sort, like the rod of Aaron, which swallowed up the rods of the enchanters. *** Who does not now perceive that the chair of St. Peter formed an august tribunal, which often rebuked and curbed the brutal rapine and merciless oppression of barons and princes? It may, indeed, be no pleasing spectacle to see the potentates of the earth at the bridle or stirrups of a churchman, or to behold emperors waiting barefoot at the gates of his palace. *** Again, it is an astounding thing to behold all Europe precipitating herself into the East, and draining out her lifeblood and her treasure, at the call of an imperious hierarchy, or the preaching of a fanatical monk. But then it should be remembered, that, according to all human calculation, nothing but this upheaving of the resources and energies of Christendom could have rolled back the flood which the fury of Mohammed had let loose upon the eastern world, and which, if not arrested, might have swept religion and humanity from the regions of the West. All these are considerations which may reasonably satisfy us, that the thoughts of God towards the children of men were not wholly thoughts of evil, when he permitted the mystery of iniquity to grow up into such colossal grandeur. We cannot, without violence to our judgment or our faith, shut out from our minds the notion of some especial providential agency and interference, shaping and regulating the growth of this gigantic spiritual empire. There surely is something awful and grand in the spectacle of a mental supremacy controlling the mutinous elements of society during the wildest periods of barbarism, and often potently interfering, to prevent their rushing into ruinous and exterminating conflict. And then, too, it should never be forgotten that the same power was, in effect, the sole guardian of intelligence, the sole protector and preserver of literature, in those days of Egyptian darkness. The man is not to be envied who can reflect, without some emotions of gratitude, on those various and noble foundations, which, although they may have at last degenerated into haunts and hiding-places of profligacy, formed, nevertheless, the only retreats of learning, civilisation, and charity, during a dreary interval of general ignorance and brutality. It would be scarcely too much to affirm that the papal church, corrupt as it became, was no less than the ark, which preserved the moral and spiritual life of Christendom from perishing in the flood that so long overspread the face of the earth."-P. 23.

We cannot refrain from acknowledging with humble gratitude the wisdom and goodness of God in adjusting the faculties of his agents to their work, when he raised up first a Wicklif, and afterwards a Cranmer. A change of position might have been fatal to their efforts. Cranmer would have been beaten down by the torrent of corruption, which Wicklif breasted with fearless energy and determination. Milton has called Cranmer a time

serving and a halting prelate; but that very gentleness and hesitation of purpose, conspired to promote and to complete the building of the Church. It is well remarked by Mr. Blunt,* that, in contemplating the progress of the Reformation, our attention is particularly attracted to the calmness, the temper, and the prudence with which Cranmer attempted to direct, (like a good and guardian angel,) the tempest on which he rode. Guided by a pilot of more impetuous ardour and daring, the Ark of our religion might have foundered among the breakers. The ashes of Wicklif have been scattered over the world, and the dust of Cranmer was mingled with the fire of the stake; but the flame which destroyed his life, revived his reputation; his faith died only to live again; the denyer of his Master brightened into the martyr; the mortal put on immortality. Like Jewel, he had fallen away, and like him had repented in bitterness and tears. Never was indignant penitence more complete-" This hand hath offended-this unworthy hand." Such was his continual exclamation in the midst of the burning; and while the power of utterance remained, the same voice was heard exclaiming, "This unworthy hand! Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Never, then, let the churchman, at least, fling a stone at the memory of Cranmer; let him recollect how deep, how all-important are our obligations to him; how melancholy his abasement; how glorious his recovery; how triumphant his translation! Doubtless he, who was not dead, but slept, beheld the face of his Lord shining in forgiveness upon him!

The life of Laud furnishes abundant matter for a distinct article. Mr. Le Bas has not attempted-and the endeavour were probably hopeless-to clear up the mystery hanging about the enmity which subsisted between Laud and Williams. He may be right in attributing their original disagreement to some unimportant difference of opinion. Yet it requires only a very partial examination of the character and disposition of these eminent individuals, to perceive the impossibility of any harmonious intercourse between them; they were both men of daring energy, sleepless activity, unquenchable thirst of distinction. Mr. Le Bas considers their opposite views of the religious dissensions of the time, sufficient to occasion their alienation. Laud, by his urgent efforts to suppress puritanism, incurred the odium of papistry; while Williams was stigmatized as the advocate of the non-conformists. The key to the quarrel is, however, to be sought for in the natural rivalry rising out of their peculiar and relative positions. Hacket, in his most curious and interesting life of Archbishop Williams,—a work containing more learning, more satire, more eloquence, and more

* Sketch of the Reformation, p. 86.

*

eccentricity, than any similar production in the language,-has laboured with enthusiastic diligence to vindicate the reputation of his patron and friend. The fire of envy, he says, would have gone out by this time, but that there is a pile of virtue left behind to keep it burning. He sets out, indeed, with the honest confession of his "drift to sweeten his master's memory with a strong composed perfume;"† but he demands for his narrative, at the same time, the highest credit for veracity and impartiality, resting his claim upon this brief and emphatic sentence I fear God." Writing avowedly with a feeling of partizanship, and with a glowing admiration of Archbishop Williams, the admirers of Laud will not find much to reprobate in the following passage, which we quote from the Life of Williams, both because it is curious and valuable in itself, and because this quaint folio is not in the hands of the general reader :—

66

"Of all men," writes Hacket, "Bishop Laud was the party whose enmity was most tedious and most spiteful against his great benefactor, the Bishop of Lincoln. He battered him with old and new contrivances fifteen years; his very dreams were not without them, as they are enrolled in his memorials, drawn out with his own hand. I will touch that fault, that great fault, with a gentle hand, because of that good which was in him; because in other things I believe for my part he was better than he was commonly thought; because his death did extinguish a great deal of envy. I meet with him in the worst action that ever he did, and cannot shun it; if I should draw him in purposely to defame him, now he is at rest, I were more sacrilegious than if I robbed his tomb. *** Perhaps it began from emulation to keep him back, who was only like to be Laud's competitor for the greatest place of our Church. Had it gone no further, it might be censured moderately for a common temptation. No wonder if the seal and the sword-fish never swim quietly in the same channel. *** What a provocation it was to the ambitious spirit of Bishop Laud, a man of many good works, to blow out a light, that in common opinion did outshine him! And what a temptation it was to follow his thrust, when he was persuaded that the removing of one suspected would be the bottom of his safety! Therefore, according to the prudence and charity which God hath given me, I will neither shake off the good esteem I had of him, nor think too highly and absolutely of human infirmity; and this is inserted to do him justice who was the chiefest cause, under God's providence and permission, of all the injustice and troubles that did light upon Lincoln."+

To this statement, written with apparent candour and tem

* Pt. ii. p. 28.

+ Preface.

Life of Williams, pt. ii. pp. 65, 66; ed. 1693.

perance, two principal objections occur; one against the uncharitable allusion to Laud's dreams, the other to his ingratitude towards his benefactor. This charge, Mr. Le Bas very properly observes, (p. 67,) loses much of its force, from the probable hypothesis that Williams, in his anxiety for Laud's promotion to a bishopric, was mainly actuated by a desire to retain the deanery of Westminster.

In a previous article, upon the Character and Progress of Religious Poetry, we briefly alluded to Archbishop Laud, as a patron of literature; and in returning to the subject, our acknowledgments are due to the learned researches of Archdeacon Todd, printed in the second volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature. The character of Laud has, indeed, hardly yet recovered its natural hue, so long has it been the mark of calumny and invective; no missile being thought too abominable to assail him. Yet Anthony Wood, a censor by no means liberal of praise, pronounced him so generous a benefactor to learning, as to leave little or nothing for his own use. Wellwood describes his rich endowment of books and manuscripts, as resembling the bounty of a king rather than of a subject; and South, after observing that his performances were only surpassed by his intentions, demanded, with triumphant eloquence, what scholar he had not promoted, what man of genius he had not studiously drawn to himself. When the shallowness of his purse, to employ his own phrase to Usher, impeded his liberal desires, he exerted himself in procuring the aid of others; among whom Lord Pembroke and the Duke of Buckingham are to be especially named. His presentation of Oriental MSS. to the Bodleian Library is well known, together with the foundation of a lectureship for the encouragement of Arabic learning. Pocock was at Aleppo when the Archbishop's letter invited him to Oxford: the first lecture was delivered August 10, 1636. In the following year, Pocock once more visited the East; and how warmly the feelings of Laud were enlisted in behalf of oriental knowledge may be seen in the Life of Pocock, by Dr. Twells. In 1640, when the distant roar of the approaching storm began to be heard, Laud's anxiety for the progress of learning was undiminished. He turned with an affectionate eye from the blackening horizon to the classic shades of his own university. His literary talents were undoubtedly great, although the unfortunate turbulence of his life prevented their ample development. He fell upon evil tongues and evil days, when the sword was a more popular weapon than the pen, and the graces of literature fled from the tumult of controversy and the distraction of rebellion. As a theological disputant, his book against the Jesuit, Fisher, in Mr. Todd's opinion, bespeaks him matchless. Wood said it was looked upon as a piece so solidly compacted, that one of our historians (l'Estrange) gives it the commendation of being the

exactest masterpiece of divinity extant at that time. Sir Edward Dering, a most bitter adversary of Laud, confessed that he had muzzled the Jesuit, and struck the Papists under the fifth rib; that his monument should be St. Paul's, and his book against Fisher his epitaph.* His Answer to the Covenanting Scots deserves equal commendation. Two reasons may be assigned for the oblivion which covers these powerful efforts; the feeble interest attached to the questions they examine, and the rough and unpolished freedom of the style. There is something, remarks Mr. Le Bas, too homely and colloquial about it; it has little either of the terseness or the dignity of written compositions. Laud seems to have composed, for the most part, like Butler, in the manner of one who thinks aloud. If we compare the style of Laud with that of his friend Bishop Hall, or of the English Chrysostom, Jeremy Taylor, of whom he was the early patron, we find indeed abundant room for disappointment. We are delighted by none of the delicate gleams of fancy that play over the pages of the first, nor dazzled by the gorgeous splendour nor rapt into ecstasy by the delicious music of the second. In their works, the footsteps of all the Muses are visible; and, from every stream of learning, pearls are gathered to illuminate the shrines of the Temple. But Laud has the merit of being vigorous, though he be harsh: the sword is of a grotesque form, ponderous and unwieldly; but the day may come when it will be found not without its use in the christian armoury. Dr. Gilly, of Durham, supplied Mr. Le Bas with a few brief extracts from the Laudeana, which he has printed in the appendix, and two of which we shall transfer to our pages. The first has a mournful fulness of meaning, when we remember the unhappy distresses and persecutions in which the spirit of the age and the violence of his own temper involved the writer. "Though David never took any war in hand, but with God's approbation and against his enemies, yet we find (1 Chron. xxii. 8,) that his battles and his blood were the cause why God would not suffer him to build his temple. He might sing before the ark, he might serve in the tabernacle, but no temple would God have built by hands of blood. Solomon's hands, hands of peace, might do that." Again, in a different manner; "If you will have God arise, you must rise too. Arise in soul by devotion; arise in life by the works of sanctification; and arise in prudence and in provident care to be up, and not found sleeping in riot and excéss, where an enemy is, or ought to be feared." It must, however, be admitted, that, in intellectual power, Laud was excelled by his rival Williams; fatigue could not impede him, nor difficulties daunt him, nor sickness relax his enthusiasm.

See Mr. Le Bas, note, p. 59.