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waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation: others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge. What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of worthies.-Areopagitica.

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XV.

JEREMY TAYLOR.

1613-1667.

JEREMY TAYLOR was the son of a barber at Cambridge, in which town he was born, August 15, 1613. From the recently founded Grammar School of his native place he passed, at the age of thirteen, to Caius College as a sizar. He took his degree of B.A. in 1631, and was chosen fellow of his college. At twentyone he was ordained. Soon after this he removed to London, where he was favourably noticed by Laud, who was always remarkable for his encouragement of men of learning and ability. Laud's exertions obtained for Taylor a Fellowship at All Souls' College, Oxford. In 1637 Bishop Juxon appointed him to the living of Uppingham. He followed the fortunes of Charles I during his struggle with Parliament, his living was sequestered, and, like many other royalists, he suffered hardship and poverty during the Commonwealth. In 1655, on account of some expressions in a preface to The Golden Grove, a well-known book of devotion, he was imprisoned. At the Restoration, he was made Bishop of Down and Connor. Here he laboured incessantly for the advance of his Church, but with small effect. He died at Lisburne, in 1667.

Jeremy Taylor stands high in the catalogue of English divines. His practical writings preserve their popularity, and, in their own peculiar way, possess a remarkable charm. He is best known to the general reader by his Manual of Devotion, Holy Living and Dying, and by his Sermons. In his sermons we have, upon the whole, the most favourable specimens of his genius. The learning is abundant, sometimes oppressive. Few writers in any

age have used quotation so freely. The rhetorical power of Taylor is certainly, as Mr. Hallam has called it, too Asiatic; but the distinct personality of the writer is so preserved, that the reader is attracted in spite of himself. There are passages in his sermons which will charm so long as imagination and fancy exert their sway. In The Liberty of Prophesying, he pleaded for toleration and freedom of opinion. The Ductor Dubitantium exhibits him as a master of casuistic morality. His solution of grave difficulties is often far from satisfactory, and the student of Taylor's writings will turn with pleasure to the hortatory and devotional passages which abound in his purely theological writings.

The great preachers of the Gallican Church are the only divines who have equalled Jeremy Taylor in the composition of funeral orations. His discourse on the death of Lady Carbery, the wife of a nobleman who had shown him great kindness, from which an extract is given below, is unique in English literature. A striking criticism of Bishop Taylor, and a parallel between his characteristics as a writer and those of Milton, will be found later among the extracts from Coleridge.

1. Care of our Time.

HE that is choice of his time will also be choice of his company, and choice of his actions; lest the first engage him in vanity and loss, and the latter, by being criminal, be a throwing his time and himself away, and a going back in the accounts of eternity.

God hath given to man a short time here upon earth, and yet upon this short time eternity depends: but so, that for every hour of our life (after we are persons capable of laws, and know good from evil), we must give account to the great judge of men and angels. And this is it which our blessed Saviour told us, that we must account for every idle

word: not meaning that every word which is not designed to edification, or is less prudent, shall be reckoned for a sin; but that the time which we spend in our idle talking and unprofitable discoursings, that time which might and ought to have been employed to spiritual and useful purposes, that is to be accounted for.

For we must remember that we have a great work to do, many enemies to conquer, many evils to prevent, much danger to run through, many difficulties to be mastered, many necessities to serve, and much good to do, many children to provide for, or many friends to support, or many poor to relieve, or many diseases to cure, besides the needs of nature and of relation, our private and our public cares, and duties of the world, which necessity and the providence of God hath adopted into the family of religion.

And that we need not fear this instrument to be a snare to us, or that the duty must end in scruple, vexation, and eternal fears, we must remember that the life of every man may be so ordered. (and indeed must), that it may be a perpetual serving of God: the greatest trouble, and most busy trade, and worldly incumbrances, when they are necessary, or charitable, or profitable, in order to any of those ends which we are bound to serve, whether public or private, being a doing of God's work. For God provides the good things of the world to serve the needs of nature, by the labours of the ploughman, the skill and pains of the artizan, and the dangers and traffic of the merchant: these men are in their callings the ministers of the Divine Providence, and the stewards of the creation, and servants of a great family of God.

God hath given every man work enough to do, that there shall be no room for idleness; and yet hath so ordered the world, that there shall be space for devotion. He that hath

the fewest businesses of the world, is called upon to spend more time in the dressing of his soul; and he that hath the most affairs, may so order them, that they shall be a service of God; whilst at certain periods they are blessed with prayers and actions of religion, and all day long are hallowed by a holy intention. Idleness is the greatest prodigality in the world: it throws away that which is unvaluable in respect of its present use, and irreparable when it is past, being to be recovered by no power of art or nature. -Holy Living.

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2. On the Death of Lady Carbery.

THIS descending to the grave is the lot of all men, 'neither doth God respect the person of any man;' the rich is not protected for favour, nor the poor for pity, the old man is not reverenced for his age, nor the infant regarded for his tenderness; youth and beauty, learning and prudence, wit and strength, lie down equally in the dishonours of the grave. All men, and all natures, and all persons resist the addresses and solennities of death, and strive to preserve a miserable and unpleasant life; and yet they all sink down and die. For so have I seen the pillars of a building assisted with artificial props bending under the pressure of a roof, and pertinaciously resisting the infallible and prepared ruin,

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Donec longa dies omni compage soluta
Ipsum cum rebus subruat auxilium,

till the determined day comes, and then the burden sunk upon the pillars, and disordered the aids and auxiliary rafters into a common ruin and a ruder grave: so are the desires and weak arts of man; with little aids and assistances of care and physic we strive to support our decaying bodies, and to

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