That should have given forth fruit.

But when I pruned the plant,

Then it grew temperate in its vain expense

Of useless leaves, and knotted, as thou seest,

Into these full clear clusters, to repay

The hand that wisely wounded it.'"-Lon. Quarterly Review.

"The sermons of Jeremy Taylor are 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, and 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 the 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 vehemency 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."- Hallam's Lit. Hist. of Europe.

Bishop Pearson.

John Pearson, D. D., 1612–1686, a learned Bishop of the Church of England, acquired lasting fame by his Exposition of the Creed, which has become a standard text-book in theological literature.

Career. Bishop Pearson passed through a great variety of ecclesiastical and academic dignities which it is not necessary here to enumerate. His theological works are numerous, but he is now known almost exclusively by the one already named, An Exposition of the Creed. This has attained the rank of a classic in theological literature, and is studied as a text-book in most theological schools of the Episcopal Church. Pearson on the Creed and Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity usually stand on the same shelf.

"A standard book in English divinity. It expands beyond the literal purport of the Creed itself to most articles of orthodox belief, and is a valuable summary of arguments and authorities on that side. The closeness of Pearson, and his judicious selection of proofs, distinguish him from many, especially the earlier, theologians. Some might surmise that his undeviating adherence to what he calls the Church is

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