called for that in his return from India to Lisbon it was discovered the 3. of May; a day consecrated to the memory of Helena the Empress who first found the Cross, the most religious of Ladies in her time, mother to the first Christian Emprour, Constantine; both of them glorious in their age, Brittans both; both bright gems of this our nation.

This isle is removed south from the æquator sixteen degrees from the utmost promontory of South Afric hath two and twenty degrees of longitude, and where the needle varies five degrees and thirteen minutes, but from the lands end of England distant 4500 English miles; from the Cape of Good Hope 1740; Madagascar 3000; Surat 6600; and from Bantam 6900 or thereabouts. In that Bay, which takes name from the chappel, the isle has this resemblance.

But to what part of the inhabited world it appertains may be queried, seeing the vast Ethiopic Ocean so largely circles it. To Afer I may imagine (because it is nearest that continent) rather than Vesputius. It is but small, not exceeding thirty English miles circumference, yet excessive high; for it vails its head often in the clouds, where opening a wide mouth it gulps down sufficient moisture to cool its ardor, which by reason of the clime 'tis in, cannot but be sometimes intemperate ; and but for that affinity it has with the middle region which invelops it as with a chil-cold tulipant [turban], and long nights it has, that extreme heat which the sun darts constantly twice every year perpendicular upon this isle, would doubtless make the entrails enflame (had it sulphur) like another Vesuvius. Nevertheless the land is not more eminent in its height than the ambient sea profound in the depth; so deep that it admits ill anchoring save at the N.W. from the chappel, where is 20 fathoms; so as that there are mountains in the sea as in the earth is not to be doubted; seeing that upon the casting of the lead, log, or plummet, upon the one side of the ship is sometimes found 30 fathom, and upon the other side 60. Nevertheless it is so very deep here that the sounding line or plummet will scarce find ground; which is the cause that marriners do sometimes carry their anchors ashore that they may moor or ride the more securely. By reason of the depth I could hardly discern either flux or reflux near the shore; seeming as if we were in the mid ocean where neither ebb nor flood is to be discerned. Howbeit, the salt water plashes and froaths to see it self so suddenly resisted: but the moist breath usually vaporing in or upon the seas makes it sometimes turbulent.

This isle is hard to be ascended; not that the passage is craggy, but that it is so precipitous. The sailers have an ironick proverb, The way is such as a man may chuse whether he will break his heart going up, or his neck coming down but being once up, scarce any place can yield a more large or more delightful prospect. The land is very even and plain at the top, and swells no where to a deformed rising: some springs above be sweet which below are brackish: the reason may be for that in their drilling descent they may relish of the salt hills through which it cuts an usual passage, so as they become salt both by their own composition and the salt breath which the sea evaporates. Nevertheless, there are but two noted rivolets; one which bubbles down towards the chappel, the other into the Lemmon Valley, so called from a lemmon tree and chappel built at the bottom of the isle by the Spaniard Anno 1571. and by the Dutch of late pull'd down; a place once intended for God's worship, but now disposed of to common uses. There

are also some ruines of a little town lately demolisht by the Spaniard, in that it became a magazine of private trade in turning and returning out of both the Indies; no other monuments nor antiquities are there found. You see all if you look upon the ribs of a weather-beaten carrique [carack, large ship] and some broken pieces of great ordnance which albeit left there against the owners liking serve some instead of anchors. Human inhabitants there are none; nor were of late, save that in the year 1591. Captain Kendall weighing anchor sooner than was expected, one Segar a marriner was accidentally left ashore 18 months after, Captain Parker coming to an anchor found poor Segar alive, but so amazed, or rather overjoyed at his arrival, that he dyed suddenly; by which we see that sudden joy is not easily digested. Howbeit of hogs and goats here are plenty, who agree wellfavouredly and multiply even to admiration; happy in their ease and safety till ships arrive there for refreshment. The goats leap wildly from rock to rock, and to avoid the reach of our small guns keep their centinels. . . .

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Here also with a little labour we got store of phesants, powts, quails, hens, partridge; and which was no less acceptable, divers sorts of grass and roots, as wood-sorrel, three- leav'd grass, scurvy-grass and like acid herbs soveraign against the scurvy; the usual disease from the sea, and most predominating amongst islanders: we had also basil, parsly, mint, spinage, fennel, annis, radish, mustard-seed, tabaco, and some others, which by a willing hand, directed by an ingenious eye, may soon be gathered; brought hither, and here sown, by Fernandus Lupius, a Portugal, in the year of our Lord 1509. for the good of his country-men; who nevertheless at this day dare hardly land to over-see their seminary, or own their labours; the English and Dutch in the churlish language of a cannon sometime disputing the propriety. Anno 1588. Candish [Thomas Cavendish], our countryman, landed here in his circum-navigating the globe; and found store of lemons, orenges, pomgranads, pomcitrons, figs and dates, but how the alteration comes who knows: for none of those grow there now that I could either see or hear of, one lemontree excepted. To conclude: In the old chappel here we buried our captain, Andrew Evans, whose deaths wound (as formerly told) was unhappily given him by a Mannatee at the Mauritius. He was an expert seaman, and no less vigilant than expert: so as doubtless the company had a great loss of him. . .

So as by the judgment of that indifferent and learned writer it appears the English have the first place for sea knowledge and navigation attributed them. And amongst the best sea commanders this late captain of ours very well deserved with the rest to be ranked. But to return. That this is a very delightful isle cannot be denied, and its admirable prospect and other pleasures were sufficient to induce our longer stay; but stay we might not: So as after a weeks refreshment we discharged our reckoning in a hearty farewel, and by the invitation of a prosperous gale upon a N.W. course swiftly cut our passage through the yielding ocean; insomuch as on the sixteenth of October we were once more nadyr to the sun, which at that time was in its Antarctic progress.

Helena, saint and mother of Constantine, was of obscure origin, and was said to have been born in Britain, though other accounts say at Treves in Germany or in Bithynia. Constantine was not born in Britain, though he was in Britain when his father died at York. Afer is given eponymously for Africa. Vesputius is the Latinised second name of Amerigo Vespucci, after whom America was named.

Benjamin Whichcote (1609-83), a liberal divine of the Cambridge Platonist group, was born at Whichcote Hall of good Shropshire family, was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, became tutor there, and in 1644 provost of King's. According to Tulloch, he, more than any other teacher at Cambridge, impressed his own mode of thought both upon his colleagues in the university and the rising generation of students.' At the Restoration Whichcote was removed from the provostship, but he retained a college rectory; and in 1668 he was presented by Bishop Wilkins to the vicarage of St Lawrence Jewry, London, which he held till his death. The works of Whichcote comprise a number of Discourses, republished in four volumes in 1751, and a series of (1200) Moral and Religious Aphorisms, collected from his MSS. The leading principle of all his thought was the use of reason in religion; like John Hales, of Eton, he wished religion and learning alike to be 'cleared of froth and grounds.' He it was who mainly gave impulse to the movement represented by the 'Cambridge Platonists' and the Latitudinarians, amongst whom, besides himself, his pupil John Smith, Cudworth, and Henry More were conspicuous. And he had the unusual honour of having a selection of his sermons edited, with a preface, by the third Earl of Shaftesbury, author of the Characteristics, and called a Deist. These are amongst his aphorisms : It is a wise man's motto: 'I live to be wiser every day;' 'I am not too wise to be taught of any.'

Examine all principles of education; for since we are all fallible, we should suppose we may be mistaken. Quotidie depono aliquem errorem ['Daily I renounce some error or another']. Γηράσκω αἰεὶ πολλὰ διδασκόμενος ['I grow old constantly learning many a thing').

To speak of natural light, of the use of reason in religion, is to do no disservice at all to grace; for God is acknowledged in both-in the former as laying the groundwork of His creation, in the latter as reviving and restoring it.

If a man be once out of the use of reason, there are no bounds to unreasonableness.

Both heaven and hell have their foundation within us. Heaven primarily lies in a refined temper, in an internal reconciliation to the nature of God, and to the rule of righteousness. The guilt of conscience and enmity to righteousness is the inward state of hell. The guilt of conscience is the fewel of hell.

It had been better for the Christian church if that which calls itself Catholic had been less employed in creating pretended faith and more employed in maintaining universal charity.

Carefully avoid the odium of comparisons: either of persons, that you do not offend; or of things that you be not deceived. He that hath the advantage in a comparison thinks he hath but his right; he that has the disadvantage thinks he hath not his right.

Religion, which is a bond of union, ought not to be a ground of division; but it is in an unnatural use when it doth disunite. Men cannot differ by true religion, because it is true religion to agree. The spirit of religion is a reconciling spirit.

It is better for us that there shou'd be difference of

judgement, if we keep charity; but it is most unmanly to quarrel because we differ.

They do not advance religion who draw it down to bodily acts or who carry it up highest into what is mystical, symbolical, emblematical, etc. Christian religion is not mystical, symbolical, ænigmatical, emblematical; but uncloathed, unbodied, intellectual, rational, spiritual.

Religion is not a system of doctrines, an observance of modes, a heat of affections, a form of words, a spirit of censoriousness.

Religion is not a hear-say, a presumption, a supposition; is not a customary pretension and profession; is not an affectation of any mode; is not a piety of particular fancy, consisting in some pathetic devotions, vehement expressions, bodily severities, affected anomalies and aversions from the innocent usages of others: but consisteth in a profound humility and an universal charity.

Enthusiastic principles-good things strained out of their wits. Among Christians, those that pretend to be inspired seem to be mad; among the Turks, those that are mad seem to be inspired.

Among politicians the esteem of religion is profitable; the principles of it are troublesom.

Rule by right is the weak man's strength, and the strong man's curb; it makes mine my own, and arraigns the intruder's violence.

It is not good to live in jest, since we must die in

earnest.

Jeremy Taylor,

one of the greatest preachers of the English Church, was born in the town of Cambridge, He came and baptised on 15th August 1613. of good Gloucestershire stock, and was related to Dr Rowland Taylor, who suffered martyrdom at Hadleigh in the reign of Queen Mary. But the Taylors 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 or barbersurgeon. He had his son entered as a sizar at Caius College in his thirteenth year, having himself previously taught him the rudiments of grammar and mathematics. In 1630 Jeremy Taylor took his degree of Bachelor of Arts, was chosen a fellow, and in 1634 was ordained and proceeded M.A. He then 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. By Laud's assistance Taylor obtained a fellowship in All Souls College, Oxford, which he enjoyed for two years, till by favour of Juxon he became rector of Uppingham in Rutlandshire. He was also chaplain-in-ordinary to the king. About this time he was suspected of a Romeward tendency, and of too great familiarity with a learned Franciscan friar. In 1639 he married Phoebe Langsdale, who bore four sons and two daughters, and died in 1651. The sons of Taylor all 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 was inevitably committed by principle and profession to the royal cause. 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. In 1645, apparently while accompanying the royal army as chaplain, or as chaplain to the king, Jeremy Taylor was taken prisoner by the Parliamentary forces, in the battle fought before Cardigan Castle. He was soon released; but the tide of war had turned against the royalists, and in the wreck of the

Church, Taylor resolved to continue in Wales, and, in conjunction with two learned friends, to establish a school at Newton-hall in Caermarthenshire. 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 stilleth the raging of the sea, and the noise of his waves, 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, shewing the Unreasonableness of prescribing to other Men's Faith, and the Iniquity of persecuting Differing Opinions (1646) -'prophesying' meaning simply preaching or expounding. The work has been justly described as 'perhaps, of all Taylor's writings, that which shows him furthest in advance of 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, 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 from the opposite camp, excluded Roman Catholics; and Jeremy Taylor, to establish some standard of truth and prevent anarchy, as he alleges, proposed the confession of the Apostles' Creed as the test of orthodoxy and the condition of union among Christians. The principles he advocates that governments should not interfere with any opinions save such as directly tend to subvert them go to destroy this limitation, and are applicable to universal toleration, which perhaps he dared hardly then avow, even if he had entertained such an aspiration. 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 in the second edition (1659) with the following interesting and instructive apologue:

I end with a story which I find in the Jews' books: When Abraham sat at his tent-door according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old

man stopping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travel, coming towards him, who was an hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, caused him to sit down; but observing that the old man eat 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.

In Wales, Jeremy Taylor was married to Mrs Joanna Bridges, absurdly said to have been a natural daughter of Charles I., but 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. In his Welsh retreat he further wrote an Apology for Authorised and Set Forms of Liturgy (1649), and The Life of Christ, or the Great Exemplar (1649). These were followed by Holy Living and Holy Dying, Twenty-seven Sermons for the Summer Half-year, and other minor works. The excellent little manual of devotion, the Golden Grove (1655), was so called after the mansion of his neighbour and patron, the Earl of Carbery, in whose family he had spent many of his happiest 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 (and rather latitudinarian) tracts on the doctrine of Original Sin. 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 in 1658, 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 publish his Ductor Dubitantium, or the Kule of Conscience in all her General Measures, the most elaborate, but the least successful, of all his works. It was meant as a compound of Christian ethics and casuistry, basing morality on the will of God as revealed in and through conscience; and though eloquent and learned, is super-subtle and even at times casuistical. His journey to London was made at an auspicious period. The Commonwealth was on the eve of dissolution in the weak hands of Richard Cromwell, and the hopes of the Cavaliers were fanned by the artifice and ingenuity of Monk. Jeremy Taylor signed the declaration of the loyalists of London on the 24th of April; on the 29th of May he saw Charles II. enter London in triumph, and in August following was appointed Bishop of Down and Connor. The Restoration exalted many a worthless parasite, and disappointed many a deserving loyalist; it brought a mitre to 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 administration of 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; at his first visitation he saw it his duty to eject thirty-six ministers as not episcopally ordained, and thenceforward he was kept in perpetual controversy and trouble by irreconcilable Presbyterians, and he would fain have withdrawn to a small parochial cure where he could have had peace. The few sermons which we possess delivered by him in Ireland are truly apostolic, both in spirit and language. He died at Lisburn, of a fever caught at a stricken parishioner's bedside, on the 13th of August 1667, and was buried in the cathedral of Dromore.

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A finer pattern of a Christian divine never perhaps existed. His learning dignified the high station he at last attained; his gentleness and courtesy shed a grace over his whole conduct and demeanour. Dr Parr said, and Heber agreed with him, that Englishmen revere Barrow, admire Hooker, but love Jeremy Taylor. Most eloquent of divines,' Coleridge called him; he has no rival but Milton in impassioned prose. Of his controversial writings Parr said: 'Fraught as they are with guileless ardour, with peerless eloquence, and with the richest stores of knowledge-historical, classical, scholastic, and theological-they may be considered as irrefragable proofs of his pure, affectionate, and dutiful attachment to the reformed church of England.' His uncontroversial writings, however, form ` the noblest monument to his memory. He was perhaps too prone to speculations in matters of doctrine, and he was certainly no blinded adherent of the Church; he was an early example of a Liberal High Churchman. His mind loved to expatiate

on the higher things of time, death, and eternity, which concern men of all parties, and to draw from the divine revelation its hopes, terrors, and injunctions-in his hands, irresistible as the flaming sword as a means of purifying the human mind, and fitting it for a more exalted destiny. 'Theology is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge. In heaven indeed we shall first see and then love; but here on earth we must first love, and love will open our eyes as well as our hearts; and we shall then see, and perceive, and understand.'

'The

English Chrysostom,' as he has been called, was a preacher of righteousness and of personal holiness rather than an expositor of doctrine or an accurate theologian. He is hardly self-consistent in all his utterances, and seems to come dangerously near heresy at times. His style is unequalled for wealth of illustration, exuberant fullness of thought, and a certain grandeur of diction; his forte was not in trenchant argument, terseness, or even perfect lucidity. At times the illustrations almost overlay the argument; and the quotations from classical and patristic sources and the learned allusions to ancient literature and story must have been beyond the apprehension of the bulk of his audiences. His devotional works are much less rhetorical than his sermons. He has sometimes been called the Spenser of the pulpit. He certainly resembled Spenser in his prolific fancy, in a certain musical arrangement and sweetness of expression, in prolonged description, and in delicious musings and reveries, suggested by some favourite image or metaphor, on which he dwells with the fondness and enthusiasm of a young poet. In these passages he is also apt to run into excess; epithet is heaped upon epithet, and figure upon figure; all the quaint conceits of his fancy and the curious stores of his learning are dragged in, till precision and proportion are lost. He writes like an orator, and produces his effect by reiterated strokes and multiplied impressions. Some of his sermons are the noblest prose-poetry; but by preference he dwells on 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 very imagery and colours are fantastical.' The fulfilment 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, 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. The earlier of the extracts given below are from Of Holy Dying, the others from sermons.

The Age of Reason and Discretion.

Neither must we think that the life of a man begins when he can feed himself or walk alone, when he can fight or beget his like, for so he is contemporary with a camel or a cow; but he is first a man when he comes to a certain steady use of reason, according to his proportion; and when that is, all the world of men cannot tell precisely. Some are called 'at age' at fourteen, some at one-and-twenty, some never; but all men late enough; for the life of a man comes upon him slowly and insensibly. But as, when the sun approaches towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits 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 shews 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 institutions, he is at first entertained with trifles and impertinent things, not because he needs them, but because his understanding is no bigger, and little images of things are laid before him, like a cock-boat to a whale, only to play withal: but before a man comes to be wise, he is half dead with gouts and consumptions, with catarrhs and aches, with sore eyes and a worn-out body. So that if we must not reckon the life of a man but by the accounts of his reason, he is long before his soul be dressed; and he is not to be called a man without a wise and an adorned soul, a soul at least furnished with what is necessary towards his well-being: but by that time his soul is thus furnished, his body is decayed; and then you can hardly reckon him to be alive, when his body is possessed by so many degrees of death.

But there is yet another arrest. At first he wants strength of body, and then he wants the use of reason: and when that is come, it is ten to one but he stops by the impediments of vice, and wants the strength of the spirit; and we know that body and soul and spirit are the constituent parts of every Christian man. And now let us consider what that thing is which we call years of discretion. The young man is passed his tutors, and arrived at the bondage of a caitiff spirit; he has run from discipline, and is let loose to passion. The man by this time hath wit enough to choose his vice, to act his lust, to court his mistress, to talk confidently, and ignorantly, and perpetually; to despise his betters, to