which almost universally in those days marked the prevalence of a sectarian spirit. On the other hand, the charge of a tendency to Romanism was still more undeserved, being simply due to that same contracted and miserable uncharitableness which was prepared to persecute falsely all who refused to encounter the arrogance and presumption of the Church of Rome with arrogance and presumption equally mistaken, equally unjustifiable. In regard to ceremonial observances the spirit of Hall was far too deeply imbued with the true principles of the Gospel, and far too tenderly jealous of the least depreciation of the paramount importance of those principles, to be over anxious to claim even their due position for the outward forms and ordinances of divine worship, at the risk of provoking evils far more serious than defects of ritual. And yet we have the clearest testimony even of Laud himself that, notwithstanding his avowed dislike of ritualistic "novelties," for which (as soon became only too manifest) the people were not prepared, he was careful to effect such improvement, as he quietly could, in the Church's ceremonial;* and, while holding the see of Exeter, succeeded by gentle means in establishing order and obedience to authority throughout his diocese. The judgment which he formed and expressed in regard to the position of the Foreign Reformed Churches was marked by a similar exercise of sound but considerate and charitable discrimination. Not only did he profess reverence and affection for those Churches, but he went even so far as to defend their form of outward government, "as fittest for their own (then existing) condition," against the censure of the Brownist Sectaries. At the same time, however, he was not slow, when occasion offered, to remind them of the better way,‡ and again and again he urged them to return into it so soon as the necessity § which, “as they imagined," had driven them to forsake it should have passed away. Nay, he did not scruple to call Episcopacy "the holy institution of our blessed Saviour and his unerring Apostles;" || and, with all his desire to speak favourably of the Churches which had abandoned it, he still "thought it considerable whether the condition they were in did altogether absolutely warrant such a proceeding;" ¶ maintaining, as he did, that an institution which had been universal from the first, cannot but be regarded as universally obligatory.** It is his own expression that he "hated to betray the truth by an unfaithful silence," ++ whenever the call of duty required him to defend it. But in allowing himself, from time to time, to engage in controversy, he acted also upon another principle, no less truly noble and truly Christian. He regarded it, when conducted in a proper spirit, as a fit and necessary means to reconcile differences, to restore peace, or, if this were impossible, at least to recover those who had been led astray. Even of the Church of Rome he could say, "We differ from that Church only upon points in which it has departed from itself." And again, "It is only the gross abuses and palpable innovations of the Church of Rome that we have parted from. Set these aside, they and we are and will be one Church; or if their cruelty would sever us, our unity of faith and Christian love shall make us one in spite of malice." And so, in his estimate of individuals, he appears to have been studious to keep himself free, as far as possible, from the trammels of party spirit, and to recognize what was good in divines of the most * See letter first printed in Works, edit. 1863, vol. x., p. 519. + Works, vol. x., pp. 41, 61. See vol. vii., p. 58; x., p. 340; xi., p. 21. Also "Concio ad Clerum," quoted above, P. xix. § Vol. x., pp. 149, 151, 154. | Vol. x., pp. 242, 269. ** Ibid., p. 242. Compare Laud's Works, vol. iv., p. 309, sq. +Ibid., p. 288. Vol. x., p. 153. Vol. ix., pp. 4, 434; also xi., pp. 31, 37, 286; and x., pp. 18, 47, 49, sq. opposite schools. He could speak of Bishop Andrewes as "that oracle of our present time," and he dedicated his "Concio" to Archbishop Abbot in terms which it would be unjust to attribute to mere flattery.+ Nor is there any reason to suppose that this largeness and kindliness of heart was less apparent in the closer or humbler relations of his private life. On the contrary, we may conclude that he would scarcely have been allowed to reside, as he did, so near to Norwich comparatively unmolested, during so many years after his expulsion from the Episcopal palace, unless his amiable qualities had won for him greater forbearance than was shown to most of the Clergy in those disastrous times; and, as a proof of his charitable disposition, it remains on record that, notwithstanding his own straitened circumstances while he lived at Higham, he was in the habit of making a weekly distribution of alms to a certain number of poor widows.† In the notice which has been taken of his several works in the foregoing memoir, their titles, for the most part, have been given in full, with the design and in the hope that some to whom they are now unknown may be induced, by curiosity or interest in their contents, to make acquaintance, out of so great a variety, with such as may be expected to meet the requirements or the taste of each. To enter into any detailed examination of their merits in this introduction would be out of place. Suffice it to say, they have alike one common recommendation, they are all the productions of a man who so cultivated the excellent gifts which he had received both of nature and of grace, that, in a lot diversified and disturbed beyond the experience of most men, he showed himself equal to every circumstance and condition of life. At home or abroad, among his family or in the Church, in Parliament or at the Court, as a Bishop in his palace or as a prisoner in the Tower, during years of prosperity or during years of adversity, he still shone with the steady light of the true Christian; not conforming himself to the world, but rising above the world, and daily transformed, more and more, by the renewing of his mind. According to the testimony of a contemporary, who was on every account well qualified to judge—Dr. Morton, Bishop of Durham— "God's visible, eminent, and resplendent graces of illumination, zeal, piety, and eloquence have made him truly honourable and glorious in the Church of Christ."§ In a word, he had studied to frame his life according to the model of the GREAT EXAMPLE and of the holiest of those Scriptural Saints whose characters he has illustrated in the following "Contemplations;" and the most appropriate honour that can be paid to his memory is to endeavour so to peruse them that they may bring forth in the heart and life of the reader the same good and ever blessed results which the composition of them had tended to produce in the author himself. * Vol. x., p. 8. + Vol. ix., p. 160. See "Ecclesiastical Biography," vol. iv., p. 311. It is also said that he observed a weekly fast in deprecation of the evils with which the Church and nation were then afflicted. Hone, p. 514. § See Pratt's Edition of his Works, vol. ix., p. 318. CONTEMPLATIONS. BOOK I. CONTEMPLATION 1.-THE CREATION. WHAT can I see, O God, in thy creation, but miracles of wonders? Thou madest something of nothing, and of that something all things. Thou, which wast without a beginning, gavest a beginning to time, and to the world in time. It is the praise of us men, if, when we have matter, we can give fashion: thou gavest a being to the matter, without form; thou gavest a form to that matter, and a glory to that form. If we can finish but a slight and imperfect matter according to a former pattern, it is the height of our skill: but to begin that which never was, whereof there was no example, whereto there was no inclination, wherein there was no possibility of that which it should be, is proper only to such power as thine: the infinite power of an infinite Creator! With us, not so much as a thought can arise without some matter; but here, with thee, all matter arises from nothing. How easy is it for thee to repair all out of something, which couldst thus fetch all out of nothing! Wherein can we now distrust thee, that hast proved thyself thus omnipotent? Behold, to have made the least clod of nothing, is more above wonder, than to multiply a world! But now the matter doth not more praise thy power, than the form thy wisdom. What beauty is here! what order! What order in working! what beauty in the work! which are so subject to imperfection; since it pleased thine infinite perfection (not out of need) to take leisure? Neither did thy wisdom herein proceed in time only, but in degrees: at first thou madest nothing absolute; first, thou madest things which should have being without life; then, those which should have life and being; lastly, those which have being, life, reason: So we ourselves, in the ordinary course of generation, first live the life of vegetation, then of sense; of reason afterwards. That instant wherein the heaven and the earth were created in their rude matter, there was neither day nor light: but presently thou madest both light and day. While we have this example of thine, how vainly do we hope to be perfect at once! It is well for us, if, through many degrees, we can rise to our consummation. But, alas! what was the very heaven itself without light? How confused! how formless! like to a goodly body without a soul, like a soul without thee. Thou art light, and in thee is no darkness. Oh! how incomprehensibly glorious is the light that is in thee, since one glimpse of this created light gave so lively a glory to all thy workmanship! This even the brute creatures can behold! that, not the very angels,— that shines forth only to the other supreme world of immortality; this to the basest part of thy creation. There is one cause of our darkness on earth and of the utter darkness of hell;-the restraint of thy light. Shine thou, O God, into the vast corners Thou mightest have made all the world of my soul, and in thy light I shall see light. perfect in an instant, but thou wouldst not. But whence, O God, was that first light? That will, which caused thee to create, is The sun was not made till the fourth day reason enough why thou didst thus create.-light the first. If man had been, he How should we deliberate in our actions, might have seen all lightsome; but, whence it had come, he could not have seen; as, in some great pond, we see the banks full; we see not the springs from whence the water ariseth. Thou madest the sun; madest the light without the sun, before the sun, that so light might depend upon thee, and not upon thy creature. Thy power will not be limited to means. It was easy to thee to make an heaven without sun, light without an heaven, day without a sun, time without a day. It is good reason thou shouldst be the Lord of thine | own works. All means serve thee: why do we, weak wretches, distrust thee, in the want of those means which thou canst either command or forbear? How plainly wouldst thou teach us, that we creatures need not one another, so long as we have thee! One day we shall have light again without the sun: Thou shalt be our sun: thy presence shall be our light: "Light is sown for the righteous." The sun and light is but for the world below itself: thine only for above. Thou givest this light to the sun, which the sun gives to the world that light which thou shalt once give us, shall make us shine like the sun in glory. Now this light, which for three days was thus dispersed through the whole heavens, it pleased thee, at last, to gather and unite into one body of the sun. The whole heaven was our sun, before the sun was created: but now one star must be the treasury of light to the heaven and earth. How thou lovest the union and reduction of all things of one kind to their own head and centre! so the waters must, by thy command, be gathered into one place, the sea: so the upper waters must be severed by these airy limits from the lower: so heavy substances hasten downward, and light mount up: so the general light of the first days must be called into the compass of one sun so thou wilt once gather thine elect from all coasts of heaven, to the participation of one glory. Why do we abide our thoughts and affections scattered from thee, from thy saints, from thine anointed? Oh! let this light, which thou hast now spread abroad in the hearts of all thine, once meet in thee. We are as thy heavens, in this their first imperfection; be thou our sun, unto which our light may be gathered. Yet this light was by thee interchanged with darkness, which thou mightest as easily have commanded to be perpetual. The continuance, even of the best things, cloyeth and wearieth: there is nothing but thyself, wherein there is not satiety. So pleasing is the vicissitude of things, that the intercourse even of those occurrents, which in their own nature are less worthy gives more contentment than the unaltered estate of better. The day dies into night, and rises into the morning again, that we might not expect any stability here below, but in perpetual successions. It is always day with thee above: the night savoureth only of mortality. Why are we not here spiritually, as we shall be hereafter? Since thou hast made us children of the light, and of the day, teach us to walk ever in the light of thy presence, not in the darkness of error and unbelief. Now, in this thine enlightened frame, how fitly, how wisely are all the parts disposed; that the method of the creation might answer the matter and the form both Behold all purity above; below, the dregs and lees of all. The higher I go, the more perfection; each element superior to other, not more in place than dignity; that, by these stairs of ascending perfection, our thoughts might climb unto the top of all glory, and might know thine imperial heaven, no less glorious above the visible than those above the earth. Oh! how miserable is the place of our pilgrimage, in respect of our home! Let my soul tread awhile in the steps of thine own proceedings; and so think as thou wroughtest. When we would describe a man, we begin not at the feet, but the head. The head of thy creation is the heaven; how high! how spacious! how glorious! It is a wonder that we can look up to so admirable a height, and that the very eye is not tired in the way. If this ascending line could be drawn right forwards, some, that have calculated curiously, have found it five hundred years' journey unto the starry heaven. I do not examine their art; O Lord, I wonder rather at thine, which hast drawn so large a line about this little point of earth: for, in the plainest rules of art and experience, the compass must needs be six times as much as half the height. We think one island great, but the earth immeasurable. If we were in that heaven, with these eyes, the whole earth (were it equally enlightened) would seem as little to us, as now the least star in the firmament seems to us upon earth: and, indeed, how few stars are so little as it? And yet, how many void and ample spaces are there beside all the stars The hugeness of this thy work, O God, is little inferior for admiration to the majesty of it. But, oh, what a glorious heaven is this which thou hast spread over our heads! With how precious a vault hast thou walled in this our interior world! What worlds of light hast thou set above us! Those things which we see are wondrous; but those, which we believe and see not, are yet more. Thou dost but set out these unto view, to shew us what there is within. How proportionable are thy works to thyself! Kings erect not cottages, but set forth their magnificence in sumptuous buildings; so hast thou done, O King of Glory! If the lowest pavement of that heaven of thine be so glorious, what shall we think of the better parts yet unseen? And if this sun of thine be of such brightness and majesty, oh! what is the glory of the Maker of it? And yet if some other of thy stars were let down as low as it, those other stars would be suns to us; which now thou hadst rather to have admired in their distance. And if such a sky be prepared for the use and benefit even of thine enemies also upon earth, how happy shall those eternal tabernacles be, which thou hast sequestered for thine own? Behold then in this high and stately building of thine, I see three stages: this lowest heaven for fowls, for vapours, for meteors: the second for the stars: the third for thine angels and saints. The first is thine outward court, open for all: the second is the body of thy covered temple, wherein are those candles of heaven perpetually burning: the third is thine holy of holies. In the first is tumult and vanity: in the second, immutability and rest: in the third, glory and blessedness. The first we feel, the second we see, the third we believe. In these two lower is no felicity; for neither the fowls nor stars are happy. It is the third heaven alone, where thou, O blessed Trinity! enjoyest thyself, and thy glorified spirits enjoy thee. It is the manifestation of thy glorious presence, that makes heaven to be itself. This is the privilege of thy children, that they here, seeing thee (which art invisible) by the eye of faith, have already begun that heaven, which the perfect sight of thee shall make perfect above. Let my soul then let these heavens alone, till it may see as it is seen. That we may descend to this lowest and meanest region of heaven, wherewith our senses are more acquainted; what marvels do even here meet with us? There are thy clouds, thy bottles of rain, vessels as thin as the liquor which is contained in them: there they hang and move, though weighty with their burden: how they are upheld, and why they fall, here, and now, we know not, and wonder. Those thou makest one while, as some airy seas, to hold water: another while as some airy furnaces, whence thou scatterest thy sudden fires unto all the parts of the earth, astonishing the world with the fearful noise of that eruption: out of the midst of water thou fetchest fire, and hard stones out of the midst of thin vapours: another while, as some steel glasses, wherein the sun looks, and shews his face in the variety of those colours which he hath not; there are thy streams of light, blazing and falling stars, fires darted up and down in many forms, hollow openings, and (as it were) gulfs in the sky, bright circles about the moon and other planets, snows, hail: in all which it is enough to admire thine hand, though we cannot search out thine action. There are thy subtile winds, which we hear and feel, yet neither can see their substance, nor know their causes; whence, and whither they pass, and what they are, thou knowest. There are thy fowls of all shapes, colours, notes, natures whilst I compare these with the inhabitants of that other heaven, I find those stars and spirits like one another: these meteors and fowls, in as many varieties as there are several creatures. Why is this? Is it because Man (for whose sake these are made) delights in change, thou in constancy? or is it, that in these thou mayest shew thine own skill, and their imperfection? There is no variety in that which is perfect, because there is but one perfection? and so much shall we grow nearer to perfectness, by how much we draw nearer to unity and uniformity. From thence, if we go down to the great deep, the womb of moisture, the well of fountains, the great pond of the world; we know not whether to wonder at the element itself, or the guests which it contains. How doth that sea of thine roar and foam and swell, as if it would swallow up the earth? Thou stayest the rage of it by an insensible violence; and, by a natural miracle, confinest his waves: why it moves, and why it stays, it is to us equally wonderful: what living mountains (such are thy whales) roll up and down in those fearful billows: for greatness of number, hugeness of quantity, strangeness of shapes, variety of fashions, neither air nor earth can compare with the waters. nothing of thy hid treasures, which thy wisdom hath reposed in the bowels of the earth and sea: how secretly and how basely are they laid up! secretly, that we might not seek them; basely, that we might not over-esteem them: I need not dig so low as these metals, mineries, quarries, which yield riches enough of observation to the soul. How many millions of wonders doth the very face of the earth offer me? Which of these herbs, flowers, trees, leaves, seeds, C I say |