so easy to choose. The names and works referred to in this chapter must be taken merely as examples given to show the trend of thought and style of language then prevailing.

52. Order of Presentation.- The prose-writings of this period are so important that they will be noticed first, especially since they better connect with the last topic of the preceding chapter.

53. Chillingworth.— Among the earliest of these writers was William Chillingworth, who died in 1644, at the age of forty-two years. Though an able man, he was so distrustful of his own judgment that he allowed himself to be persuaded to turn from a Protestant to a Catholic, and then from a Catholic, to a Protestant. When writing to a Catholic, he referred to his inconstancy of faith as follows:

I know a man, that of a moderate Protestant turned a Papist, and the day that he did so, was convicted in conscience that his yesterday's opinion was an error. The same man afterward, upon better consideration, became a doubting Papist, and of a doubting Papist a confirmed Protestant. And yet this man thinks

himself no more to blame for all these changes than a traveler who, using all diligence to find the right way to some remote city, did yet mistake it, and after find his error and amend it.

Lord Clarendon, who was intimately acquainted with Chillingworth, says of him, that he was of so rare a temper in debate, that it was impossible to provoke him into any passion.

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He became a very firm defender of the Protestant faith, and his greatest work was entitled The Religion of the Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation."

In this

work he maintains that the Scripture is the only rule to which appeal ought to be made in theological disputes, and that no church is infallible. With reference to using force in matters of conscience, he says,—

I have learned from the ancient Fathers of the church, that nothing is more against religion than to force religion; and of St. Paul [that], the weapons of the Christian warfare are not carnal. And great reason; for human violence may make men counterfeit, but cannot make them believe, and is therefore fit for nothing but to breed form without and atheism within.

In defense of the use of reason in determining one's religious belief, he uses the following words :

But you that would not have men follow their reason, what would you have them follow? their passions, or pluck out their eyes, and go blindfold? No, you say; you would have them follow authority. In God's name, let them; we also would have them follow authority; for it is upon the authority of universal tradition that we would have them believe Scripture. But then, as for the authority which you would have them follow, you will let them see reason why they should follow it.

The following selection affords a fine illustration of irony. He is showing the folly and wickedness of dueling:

If thy brother or thy neighbor have offered thee an injury, or an affront, forgive him? By no means; thou art utterly undone, and lost in reputation with the world, if thou dost forgive him. What is to be done, then? Why, let not thy heart take rest, let all other business and employment be laid aside, till thou hast his blood. How! A man's blood for an injurious, passionate speech - for a disdainful look? Nay, that is not all that thou mayest gain among men the reputation of a discreet, well-tempered murderer, be sure thou killest him not in passion, when thy blood is hot and boiling with the provocation; but proceed with as great temper and settledness of reason, with as much dis

cretion and preparedness, as thou wouldst to the communion : after several days' respite, that it may appear it is thy reason guides thee, and not thy passion, invite him kindly and courteously into some retired place, and there let it be determined whether his blood or thine shall satisfy the injury.

These brief selections will give some notion of the trend of this author's thought and of his style of composition.

54. Jeremy Taylor. Of all the eminent religious teachers of his time, Jeremy Taylor was the most eloquent and imaginative. He may be fitly termed a prose-poet. His illustrations are profuse, and abound in figurative expressions. His imagination is so quick and fruitful, that, whichever way he turns, or whatever truth he would set forth, images crowd upon him until he can scarcely find room for them. From this cause, they often crowd upon one another in his writing until his sentences become intolerably long, and propriety and precision are made to suffer not a little. Yet he mostly deals in what is natural and familiar, giving his hearers illustrations from familiar objects of nature, such as birds, trees, flowers, morning beauties, sunset skies, running streams, placid lakes, the sweetness and innocence of childhood, the felicity of domestic peace.

His love of Nature is so great that he never forgets her, and her abundant stores are so familiar to him that he readily finds enough to draw from on all occasions. He is continually surprising his readers with new and quaint, yet beautiful, conceptions. He writes as an orator would speak; and as you peruse his writings, you do not realize that you are reading, but seem to hear him talking to you.

The few selections for which there is room here, can give but a faint idea of the versatility and richness of his style.

In speaking of domestic felicity, he says,

No man can tell, but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society.

In illustration of the progress of sin, he gives the following:

I have seen the little purls of a spring sweat through the bottom of a bank, and intenerate the stubborn pavement, till it hath made it fit for the impression of a child's foot; and it was despised, like the descending pearls of a misty morning, till it had opened its way and made a stream large enough to carry away the ruins of the undermined strand, and to invade the neighboring gardens: but then the despised drops were grown into an artificial river, and an intolerable mischief. So are the first entrances of sin stopped with the antidotes of a hearty prayer, and checked into sobriety by the eye of a reverend man, or the counsels of a single sermon: but when such beginnings are neglected, and our religion hath not in it so much philosophy as to think anything evil as long as we can endure it, they grow up to ulcers and pestilential evils; they destroy the soul by their abode, who at their first entry might have been killed with the pressure of a little finger.

In giving advice concerning profitable studies, he has this paragraph :

Spend not your time in that which profits not; for your labor and your health, your time and your studies, are very valuable; and it is a thousand pities to see a diligent and hopeful person spend himself in gathering cockle-shells and little pebbles, in tell

ing sands upon the shores, and making garlands of useless daisies. Study that which is profitable, that which will make you useful to churches and commonwealths, that which will make you desirable and wise. Only I shall add this to you, that in learning there are variety of things as well as in religion: there is mint and cummin, and there are the weighty things of law; so there are studies more and less useful, and everything that is useful will be required in its time : and I may in this also use the words of our blessed Savior, "These things ought you to look after, and not to leave the other unregarded." But your great care is to be in the things of God and of religion, in holiness and true wisdom, remembering the saying of Origen,— That the knowledge that arises from goodness is something that is more certain and more divine than all demonstrations,— than all other learnings of the world.

He

55. John Milton as a Prose-Writer.- Milton, the poet, was also a powerful prose-writer. His prose productions were mostly on political subjects. strongly advocated freedom of the press, regarding it as a good fortune for error to unmask itself, so that it might be met in open combat. He had unbounded confidence in the power of truth to defend itself. He said,

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously (by licensing and prohibiting) to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her [Falsehood's] confuting is the best and surest suppressing.

And again,

For who knows not that Truth is strong, next to the Almighty ? She needs no policies, no strategems, no licensings, to make her victorious; those are the shifts and the defenses that Error uses against her [Truth's] power; give her [Truth] but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps.