tracts are from a sermon, Of Inquiry and Private your eyes to direct you, and your legs to support you, Judgment in Religion. [Private Judgment in Religion.] in your course of integrity and sanctity; you may no more refuse or neglect the use of it, and rest yourselves upon the use of other men's reason, than neglect your own and call for the use of other men's eyes and legs. The man in the gospel, who had bought a farm, excuses himself from going to the marriage-supper, because himself would go and see it: but we have taken an easier course; we can buy our farm, and go to supper too, and that only by saving our pains to see it; we profess ourselves to have made a great purchase of heavenly doctrine, yet we refuse to see it and survey it ourselves, but trust to other men's eyes. and our surveyors: and wot you to what end i know not, except it be, that so we may with the better leisure go to the marriage-supper; that, with Haman, we may the more merrily go in to the banquet provided for us; that so we may the more freely betake ourselves to our pleasures, to our profits, to our trades, to our preferments and ambition. * Would you see how ridiculously we abuse ourselves when we thus neglect our own knowledge, and securely hazard ourselves upon others' skill? Give me leave, then, to show you a perfect pattern of it, and to report to you what I find in Seneca the philosopher, recorded of a gentleman in Rome, who, being purely ignorant, yet greatly desirous to seem learned, procured himself many servants, of which some he caused to study the poets, some the orators, some the historians, some the philosophers, and, in a strange kind of fancy, all their learning he verily thought to be his own, and persuaded himself that he knew all that his servants understood; yea, he grew to that height of madness in this kind, that, being weak in body and diseased in his feet, he provided himself of wrestlers and runners, and proclaimed games and races, and performed them by his servants; still applauding himself, as if himself had done them. Beloved, you are this man: when you neglect to try the spirits, to study the means of salvation yourselves, but content yourselves to take them upon trust, and repose yourselves altogether on the wit and knowledge of us that are your teachers, what is this in a manner but to account with yourselves, that our knowledge is yours, that you know all that we know, who are but your It were a thing worth looking into, to know the reason why men are so generally willing, in point of religion, to cast themselves into other men's arms, and, leaving their own reason, rely so much upon another man's. Is it because it is modesty and humility to think another man's reason better than our own? Indeed, I know not how it comes to pass, we account it a vice, a part of envy, to think another man's goods, or another man's fortunes, to be better than our own; and yet we account it a singular virtue to esteem our reason and wit meaner than other men's. Let us not mistake ourselves; to contemn the advice and help of others, in love and admiration to our own conceits, to depress and disgrace other men's, this is the foul vice of pride: on the contrary, thankfully to entertain the advice of others, to give it its due, and ingenuously to prefer it before our own if it deserve it, this is that gracious virtue of modesty but altogether to mistrust and relinquish our own faculties, and commend ourselves to others, this is nothing but poverty of spirit and indiscretion. I will not forbear to open unto you what I conceive to be the causes of this so general an error amongst men. First, peradventure the dregs of the church of Rome are not yet sufficiently washed from the hearts of many men. We know it is the principal stay and supporter of that church, to suffer nothing to be inquired into which is once concluded by them. Look through Spain and Italy; they are not men, but beasts, and, Issachar-like, patiently couch down under every burden their superiors lay upon them. Secondly, a fault or two may be in our own ministry; thus, to advise men (as I have done) to search into the reasons and grounds of religion, opens a way to dispute and quarrel, and this might breed us some trouble and disquiet in our cures, more than we are willing to undergo; therefore, to purchase our own quiet, and to banish all contention, we are content to nourish this still humour in our hearers; as the Sibarites, to procure their ease, banished the smiths, because their trade was full of noise. In the meantime, we do not see that peace, which ariseth out of ignorance, is but a kind of sloth, or moral lethargy, seeming quiet because it hath no power to move. Again, maybe the portion of knowledge in the miniEducation and breeding is nothing else but the ster himself is not over-great; it may be, therefore, authority of our teachers taken over our childhood. good policy for him to suppress all busy inquiry in Now, there is nothing which ought to be of less force his auditory, that so increase of knowledge in them with us, or which we ought more to suspect: for might not at length discover some ignorance in him. childhood hath one thing natural to it, which is a Last of all, the fault may be in the people themselves, great enemy to truth, and a great furtherer of deceit : who, because they are loath to take pains (and search what is that? Credulity. Nothing is more credulous into the grounds of knowledge is evermore painful), than a child: and our daily experience shows how are well content to take their ease, to gild their vice strangely they will believe either their ancients or with goodly names, and to call their sloth modesty, one another, in most incredible reports. For, to be and their neglect of inquiry filial obedience. These able to judge what persons, what reports are credible, reasons, beloved, or some of kin to these, may be the is a point of strength of which that age is not capable: motives unto this easiness of the people, of entertain-The chiefest sinew and strength of wisdom,' saith ing their religion upon trust, and of the neglect of the inquiry into the grounds of it. servants in Jesus Christ? [Children Ready to Believe.] Epicharmus, is not easily to believe.' Have we not, then, great cause to call to better account, and exaTo return, therefore, and proceed in the refutation mine by better reason, whatsoever we learned in so of this gross neglect in men of their own reason, and credulous and easy an age, so apt, like the softest casting themselves upon other wits. Hath God given wax, to receive every impression? Yet, notwithyou eyes to see, and legs to support you, that so your-standing this singular weakness, and this large and selves might lie still, or sleep, and require the use of other men's eyes and legs! That faculty of reason which is in every one of you, even in the meanest that hears me this day, next to the help of God, is part of his composition, and is also characteristical of the age in which he writes. Besides, sir, when the language is changed, we are not sure that the sense is the same. No, sir; I am sorry Lord Hailes has done this.'-Boswell's Life of Johnson, iv. 282; edit. 1823. real exception which we have against education, I verily persuade myself, that if the best and strongest ground of most men's religion were opened, it would appear to be nothing else. [Reverence for Ancient Opinions.] Antiquity, what is it else (God only excepted) but man's authority born some ages before us Now, for the truth of things, time makes no alteration; things are still the same they are, let the time be past, present or to come. Those things which we reverence for antiquity, what were they at their first birth? Were they false?-time cannot make them true. Were they true?-time cannot make them more true. The circumstance, therefore, of time, in respect of truth and error is merely impertinent. the king. Milton, who, as secretary to the council of state, wrote an answer to it, which he entitled 'Iconoclastes,' or The Image-breaker, alludes to the doubts which prevailed on the subject; but at this time the real history of the book was unknown. The first disclosure took place in 1691, when there appeared in an Amsterdam edition of Milton's 'Iconoclastes,' a memorandum said to have been made by the Earl of Anglesey, in which that nobleman affirms [Prevalence of an Opinion no Argument for its Truth.] he had been told by Charles II. and his brother that the 'Ikon Basilike' was the production of Gauden. Universality is such a proof of truth, as truth itself This report was confirmed in the following year by is ashamed of; for universality is nothing but a a circumstantial narrative published by Gauden's quainter and a trimmer name to signify the multi-former curate, Walker. Several writers then entude. Now, human authority at the strongest is buttered the field on both sides of the question; the 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. JOHN GAUDEN. principal defender of the king's claim being Wagstaffe, a nonjuring clergyman, who published an elaborate Vindication of King Charles the Martyr,' in 1693. For ten years subsequently, the literary war continued; but after this there ensued a long interval of repose. When Hume wrote his history, the evidence on the two sides appeared so equally balanced, that, with regard to the genuineness of that production, it is not easy,' says he, 'for a historian to fix any opinion which will be entirely to his own satisfaction. The proofs brought to evince that this work is or is not the king's, are so convincing, that if any impartial reader peruse any one side apart, he will think it impossible that arguments could be produced sufficient to counterbalance so strong an evidence; and when he compares both sides, he will be some time at a loss to fix any determination.' Yet Hume confesses that to him the arguments of the royal party appeared the strongest. In 1786, however, the scale of evidence was turned by the publication, in the third volume of the Clarendon State Papers, of some of Gauden's letters, the most important of which are six addressed by him to Lord Chancellor Clarendon after the Restoration. He there complains of the poverty of the see of Exeter, to which he had already been appointed, and urgently solicits a further reward for the important secret service which he had performed to the royal cause. Some of these letters, containing allusions to the circumstance, had formerly been printed, though in a less authentic form; but now for the first time appeared one, dated the 13th of March 1661, in which he explicitly grounds his claim to additional remuneration, not on what was known to the world under my name, but what goes under the late blessed king's name, the Ikon or Portraiture of his majesty in his solitudes and sufferings. This book and figure,' he adds, was wholly and only my invention, making, and design; in order to vindicate the king's wisdom, honour, and piety.' Clarendon had before this learnt the secret from his own intimate friend, Morley, bishop of Worcester, and had otherwise ample means of investigating its truth: and not only does he, in a letter to Gauden, fully acquiesce in the unpalatable statement, but, in his History of the Rebellion,' JOHN GAUDEN was a theologian of a far more worldly and ambitious character than either of the three preceding divines. He was born in 1605, and when about thirty years of age became chaplain to the Earl of Warwick, one of the Presbyterian leaders, besides obtaining two preferments in the church. Being of a temporising disposition, he professed the opinions in vogue with the earl's party, and in 1640 preached before the house of commons a sermon which gave so much satisfaction, that the members not only voted thanks to him, but are said to have presented him with a silver tankard. Next year, the rich deanery of Bocking, in Essex, was added to his preferments; all of which, when the Presbyterian form of church government and worship was substituted for the Episcopal, he kept by conforming to the new order of things, though not without apparent reluctance. When the army resolved to impeach and try the king in 1648, he published A Religious and Loyal Protestation against their purposes and proceedings: this tract was followed in subsequent years by various other pieces, which he sent forth in defence of the cause of the royalists. But his grand service to that party consisted in his writing the famous Ikon Basiliké; or the Portraiture of his Most Sacred Majesty, in his Solitude and Sufferings, a work professing to emanate from the pen of Charles I. himself, and to contain the devout meditations of his latter days. There appears to have been an intention to publish this 'Portraiture' before the execution of the king, as an attempt to save his life by working on the feelings of the people; but either from the difficulty of getting it printed, or some other cause, it did not make its appearance till several days after his majesty's death. The sensation which it produced in his favour was extraordinary. It is not easy,' says Hume, to conceive the general compassion excited towards the king by the publishing, at so critical a juncture, a work so full of piety, meek-written at the desire of Charles L., and avowedly ness, and humanity. Many have not scrupled to ascribe to that book the subsequent restoration of the royal family. Milton compares its effects to those which were wrought on the tumultuous Romans by Antony's reading to them the will of Cæsar.' So eagerly and universally was the book perused by the nation, that it passed through fifty editions in a single year; and probably through its influence the title of Royal Martyr was applied to the king. It being of course desirable, for the interest of the ruling party, that the authenticity of the work should be discredited, they circulated a vague rumour that its true author was one of the household chaplains of intended as a vindication of the royal character and cause, he maintains the most rigid silence with respect to the 'Ikon Basiliké-a fact altogether unaccountable, on the supposition that he knew Charles to be the author of what had brought so much advantage to the royal party, and that he was aware of the falsity of the report current among the opposite faction. Nor is it easy, on that supposition, to conceive for what reason the troublesome solicitations of Gauden were so effectual as to lead to his promotion, in 1662, to the bishopric of Worcester; a dignity, however, of which he did not long enjoy the fruits, for he died in the same year, through dis 289 19 against the present laws and governors, which can never be such as some side or other will not find fault with, so as to urge what they call a reformation of them to a rebellion against them. JEREMY TAYLOR. appointment, it is said, at not having obtained the richer see of Winchester, which Clarendon had bestowed upon Morley. Notwithstanding the cogency of the evidence above-mentioned, and of many corroborative circumstances which it is impossible to detail here, the controversy as to the authorship of the 'Ikon Basiliké' is by some still decided in favour of the king. Such is the conclusion arrived at in a The English church at this time was honoured work entitled Who wrote Ikon Basiliké?' published by the services of many able and profound theoloin 1824 by Dr Wordsworth, master of Trinity col-gians; men who had both studied and thought lege, Cambridge; and a writer in the Quarterly deeply, and possessed a vigorous and original chaReview has ranged himself on the same side. But racter of intellect. The most eloquent and imagiin a masterly article by Sir James Mackintosh, in the Edinburgh Review, the question, notwithstanding some difficulties which still adhere to it, has, we think, been finally and satisfactorily set at rest in favour of Gauden.t As a sample of the 'Ikon,' we present the following meditations upon [The Various Events of the Civil War.] The various successes of this unhappy war have at least afforded me variety of good meditations. Sometimes God was pleased to try me with victory, by worsting my enemies, that I might know how with moderation and thanks to own and use his power, who is only the true Lord of Hosts, able, when he pleases, to repress the confidence of those that fought against me with so great advantages for power and number. From small beginnings on my part, he let me see that I was not wholly forsaken by my people's love or his protection. Other times God was pleased to exercise my patience, and teach me not to trust in the arm of flesh, but in the living God. My sins sometimes prevailed against the justice of my cause; and those that were with me wanted not matter and occasion for his just chastisement both of them and me. Nor were my enemies less punished by that prosperity, which hardened them to continue that injustice by open hostility, which was begun by most riotous and unparliamentary tumults. Jeremy Taylor. native of all her divines was, however, JEREMY TAYLOR, who has been styled by some the Shakspeare, and by others the Spenser, of our theological literature. He seems to be closely allied, in the comThere is no doubt but personal and private sins plexion of his taste and genius, to the poet of the may ofttimes overbalance the justice of public engage-Faery Queen.' He has not the unity and energy. ments; nor doth God account every gallant man (in or the profound mental philosophy, of the great the world's esteem) a fit instrument to assert in the dramatist; while he strongly resembles Spenser in way of war a righteous cause. The more men are his prolific fancy and diction, in a certain musical ar prone to arrogate to their own skill, valour, and rangement and sweetness of expression, in prolongec strength, the less doth God ordinarily work by them description, and in delicious musings and reveries for his own glory. suggested by some favourite image or metaphor on which he dwells with the fondness and enthu siasm of a young poet. In these passages he i also apt to run into excess; epithet is heaped upon Those with me had, I think, clearly and undoubt-epithet, and figure upon figure; all the quaint con edly for their justification the word of God and the laws of the land, together with their own oaths; all requiring obedience to my just commands; but to none other under heaven without me, or against me, in the point of raising arms. I am sure the event or success can never state the justice of any cause, nor the peace of men's consciences, nor the eternal fate of their souls. Those on the other side are forced to fly to the shifts of some pretended fears, and wild fundamentals of state, as they call them, which actually overthrow the present fabric both of church and state; being such imaginary reasons for self-defence as are most impertinent for those men to allege, who, being my subjects, were manifestly the first assaulters of me and the laws, first by unsuppressed tumults, after by listed forces. The same allegations they use, will fit any faction that hath but power and confidence enough to second with the sword all their demands ceits of his fancy, and the curious stores of his learning, are dragged in, till both precision and propriety are sometimes lost. He writes like an orator, anc produces his effect by reiterated strokes and multiplied impressions. His picture of the Resurrection in one of his sermons, is in the highest style of poetry, but generally he deals with the gentle and familiar; and his allusions to natural objects-as trees. birds, and flowers, the rising or setting sun the charms of youthful innocence and beauty, and the helplessness of infancy and childhood-possess an almost angelic purity of feeling and delicacy of fancy. When presenting rules for morning meditation and prayer, he stops to indulge his love of nature. Sometimes,' he says, 'be curious to see the preparation which the sun makes when he is coming forth from his chambers of the east.' He compares a young man to a dancing bubble, 'empty and gay, and shining like a dove's neck, or the image of a rainbow, which hath no substance, and whose and the madness of his people, had provided a plank for me, I had been lost to all the opportunities of content or study; but I know not whether I have been more preserved by the courtesies of my friends, or the gentleness and mercies of a noble enemy.' This fine passage is in the dedication to Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying, a discourse published in 1647, showing the Unreasonableness of Prescribing to other Men's Faith, and the Iniquity of Persecuting Differing Opinions. By 'prophesying' he means preaching or expounding. The work has been justly described as 'perhaps, of all Taylor's writ the age in which he lived, and of the ecclesiastical system in which he had been reared-as the first distinct and avowed defence of toleration which had been ventured on in England, perhaps in Christendom.' He builds the right of private judgment upon. the difficulty of expounding Scripture-the insufficiency and uncertainty of tradition-the fallibility of councils, the pope, ecclesiastical writers, and the church as a body, as arbiters of controverted points very imagery and colours are fantastical.' The ful-eth the raging of the sea, and the noise of his waves, filment of our duties he calls 'presenting a rosary or chaplet of good works to our Maker;' and he dresses even the grave with the flowers of fancy. This freshness of feeling and imagination remained with him to the last, amidst all the strife and violence of the civil war (in which he was an anxious participater and sufferer), and the still more deadening effects of polemical controversy and systems of casuistry and metaphysics. The stormy vicissitudes of his life seem only to have taught him greater gentleness, resignation, toleration for human failings, and a more ardent love of humankind. Jeremy Taylor was a native of Cambridge (bap-ings, that which shows him farthest in advance of tised on the 15th of August, 1613), and descended of gentle, and even heroic blood. He was the lineal representative of Dr Rowland Taylor, who suffered martyrdom in the reign of Queen Mary; and his family had been one of some distinction in the county of Gloucester. The Taylors, however, had fallen into the portion of weeds and outworn faces,' to use an expression of their most illustrious member, and Jeremy's father followed the humble occupation of a barber in Cambridge. He put his son to college, as a sizar, in his thirteenth year, having himself previously taught him the rudiments of grammar and mathematics, and given him the advantages of the Free Grammar school. In 1631, Jeremy Taylor took his degree of bachelor of arts in Caius college, and entering into sacred orders, removed to London, to deliver some lectures for a college friend in St Paul's cathedral. His eloquent discourses, aided by what a contemporary calls his florid and youthful beauty, and pleasant air,' entranced all hearers, and procured him the patronage of Archbishop Laud, the friend of learning, if not of liberty. By Laud's assistance, Taylor obtained a fellowship in All Souls college, Oxford; became chaplain to the archbishop, and rector of Uppingham, in Rutlandshire. In 1639 he married Phoebe Langdale, a female of whom we know nothing but her musical name, and that she bore three sons to her accomplished husband, and died three years after her marriage. The sons of Taylor also died before their father, clouding with melancholy and regret his late and troubled years. The turmoil of the civil war now agitated the country, and Jeremy Taylor embarked his fortunes in the fate of the royalists. By virtue of the king's mandate, he was made a Doctor of Divinity; and at the command of Charles, he wrote a defence of Episcopacy, to which he was by principle and profession strongly attached. In 1644, while accompanying the royal army as chaplain, Jeremy Taylor was taken prisoner by the parliamentary forces, in the battle fought before When Abraham sat at his tent door, according to the castle of Cardigan, in Wales. He was soon re- his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied leased, but the tide of war had turned against the an old man stopping and leaning on his staff, weary royalists, and in the wreck of the church, Taylor with age and travel, coming towards him, who was a resolved to continue in Wales, and, in conjunction hundred years of age. He received him kindly, with two learned and ecclesiastical friends, to esta-washed his feet, provided supper, and caused him to blish a school at Newton-hall, county of Caermarthen. He appears to have been twice imprisoned by the dominant party, but treated with no marked severity. In the great storm,' he says, which dashed the vessel of the church all in pieces, I had been cast on the coast of Wales, and, in a little boat, thought to have enjoyed that rest and quietness which in England, in a far greater, I could not hope for. Here I cast anchor, and thinking to ride safely, the storm followed me with so impetuous violence, that it broke a cable, and I lost my anchor. And here again I was exposed to the mercy of the sea, and the gentleness of an element that could neither distinguish things nor persons: and, but that He that still and the consequent necessity of letting every man choose his own guide or judge of the meaning of Scripture for himself; since, says he, any man may be better trusted for himself, than any man can be for another-for in this case his own interest is most concerned, and ability is not so necessary as honesty, which certainly every man will best preserve in his own case, and to himself (and if he does not, it's he that must smart for it); and it is not required of us not to be in error, but that we endeavour to avoid it.' Milton, in his scheme of toleration, excludes all Roman Catholics-a trait of the persecuting character of his times; and Jeremy Taylor, to establish some standard of truth, and prevent anarchy, as he alleges, proposes the confession of the apostles' creed as the test of orthodoxy and the condition of union among Christians. The principles he advocates go to destroy this limitation, and are applicable to universal toleration, which he dared hardly then avow, even if he had entertained such a desire or conviction. The style of his masterly Discourse' is more argumentative and less ornate than that of his sermons and devotional treatises; but his enlightened zeal often breaks forth in striking condemnation of those who are curiously busy about trifles and impertinences, while they reject those glorious precepts of Christianity and holy life which are the glories of our religion, and would enable us to gain a happy eternity.' He closes the work with the following interesting and instructive apologue, which he had found, he says, in the Jews' books: sit down; but observing that the old man ate and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven! The old man told him that he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God; at which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him where the stranger was? He replied, I thrust him away because he did not worship thee: God answered him, I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonoured me, and couldst thou not endure him one night, when he gave thee no trouble? Upon this, saith the story, Abraham fetched him back again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise instruction. Go thou and do likewise, and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham.' or fervent piety. Any remains of a controversial In Wales, Jeremy Taylor was married to Mrs Joanna Bridges, a natural daughter of Charles I., and mistress of an estate in the county of Caermarthen. He was thus relieved from the irksome duties of a schoolmaster; but the fines and sequestrations imposed by the parliamentary party on the property of the royalists, are supposed to have dilapidated his wife's fortune. It is known that he received a pension from the patriotic and excellent John Evelyn, and the literary labours of Taylor were never relaxed. Soon after the publication of the Liberty of Prophesying,' he wrote an Apology for Authorised and Set Forms of Liturgy, and in 1648 The Life of Christ, or the Great Exemplar, a valuable and highly popular work. These were followed by nis treatises of Holy Living and Holy Dying, Twentyseven Sermons for the Summer Half-Year, and other minor productions. He wrote also an excellent little manual of devotion, entitled the Golden Grove, so called after the mansion of his neighbour and patron the Earl of Carberry, in whose family he had spent many of his happiest leisure hours. In the preface to this work, Taylor had reflected on the ruling powers in church and state, for which he was, for a short time, committed to prison in Chepstow Castle. He next completed his Course of Sermons for the Year, and published some controversial tracts on the doctrine of Original Sin, respecting which his opinions were rather latitudinarian, inclining to the Pelagian heresy. He was attacked both by High Churchmen and Calvinists, but defended himself with warmth and spirit-the only instance in which his bland and benevolent disposition was betrayed into anything approaching to personal asperity. He went to London in 1657, and officiated in a private congregation of Episcopalians, till an offer was made him by the Earl of Conway to accompany him to Ireland, and act as lecturer in a church at Lisburn. Thither he accordingly repaired, fixing his residence at Portmore, on the banks of Lough Neagh, about eight miles from Lisburn. Two years appear to have been spent in this happy retirement, when, in 1660, Taylor made a visit to London, to pub- We must not think that the life of a man begins lish his Ductor Dubitantium, or Cases of Conscience, when he can feed himself or walk alone, when he can the most elaborate, but the least successful, of all his fight or beget his like, for so he is contemporary with works. His journey, however, was made at an aus- a camel or a cow; but he is first a man when he picious period. The Commonwealth was on the eve comes to a certain steady use of reason, according to of dissolution in the weak hands of Richard Crom- his proportion; and when that is, all the world of well, and the hopes of the cavaliers were fanned men cannot tell precisely. Some are called at age at by the artifice and ingenuity of Monk. Jeremy fourteen, some at one-and-twenty, some never; but Taylor signed the declaration of the loyalists of all men late enough; for the life of a man comes upon London on the 24th of April; on the 29th of him slowly and insensibly. But, as when the sun apMay Charles II. entered London in triumphal pro- proaching towards the gates of the morning, he first cession, to ascend the throne; and in August follow-opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits ing, our author was appointed bishop of Down and Connor. The Restoration exalted many a worthless parasite, and disappointed many a deserving loyalist; let us be thankful that it was the cause of the mitre descending on the head of at least one pure and pious churchman! Taylor was afterwards made chancellor of the university of Dublin, and a member of the Irish privy council. The see of Dromore was also annexed to his other bishopric, on account of his virtue, wisdom, and industry.' These well-bestowed honours he enjoyed only about six years. The duties of his episcopal function were discharged with zeal, mingled with charity; and the few sermons which we possess delivered by him in Ireland are truly apostolic, both in spirit and language. The evil days and evil tongues on which he had fallen never caused him to swerve from his enlightened toleration 6 The following passages are selected as being among the most characteristic or beautiful in Bishop Taylor's works: [The Age of Reason and Discretion.] of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns like those which decked the brows of Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly: so is a man's reason and his life. He first begins to perceive himself, to see or taste, making little reflections upon his actions of sense, and can discourse of flies and dogs, shells and play, horses and liberty: but when he is strong enough to enter into arts and little *Via Intelligentiæ,' a sermon preached by Jeremy Taylor to the university of Dublin. |