No More Learning

In this remarkable
discourse, he had given distinct evidence of his sympathy with the
party of academic reform by a candid avowal of his dissatis-
faction with the prevailing dialectics, on the one hand, and of his
sense of the advantages to be derived from the study of nature, on
the other. In the endeavour to arrive at a clearer understanding
of natural laws, he urged that man was really only discharging
a universal religious duty, the neglect of which was, in itself, a
violation of the homage due from mankind to its Creator.
Naturally disposed to weigh evidence and carefully to ponder
over each conclusion, Cudworth was as deliberate as More was
unquestionably precipitate in his judgments; and, at his death,
a pile of unpublished manuscripts mostly unfinished, gave evidence
of a vast amount of patient toil, the results of which were not
destined ever to be given to the world. His great masterpiece,
The true Intellectual System of the Universe, was not published
until 1678, when it was fated to meet with a reception, for
the most part, unsympathetic, and, in some quarters, distinctly
hostile, according as it ran counter to the prevailing scientific
cynicism or to the growing religious formalism; while, to quote the
language of Martineau, 'it laid itself open to the rebuke of scholars,
for reading the author's favourite ideas, without adequate warrant,
into the Greek text of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. ' The whole
treatise, indeed, according to the same eminent critic,
conceded too much to the Pagan philosophers, recognizing among them the
essence of Christian wisdom, to suit the assumptions of either the rising
High Churchmen or the retiring Puritans. It placed too little value on the
instituted observances of religion for the former, and on its niceties of dogma
for the latter.
With regard, however, both to More and Cudworth, there is
evidence, other than that afforded by their writings, which must
not be overlooked. If we revert to the aspect of affairs a quarter
of a century before The Intellectual System appeared—the time,
that is to say, when More published his Antidote to Atheism
(1652)—we find our attention arrested by the appearance from
among the number of their disciples of two remarkable writers,
who, like two genii responding to their call, had risen and vanished
with equal suddenness. In 1651 died Nathaniel Culverwel, to be


## p. 288 (#310) ############################################

288
Platonists and Latitudinarians
followed, the next year, by John Smith of Queens'; in the latter
year appeared Culverwel's Light of Nature, and, in 1660, Smith's
Select Discourses, edited by Worthington. These two writers were
both natives of Northamptonshire, who entered at Emmanuel
college during the period of Whichcote's tutorship—the former in
1633 (when he was probably about sixteen), the latter in 1636,
when already eighteen years of age. In 1642, Culverwel was
elected to a fellowship at Emmanuel ; but the restrictions then
existing in the college with regard to counties made it necessary
for Smith to migrate to Queens', in order to obtain like preferment,
although not before he had become well known both to Whichcote
and to Worthington. The former, discerning Culverwels genius,
gave him not only valuable advice, but, also, pecuniary aid ; while
.
the latter, whose age was the same as Smith's, but who had entered
at Emmanuel four years earlier, lived to be his lifelong friend, and
wrote the notice of him in the 1660 edition of his Discourses.
According to Worthington, Smith “studied himself into a con-
sumption, and the extraordinary attainments of which the
Discourses give evidence lend support to the statement especially
if we consider that he had to discharge the duties of dean and also
to lecture on Hebrew in his college and on mathematics in the
schools. The testimony of Simon Patrick, afterwards president of
Queens' college and bishop of Ely, is to the same effect, as he bore
witness to the merits of his departed friend in the same chapel
in which the latter had often discoursed—his sharp and piercing
understanding,' ‘his Herculean labours day and night from his
first coming to the University' and, especially, his communica-
tiveness with respect to what he knew and the clearness of his
language when imparting it,
wherein he seems to have excelled the famous philosopher, Plotin, of whom
Porphyry tells us, that he was something careless of his words, árld Jóvov Toû
voll éxóuevos, but was wholly taken up into his mind.
As Smith, like More, wrote on the immortality of the soul, their
merits, as authors, admit of a certain comparison, although the
former, when he wrote, was not yet thirty, and directs his argument
mainly against the scepticism of the ancients, such as Epicurus and
Lucretius, while the latter was in his fifty-fifth year and concerns
himself mainly with the philosophy of Hobbes. Notwithstanding,
however, the ingenuity of More's speculations and the remarkable
range of reading displayed throughout his pages, his readers can
hardly fail to experience a certain disappointment at finding that,
after a variety of questions have been mooted, with rather vague


## p. 289 (#311) ############################################

More and Smith contrasted
289
conclusions, the author is firm in his opinion that the belief in the
soul's immortality necessarily involves a recognition of the existence
of ghosts, and that all that can with certainty be predicated
respecting its condition in a future state, is that it will be an
entity not needing food and not casting a shadow.
Very different is the impression left upon the mind by John
Smith's less discursive treatment of his subject and skilful com-
pression of his well reasoned generalisations. To him, it appears
that the main argument in support of the soul's immortality is that
derived from the universality of the belief--a certain consensus
gentium, discernible throughout pagan times, fondly cherished by
the multitude, and no less firmly maintained by philosophers such
as Plotinus, Proclus and Aristotle. And this belief, he points out,
is, in turn, clearly involved in a yet grander conception, revealing
itself to the sanctified human intellect as an inevitable corollary
from the belief in the Divine beneficence. Over and above
'the Epicurean herd,' he distinguishes four grades of spiritual
existence on earth, of which the av@pwrtos Dewpntinós, the true
metaphysical and contemplative man, represents the final and the
highest-in whom the soul has already attained to communion
with the Divine Nature, and regards its confinement in this material
body as but the period of its infancy.
In order to realise the conditions under which Culverwel's
Light of Nature was conceived, we must bear in mind that,
although not published until 1652, it had been written six years
before, when the author was probably less than thirty years of age.
As regards general literary excellence, he may be said to divide
with John Smith the claim to rank foremost among Platonists.
It is evident, from his opening chapter, that he did not conceal
from himself the magnitude of the task upon which he had
embarked, and which he defines as that of 'giving to reason the
things that are reason's and unto faith the things that are faith's';
it requires, he adds,‘our choicest thoughts, the exactest discussion
that can be, to give faith her full scope and latitude, and to give
reason also her just bounds and limits. ' 'Reason is the first-born, ,
but the other has the blessing. ' Such is the assumption which
underlies the whole treatment of his subject, namely, that the
function of faith is superior to that of reason. “Reason discerns
the existence of a God, the eye of faith, a Trinity of Persons; the
former recognises the immortality of the soul, faith spies out the
resurrection of the body. “Revealed truths are never against
reason, they will always be above reason. '
19
6
>
E. L. VIII.
сн. XI.


## p. 290 (#312) ############################################

290
Platonists and Latitudinarians
It was Culverwel's design to embody in a second treatise the
evidence and the arguments whereby he proposed to prove, first,
that all moral law is founded in natural and common light-i. e.
in the light of reason; and, secondly, that there is nothing in the
mysteries of the Gospel contrary to reason, nothing repugnant to
the light that shines from the candle of the Lord. ' But he was
never able to carry into effect this great design, which would have
admirably supplemented the vast researches of Cudworth. So
far, indeed, as it is possible to discern the facts, it would appear
that, for at least five years before his death, Culverwel's labours
were altogether suspended ; while a singular mystery involves his
life during that time. It may, perhaps, be conjectured, that bis
outspoken language in his college Commonplaces, together with
his generally independent attitude as a thinker, brought upon him
the disfavour of certain seniors at Emmanuel (where Whichcote
was no longer fellow), and, under the combined effects of anxiety
with respect to his future prospects and the strain involved
in his literary labours, his health, mental as well as physical,
completely gave way. He died in 1651, when, probably, not more
than thirty-two years of age.
With regard to both Smith and Culverwel, it is also not a little
remarkable that, although none of their contemporaries can have
possessed a closer personal knowledge of them than More or
Cudworth, in the pages of neither of these do we find any reference
either to them or to their writings. It is possible, indeed, that
Culverwel's depreciatory language as to Descartes may have
offended More at the time when he was still in the first flush of
his admiration for the great French philosopher; but, on the whole,
it seems most probable that both the newly installed master of
Christ's and its most distinguished fellow were alarmed by the
confidence with which these new theories were advanced,
especially when viewed in connection with the widespread ten-
dency (already apparent at this time) to repudiate all dogmatic
teaching, of whatever school. It was certainly no reassuring
note that was sounded in 1655, when George Rust, another
member of the same society—who had been elected to a fellowship
from St Catharine's, in 1649—deemed it incumbent on him to
call attention to the impending peril. In terms remarkable for
their vigour and precision, the future bishop of Dromore,
preaching from St Mary's pulpit in Cambridge, declared that the
very foundations on which 'men had so long built their opinions
and faith' were 'shaken and staggered in this sceptical age':


## p. 291 (#313) ############################################

Joseph Glanvill
291
Every one, upon a particular and several sect, is in quest of Truth; and so
foolish and full of vain affectation is the mind of man, that each one con-
fidently believes himself in the right, and, however others call themselves,
that he and those of his party are the only Orthodox. Should we go abroad
in the world, and ask as many as we meet, What is Truth? , we should find it
a changeable and uncertain notion, which every one cloath's his own appre-
hensions with. Truth is in every sect and party, though they speak incon-
sistences among themselves and contradictions to one another. Truth is the
Turkish Alcoran, the Jewish Talmud, the Papists' Councils, the Protestants'
Catechisms and Models of divinity,-each of these in their proper place and
region. Truth is a various uncertain thing, and changes with the air and the
climate,tis Mahomet at Constantinople, the Pope at Rome, Luther at
Wittemberg, Calvin at Geneva, Arminius at Oldwater), Socinus at Cracow;
and each of these are sound and orthodox in the circuit of their own reign and
dominion.
The spirit of compromise in regard to this conflict of beliefs,
combined, however, with a maintenance of personal individuality,
is exemplified in Joseph Glanvill, of Exeter college, Oxford, after-
wards fellow of the Royal Society and chaplain-in-ordinary to
Charles II. In the main, he was in agreement with Cudworth and
More—his Lux Orientalis being chiefly a reproduction of the
theory held by the latter as to the prior existence of souls, a
doctrine which he held to be all the more defensible in that it
appeared never to have been formally condemned by any Christian
church, while its acceptance serves to vindicate the Divine Being
from the charge of injustice, since suffering in the present life may
be punishment for sins committed in a previous state of existence.
In his Sadducismus Triumphatus (1681), Glanvill defends the
belief in witchcraft-a defence pronounced by Lecky 'the ablest
ever published' of that superstition.
An excellent illustration of the points at issue among educa-
tional writers subsequent to the restoration is afforded by the
controversy between Glanvill and Henry Stubbs, a retired physician
at Warwick. Glanvill, in his Plus Ultra, had been led, by his
sympathy with the progressive tendencies of the Royal Society,
to pass a rather indiscriminate censure on the scholastic Aristotle.
This evoked from Stubbs a reply, The Plus Ultra reduced to a
Non Plus, setting forth the ‘ Advantages of the Ancient Education
in England over the Novel and Mechanical. '
In the meantime, we find the principles of the latitudinarians-
Whether the Church inspire that eloquence,
Or a Platonic piety confined
To the sole temple of the inward mind -
spreading widely, although often rudely assailed. 'I can no more
look back,' Whichcote had written to Tuckney, “than St Paul, after
· Oudewater in Holland, the birthplace of Arminius.
19-2


## p. 292 (#314) ############################################

292
Platonists and Latitudinarians
Christ discovered to him, could return into his former strayne,' and
his influence continued to extend long after his ejection from King's
college in 1660; while his death took place when he was a guest
of Cudworth's at Christ's college lodge in 1683. But, after the
,
restoration, the tenets of the party seem frequently to have been
confused with those of the Arminians. Among their number,
Hezekiah Burton of Magdalene college, Cambridge-styled by
Anthony Wood, 'that great trimmer and latitudinarian '—was a
prominent figure, and, together with him, his friend, Richard Cumber-
land, of the same society, afterwards bishop of Peterborough, who,
in his De Legibus Naturae, (writing in opposition to Hobbes)
applied to the observance of the moral law and the natural re-
wards resulting therefrom very much the same theorisation as
that which it had been Culverwel's aspiration to set forth and
which Cudworth succeeded in expounding. Another distinguished
representative of the same principles was Thomas Burnet, who,
as an undergraduate, had followed Cudworth from Clare hall to
Christ's, and was afterwards master of the Charterhouse! Simon
Patrick, Edward Stillingfleet and Tillotson--all three members of
the episcopal order, while the lastnamed was, perhaps, the most
popular preacher in his day2-contributed powerfully to the whole
movement. At the same time, there is to be noted a corresponding
change taking place in the pulpit oratory of the church itself-a
change compared by Lecky to that which
had passed over English poetry between the time of Cowley and Donne and
that of Dryden and Pope; and over English prose between the time of
Glanvil and Browne and that of Addison and Swift3.
As regards the subsequent influence of latitudinarianism-
whether on the pulpit oratory of the Church of England or on
the teaching of its divines--widely different estimates have, from
time to time, been formed by those writers whose sympathies have
been with the movement, and by those whose endeavour it has
been to elaborate and define with increased clearness the doctrinal
belief of the Church; for, while the former, in agreement with
Montesquieu, have recognised in an habitual abstention from
dogmatism one of the most effective means of promoting unity
and concord within her communion, the latter have no less em-
phatically deprecated such a policy as the main cause of the
deadness, carelessness and apathy' in relation to religious ques-
tions which largely characterised the eighteenth century.
1 As to Thomas Burnet seo p. 347, post:
3 As to these divines see also ante, chap. VI.
3 Hist. of England in the Eighteenth Century, 1, 85.
• Ibid. I, 314—315; Perry, G. G. , Hist. of the English Church, 6144515, 587–8.


## p. 293 (#315) ############################################

CHAPTER XII
DIVINES OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
1660-1700
WITH the restoration of the church came a vociferous out-
burst of loyalty to the king, which threatened to engraft upon the
style of the pulpit not a little of the extravagance of the puritan
manner, adapted to other themes than those of its origin. But the
influence of the older tradition of restraint proved too strong.
The leaders of the restored church were men trained in the school
of Laud; disciples, in the second generation, of Andrewes, and, in
the first, of Hammond; scholars in whom the classical habit was
still strong, but who had learnt a severer simplicity of expression.
The divines to whom men listened, and whom they read and copied,
were, in literature, of the type rather of Sanderson and Hammond
than of Donne or even Jeremy Taylor; and, before long, their
language was deeply affected by Bunyan and Izaak Walton.
Pedantry, crabbed conceit, elaboration of metaphor or illustra-
tion, gave way to advanced directness, and the English language
was made to show of what it was capable when it was not strained:
style, casting off imitation, became direct and plain, During the
forty years which followed the return of Charles II, English
divines, in their treatment of serious themes, laid the founda-
tions on which Addison based his mastery over the language of
his day,
The transition was gradual. There were no startling moments
in the development. Progress was not attained by new departures,
by sudden originalities, or by deliberate leadership on new ways.
Thus, we find among the divines of the restoration and the revolu-
tion but few writers that stand out among their contemporaries.
The religious writers, for the most part, accepted the manner of
their time rather than influenced it. Bunyan, Walton and Dryden
had no peers among the professional writers on religion. In the
ecclesiastical writers of the time, with an occasional exception, we
find a high level of careful excellence, but nothing that recalls the
conspicuous individuality of Andrewes, or Mountague or Jeremy
Taylor. Nor can we say that the theological writing of the period


## p. 294 (#316) ############################################

294 Divines of the Church of England
can be divided into definite literary schools. The style is very
much a matter of date; yet not always that—for there are sur-
vivals, and a few anticipations, of other days. The later Caroline
divines may be said almost exactly to cover, among them, the
seventeenth century; for they include George Morley, who was
born in 1597, and Herbert Thorndike, born in the next year ;
while few of their conspicuous representatives survived the reign
of William III.
Herbert Thorndike is important rather for his opinions than
for his literary merits. He was a catholic anglican of the most
convinced and complete kind. He was a learned scholar, an im-
portant contributor to Brian Walton's Polyglot Bible, finished in
1657, and an influential, though not self-assertive, member of the
Savoy conference. His position in English theology is, perhaps,
best expressed in the book he published in 1670: The Reformation
of the Church of England better than that of the Council of Trent.
He advocated, for example, the practice of confession, using language
so strong as
in my judgement no Christian Kingdom or State can maintain itself to be
that which it pretendeth more effectually than by giving force and effect to
the law of private confession once a year by such means as may seem both
requisite and effectual to enforce it;
the reservation of the sacrament for the sick, in both kinds, and
not, after the Roman fashion, only in one; and the appeal to
Scripture as interpreted in the primitive church.
In his Epi-
logue to the Tragedy of the Church of England (1659), he had
desired the restoration of the episcopate as in ancient times,
the use of prayer for the dead and the introduction into the
English communion service of the Epiklesis before the consecra-
tion. He was a student of liturgies, at a time when they were not
well known; and his studies were reflected in a repeated use of
quotations from the Fathers which reminds the reader of Andrewes
and his contemporaries.
John Cosin, who, born in 1594, died in the same year as
Thorndike (1672), was also a liturgiologist, and, as early as 1627,
published A Collection of Private Devotions, at the request of
Charles I, to supply an English antidote to the Roman devotions
of queen Henrietta Maria's ladies. Cosin, in many respects,
resembles Thorndike : in the nature of his interests, in the main
principles of his theology, in the character of his influence. But
he was a much more attractive writer of English, and has, at times,
a touch of Jeremy Taylor; he had an ear for the music of prose,


## p. 295 (#317) ############################################

Isaac Barrow
295
though he did not always take pains to be in tune himself; but he
was certainly not, as Aubrey tells us, though unconvincingly, that
Thorndike was, “a good poet,' though his compressed translation of
Veni Creator has merit.
Side by side with these two writers may be placed George
Morley, the 'honest doctor' of the exiled court, who wrote little
and that rather in the antique style, but was as witty as he was
pious, the friend of Walton and Clarendon, and yet a Calvinist
as men were when he learnt his theology. Thorndike was a
prebendary of Westminster; Cosin, chaplain to Charles I and
master of Peterhouse, became bishop of Durham under Charles II;
Morley died as bishop of Winchester. A greater writer than any
of these, Isaac Barrow, lived only to be forty-seven, but rose to
the mastership of Trinity college, Cambridge, and left a mark of
originality upon the theology of his age. Charles II, who had the
means of learning which are at the disposal of kings, said that he
was the best scholar in England'; but, though Aubrey tells us
that he was 'pale as the candle he studied by,' his writings show
little of the wearisome preciseness of the pedant. He had spent
five years, from 1655 to 1659, abroad, and, at Constantinople, he
had made a longer stay than, in those days, was dared by most
Christians who were not on an embassy or a trading venture: when
he lay dying, the standers-by could heare him say softly “I have
seen the glories of the world. ”. It was this width of experience,
as well as the extent of his learning-he said that he used tobacco
to 'regulate his thinking'-which gave him the mingled strength
and richness that made him greatly admired by critics of taste
so different as were the elder Pitt and Henry Hallam. His manner
of writing, which has been considered hasty and almost extem-
poraneous, has been shown to have been elaborated with the
most extraordinary care, his manuscripts being revised, rewritten
and subjected to continual addition or correction. The ease with
which he appears to write is the result of prolonged labour; the
sentences are smooth, if often lengthy; the meaning is direct in
reaching the reader, and, behind all, there is unquestionable
strength. Throughout, his appeal is to the reason rather than the
heart or the ear; but, though he argues like a mathematician, he
writes like a classical scholar. He is never extravagant; he does
not aim at beauty or search for conceits; his characteristic merits
are completeness, coherence, consecutiveness ; and, thus, his chief
influence was exercised upon those who wished to argue or to
think-upon Locke and Warburton and the elder and the younger
)
a


## p. 296 (#318) ############################################

296 Divines of the Church of England
Pitt. It is not easy to find a passage which satisfactorily illustrates
his style, for he treats every subject which he approaches so
lengthily that it is difficult to disentangle a few sentences from
the web of argument or exposition. But a few sentences from his
sermon on the beauty of thankfulness (occupying nearly a hundred
octavo pages in his Works) may afford an example of the clearness
and simplicity which, under his influence, began to mark the prose
of the later seventeenth century.
And verily could we become endowed with this excellent quality of de-
lighting in others good, and heartily thanking God for it, we needed not to
envy the wealth and splendour of the greatest princes, nor the wisdom of the
profoundest doctors, nor the religion of the devoutest anchorets, no, nor the
happiness of the highest angels; for upon this supposition, as the glory of all
is God's, so the content in all would be ours. All the fruit they can conceive
of their happy condition, of what kind soever, is to rejoice in it themselves,
and to praise God for it. And this should we do then as well as they. My
neighbour's good success is mine, if I equally triumph therein: his riches are
mine, if I delight to see him enjoy them: his health is mine, if it refresh my
spirit: his virtue mine, if I by it am bettered, and have hearty complacence
therein. By this means a man derives a confluence of joy upon himself, and
makes himself, as it were, the centre of all felicity; enriches himself with the
plenty, and satiates himself with the pleasure, of the whole world; reserving
to God the praise, he enjoys the satisfaction of all good that happens to anyl,
In this, there are touches which recall the writers of the earlier
Caroline age; but the general manner of writing is an anticipation
of Addison, and even suggests something of the style of Butler.
In his sermons, Barrow avoided controversy and preached
morals; but he was also a controversial writer of great weight,
and that chiefly against the papacy, whose followers, according to
his biographer Abraham Hill, he had seen ‘militant in England,
triumphant in Italy, disguised in France. ' His treatise on the
Pope's Supremacy, published by his executor Tillotson in 1680,
was a masterpiece, in the manner of the time, seeking logic rather
than bitterness and completeness rather than venomous polemic.
Side by side with this may be placed Cosin's Historia Tran-
substantionis Papalis, which was also published posthumously, in
1675, but was based on
a Declaration of the Ancient Catholic Faith and Doctrine of the Fathers
Concerning the Real Presence. . . showing that the doctrine of Transubstan-
tiation (as it was first set forth by Pope Innocent III. . . and afterwards by
Pope Pius the Fourth), was not the faith or doctrine in the Catholic Church
in any age before them,
written by him in 16472 Cosin had experience of endeavours
1 Works, ed. 1859, vol. 1, p. 390.
? Published in Cosin's Correspondence (Surtees Society), part 1, 1869, pp. 233 ff.


## p. 297 (#319) ############################################

After the Wars
297
to convert Englishmen to Roman Catholicism in Charles ['s time
and, in consequence, had studied theology with a special bent.
Barrow, with similar experience abroad, and knowledge of the
Greek church to confirm his resistance to Rome, saw that a
period of acute controversy was imminent in England. His
Exposition of the Creed, Decalogue and Sacraments may be
regarded as a dogmatic support for his fellow churchmen; but
its influence was eclipsed by the work, on rather different lines,
of his contemporary John Pearson, whom he succeeded as master
of Trinity. Pearson was a notable preacher and an accurate
scholar: he vindicated the authenticity of the Epistles of
St Ignatius, anticipating the labours of later scholars : he was
an active bishop at Chester from 1673 to 1686. But his chief
fame is due to his Exposition of the Creed, published on the
eve of the restoration, which, till the last generation, remained
the standard work of English theology on the subject. The
character of Pearson's writing is its learning: he was critical,
elaborate, closely argumentative, replete with quotations. But
his writing is never clear or flowing; he is encumbered by the
weight of his knowledge, and precedent has stifled originality
alike in his exposition and in his style.
The earlier period of the reign of Charles II was closely linked
to the days before the war. The chief writers had experience of
earlier times and bore the marks of puritan or anti-puritan training.
Besides those whom we have named, it may be convenient to
remember that Richard Baxter, who preached in London after the
restoration, began to write his Life and Times in 1664, and did not
die till 1691; that Jeremy Taylor survived the return of the king
by seven years; and that Benjamin Whichcote lived till 1683.
John Wilkins (who preceded Pearson as bishop of Chester), a
scientific writer of eminence, an experimentalist and philosopher,
and a man of humour to boot, was a link between these times and
those of the later latitudinarians. He gave his stepdaughter in
marriage to Tillotson, telling her, as an attraction, that he was
the best polemicall Divine this day in England. ' He contrasted
his own position, as theologian and bishop, with Cosin's.
'While you,' he said, "are for setting the top on the picqued end and
downwards, you won't be able to keep it up any longer than you keep whip-
ping and scourging; whereas I am for setting the broad end downwards,
and so 't will stand of itself;'
and his funeral sermon, by William Lloyd, afterwards bishop of
St Asaph and one of the famous seven bishops, speaks of the
6


## p. 298 (#320) ############################################

298 Divines of the Church of England
'vehemence of his desire to bring the Dissenters off their pre-
judices and reduce them to the unity of the Church. '
In this aim, many eminent men concurred; few of them, how-
ever, occupy a position of eminence in English literature. Yet
some of those who were, or may be, called latitudinarians, or who
were, if not ‘men of latitude,' men of charity, left a distinct mark,
as writers, upon their times. While Gilbert Sheldon, in his youth
the friend of Falkland and a member of the liberal circle of Great
Tew, was too much occupied as primate of all England to be able
to make any contribution even to the theological literature of his
age, Leighton and Burnet, Sancroft, Patrick, Beveridge, Stilling-
fleet, in different ways combined writing with practical work.
Robert Leighton, who was ordained priest at the age of
thirty and became a famous preacher, was principal of Edinburgh
university from 1653, and professor of divinity there. In 1661,
he became bishop of Dunblane ; in 1669, archbishop of Glasgow.
By the simple beauty of his life, he gave visible expression to
the idea of true tolerance, which no one in all the seventeenth
century more sincerely advocated and more fully exemplified. He
was, at the same time, one of the great preachers of his day.
His style is simple and dignified, abounding in aphorism rather
than in epigram, powerful yet not rhetorical: its excellence is
the reflection of the spirit within, of the inspiration which filled
the writer's heart. To Coleridge, it seemed that Leighton's
writings, beyond anything outside the Bible, suggested 'a belief
of inspiration, of something more than human'; they were the
vibration of that once-struck hour remaining on the air. ' And
Burnet's description of his preaching conveys, with remarkable
fidelity, what the student of English literature may recognise as
the secret of his influence and, also, as the note of his prose:
His preaching had a sublimity both of thought and expression in it; and,
above all, the grace and gravity of his pronunciation was such that few heard
bim without a very sensible emotion: I am sure I never did. It was so
different from all others, and, indeed, from everything that one could hope to
rise up to, that it gave a man an indignation at himself and all others. It
was a very sensible humiliation to me, and for some time after I heard him
I could not bear the thought of my own performances, and was out of coun-
tenance when I was forced to think of preaching. His style was rather too
fine, but there was a majesty and a beauty in it that left so deep an impression
that I cannot yet forget the sermons I heard him preach thirty years ago.
If Leighton was a Scot, he had assimilated the English manner,
as he had the English theology, and, when he resigned the arch-
bishopric, he retired to a little village in Sussex where he preached
and ministered. If he would not say, writes Burnet, that the


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Burnet as a Theologian
299
English was 'the best constituted church in the world, he thought
it was truly so with relation to the doctrine, the worship, and the
main parts of our government. ' George Herbert, most typical of
anglicans, was his favourite poet. He died at an inn in London,
under the shadow of St Paul's, in the arms of Burnet, his fellow
countryman and disciple, who learnt from him what was best in
his own religious thought and work.
With Leighton, indeed, Burnet is naturally coupled, for both
were Scotsmen of liberal opinions who rose to high place in an
episcopal church. As a historian, Burnet, whose labours in this
kind extend beyond the general range of the present volume, will
receive notice later? ; but he was a man of boundless activity,
and it must not be forgotten that he said with truth that his
thoughts had 'run most, and dwelt longest, on the concerns of the
Church and religion. ' As a theological writer, Burnet, who lived
to witness in the Hanoverian succession the triumph of his party,
and died on the day when George I met his first parliament,
bad a distinct position and a considerable influence. He was
intimately conversant with ecclesiastical matters during something
like half a century, and set a conspicuous example—to be largely
followed-of how it was possible to be at the same time a latitu-
dinarian, a whig and an energetic bishop. Born in the land
of presbytery and Calvinism, he became an episcopalian and an
anglican. He was a convinced supporter of episcopacy as the
original order from which the others derive. But his interest
lay in personal religion more than in theology. He regarded 'the
function of the pastoral call as the highest on earth. ' Of him,
more, perhaps, than of any other writer of his age, is it true
that le style c'est l'homme. He was an energetic Scot, of intense
and perpetual vigour and vivacity, irrepressible and, at all times,
without the slightest doubt as to the truth of his own opinions or
the folly of other people's. He was a glorified 'man in the street,
always aware of, and intensely impressed by, what partisan laymen
were saying; exceedingly afraid of seeming to have 'a clerical
mind'—a fear which often prevented his own views from being
received as an expert judgment; and always ready to show that
great statesmen were right and great ecclesiastics were wrong.
He was a keen student, a man who read quickly and formed
conclusions clearly, yet not a great scholar or endowed with a
scholar's mind; a kind, generous, enthusiastic man, a genuine
patriot as well as a strong partisan, but not at all a deep thinker;
1 See post, vol. IX.


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300 Divines of the Church of England
changeable in opinions, and one who changed generally with the
party in power, or with the popular voice; a man who bulked
large in the public eye, too large for his judgment to have the
same weight with the wise or with posterity. He was extra-
ordinarily deficient in taste, and, indeed, in real distinction of
mind or feeling. His manner of writing about ecclesiastical
questions reflects all this. He is omniscient, unsympathetic and
narrow; and his judgment of the religion of his own day is often
strangely distorted. He is typical of a certain side of English
churchmanship. His Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (1699)
was, for more than a century, as famous as Pearson's Exposition
of the Creed. Leibniz described it as 'a system of theology in
brief, extremely vigorous and profound, and, what is better,
extremely temperate and logical. Indeed, it represents the
moderation of the English church, without any nebulousness or
lack of vigour. As literature, it is remarkable chiefly for its
clearness and the lucid compression of details into a coherent
summary. The merits of bis more spiritual writing are much
more conspicuous. His ministration to the dissolute Rochester,
who died a believer and a penitent, is one of the most touching
memories of his life, and he has preserved it, as Some passages
in the Life and Death of the right honorable John Earl of
Rochester, 1680, in language of almost perfect piety, reticence and
true charm.
And his admirable book The Pastoral Care, 1692,
is as straightforward and sensible in manner as it is in matter and
opinion Had he never written a word of history, he would still
deserve a permanent place among English writers.
With Burnet, may, not unfairly, be associated the name of another
divine, who was his antithesis in character, Edward Stillingfleet,
bishop of Worcester. His personal attractiveness gave him wide
popularity; men called him 'the beauty of holiness. ' His Irenicum
(1659), which, though directed against nonconformity, regards the
system of church government as unimportant, gave him a place
among "latitude men'; but one of his earlier works was a defence
of Laud's Relation of his controversy with the Jesuit John Fisher
against the Pretended Answer of T. C. (1664). Burnet com-
mended him to William III as 'the learnedst man of his age in
all respects '-a description justified by his Origines Sacrae (1662),
and Origines Britannicae (1685). Stillingfleet's writing has no
exceptional merit as literature. It reflected, without enriching,
the manner of his time; and, when his learning became obsolete,
his books passed out of use. Though his reputation as a man of


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The Fashionable Preachers 301
letters during his life was higher than any of those yet mentioned,
his style entirely lacked the distinction which could make it per-
manent. Another friend of Burnet was Simon Patrick, bishop,
successively, of Chichester and Ely, who, commended at the re-
volution to the new king's notice, afterwards became one of the
commission through which the royal patronage was exercised in
the interests of latitudinarians and whigs. Patrick was much in-
fluenced by the Cambridge Platonists and preached the funeral
sermon of John Smith. He was a voluminous writer, contro-
versial, exegetical, homiletic; but his chief excellence lay in his
sermons. Burnet called him “a great preacher' and he was said
to be an example to all bishops, and all dissenters, in ‘sermonising. '
What he did at St Paul's, Covent Garden, William Beveridge
did at St Peter's, Cornhill: churches were filled and multitudes
were influenced by the earnestness of the preacher. Robert Nelson,
himself a writer of importance as well as a leading lay churchman,
said of Beveridge that he had 'a way of touching the consciences
of his hearers which seemed to revive the spirit of the Apostolic
age. ' This, indeed, is the character of his writings-eminently
emotional, tender, full of feeling and pathos. He was ranked
among the churchmen whom a later age called evangelical, but
he was as emphatic in stating the doctrines of the church as any
member of the school of Andrewes or Laud,
The age of sermons was not yet over. If laymen no longer
found their chief theological instruction in sermons, they still
crowded to hear a great preacher, and the preaching of a sermon,
in a very great number of cases, involved, sooner or later, in some
form or another, its appearance in a book. The list of theologians
which we have given might be very greatly extended if we were to
add those who were primarily preachers. The Diary of Evelyn,
who exemplifies the high standard of a devout anglican gentleman,
and that of Pepys, who must be ranked, for the greater part of his
life at least, among the worldly, supply constant illustrations of the
interest taken by Londoners of the later Stewart age in fashion-
able preachers. Anthony Horneck, for example, a German who
was incorporated at Oxford and, after serving a cure there,
became preacher at the Savoy and was made king's chaplain at
the revolution, was-says Anthony à Wood—á frequent and florid
preacher, very popular in London and Westminster’; and Evelyn
thought his eloquence most pathetic. His popularity shows that
a reaction against the learned and lengthy style of Barrow and
his school was setting in. Quotation from the classics and the
a


## p. 302 (#324) ############################################

302
Divines of the Church of England
Fathers was, indeed, becoming less common: a volume of Beveridge
may be read through without meeting a single quotation except
from the Bible; early in the eighteenth century, Swift could
declare that he had outlived the custom of learned quotation.
But, during the last forty years of the seventeenth, a variety of
styles survived. Much controversy was compressed into the
pulpit hour, and occasionally extended it. The literature of the
Popish plot, of the anti-nonconformist controversy, of the Roman-
ising movement under James II, is well represented in sermons.
There were 'plain, honest, good, grave' discourses such as Pepys
heard from Stillingfleet, whom he declared to be, in the opinion
of the archbishop of Canterbury, and the bishop of London, and
another, 'the ablest young man to preach the Gospel since the
Apostles. ' Archbishop Dolben, described by Dryden as
(He) of the Western Dome, whose mighty sense
Flow'd in filt words and heavenly eloquence,
was equally eloquent and direct in his appeal. The language of
both these preachers is simple and unaffected, and their argument
clear and coherent: they would have agreed with Horneck that
the object of the preacher should be 'to convert souls and not to
paint them. ' For the most part, however, it would still be true to
say that English sermons, in this period—though at no other time
were they ever more popular or effective—were rather expository
and argumentative than descriptive or hortatory.
A special style belonged to a class of discourse which had
become very common. Now that prayers for the departed were
no longer publicly said, their place was taken by the pomp, gloomy
but inferior, of the funeral sermon, where solemn language fell
rapidly into a convention like the nodding plumes on the heads of
the horses which drew the coffin, or the customary cloak of solemn
black which disguised the mourners into a pattern of imposing
grief. The mass of extant funeral sermons is enormous: hardly a
country squire was suffered to be buried without a eulogium which
found its way into print; and, on the deaths of great personages,
the chief preachers used the opportunity for impressing a wide
circle with the solemnity of mortal things. Extempore preaching
was beginning to be popular. Burnet encouraged, and Charles II,
apparently, admired, it; but, all through the seventeenth century,
the written composition was much the more common. Whether it
were written out or not, there can be no doubt of the sermon's
influence or popularity; it still remained the sole class of litera-
ture with which everyone was, or might be, brought into contact;
a


## p. 303 (#325) ############################################

Tillotson and South
303
and it affords a constant parallel to the literary work of secular
writers. During the period of the later Stewarts, there gradually
ceased to be a 'pulpit style' pure and simple; the preachers were
ordinary men and wrote ordinary English. Thus, after Jeremy
Taylor, they ceased to lead in the development of prose. No one
of them had the charm of Fénelon, nor anything of the dignity
and splendour of Bossuet, Massillon or Bourdaloue. They were
typically, and almost exclusively, English. Foreign influence
hardly touched them.
This is clearly seen when we turn to the most popular of all
the preachers of the revolution period, John Tillotson, a ‘lati-
tudinarian' who rose as much through the pulpit as through
politics to be archbishop of Canterbury. It was said of him that
‘his sermons were so well heard and liked, and so much read, that
all the nation proposed him as a pattern and studied to copy after
him'; and, after his death, two thousand five hundred guineas were
given for the copyright of two volumes of his discourses. Little
more than a century later, they could be bought for waste paper;
and it is in the last degree unlikely that they will ever be reprinted
or studied again. Here, public taste can unhesitatingly be said to
have formed a sound judgment. Tillotson's style is simple and
easy, in comparison with much that was written in his day; but it
is utterly without charm, or distinction, or interest. The thought
is commonplace, and the language matches it. A comparison of
Tillotson with Addison shows at once how differently a simple style
can be used, how effectively the general aim of goodness can be ex-
pressed in prose, and how unexpected touches can redeem the expo-
sition of thoughts which are the common stock of intelligent men.
But, before we have done with sermons, we must touch on the
striking contrast, at once to the ornate and the commonplace, to
Taylor and to Tillotson, noticeable in the work of Robert South,
who was twenty years younger than the former and died twenty-
two years after the latter. South, before all things, was original.
He rejected the flowers of Taylor, and followed the simple way
before Tillotson. But he followed it with a difference. If he
delights not in tropes or figures, he abhors the commonplace and
the dull. He revels in humour: he continually shoots shafts
of ridicule against vice, be it pride or hypocrisy, ingratitude or
anger. He had fixed orthodox opinions and considered orthodoxy
important, unlike Tillotson. But he knew how to make beliefs
effective without being venomous; he could make home truths
stick, though the wound did not fester. His writing is as sincere


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304
Divines of the Church of England
6
as Tillotson's, but of quite different quality: while the one main-
tains a level of plainness from which it is difficult to detach a
passage of interest, the other is always vivacious, and the difficulty
in quoting from South is to find a passage which will not lose by
its separation from a context equally vigorous and emphatic.
Many an epigram could be set down by itself; but there was
never a time when English prose lacked a maker of epigrams.
Part of a longer passage, chosen almost at random, may illustrate
at once the characteristic merits of South and the ordinary unaf-
fected language of Charles Il's day. It is from a sermon preached
before the university of Oxford, at the beginning of the October
term of 1675, on ingratitude. The preacher is approaching his
'consequences,' and, after advising that friendships should not
be made with the ungrateful, he continues:
Philosophy will teach the Learned, and Experience may teach all, that it
is a thing hardly sensible. For, Love such an one, and he shall despise you.
Commend him, and, as occasion serves, he shall revile you. Give to him, and
he shall but laugh at your easiness. Save his life; but when you have done,
look to your own. The greatest favours to such an one, are but like the
Motion of a Ship upon the Waves ; they leave no trace, no sign, behind
them; they neither soften nor win upon him; they neither melt, nor endear
him, but leave him as hard, as rugged, and as unconcerned as ever. All
Kindnesses descend upon such a Temper, as Showers of Rain, or Rivers of
fresh Water falling into the Main Sea: the Sea swallows, but is not at all
changed, or sweetened by them. I may truly say of the Mind of an Un.
gratefull person, that it is Kindness-proof. It is impenetrable; unconquer-
able; Unconquerable that which conquers all things else, even by Love itself.
Flints may be melted (we see it daily) but an Ungrateful heart cannot; no,
not by the strongest and noblest Flame. After all your Attempts, all your
Experiments, for any doing that Man can doe, He that is Ungratefull, will
be Ungratefull stilli,
Style such as this was well employed in controversy. South's
Animadversion on Mr Sherlock's Book entituled a Vindication
of the Holy and ever-blessed Trinity is the liveliest piece of
theological criticism of the time. Sherlock himself (master of
the Temple and, ultimately, dean of St Paul's) wrote well. His
Practical Discourse concerning a Future Judgment (1691) is a
piece of sound and sober prose, and there is a touch of interest in
almost everything that he wrote. But he will not be read today,
and will be remembered only for the witty remarks on his short
sojourn among the non-jurors, and for having undergone the
criticism of a writer far abler and more lucid than himself.
South affords an agreeable diversion to the student of later
seventeenth century religious writing. Under Charles II, James II
1 Sermons, vol. I, 1697, pp. 512_514.
1


## p. 305 (#327) ############################################

Controversialists
305
and William III, theologians seem more concerned to be serious
than to be attractive, and it was natural that they should seek
rather to convince than to entertain. Among those who attained
distinction by writing sharply, Samuel Parker, whom James II
made bishop of Oxford, in his Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity,
merits attention, because he shows (as, indeed, do not a few theo-
logians by affinity or contrast) the marked influence of Hobbes.
He was a clever satirist, too, and he had views on toleration which
were in advance of his age. But he did not leave any permanent
.
impression on letters.
Among the mass of literature called forth by the controversies
of the time may, perhaps, be noted the little known Episcopalia,
or Letters of . . . Henry [Compton] Lord Bishop of London to
the Clergy of his Diocess 1686. These show that 'conferences'
with the London clergy were no modern invention; and they are
written in the plain straightforward style, without affectation
or obscurity, which was becoming the property of all educated
men. On another side were a number of Roman Catholic, and
especially Jesuit, writings, ranging from the ephemeral treatises
of Obadiah Walker to the vigorous polemic of Andrew Pulton.
Pulton's opponent was Thomas Tenison, Sheldon's successor at
Canterbury, of whose manner of writing Swift said that he was
hot and heavy like a tailor's goose. ' But in none of these, their
imitators and their followers, is there anything which arouses
interest. Apart from them, yet still winning fame chiefly through
controversial works, is the solitary and dignified figure of George
Bull (who died as bishop of St David's), perhaps the one English
ecclesiastic of the period who attained to European fame. Robert
Nelson's eulogy of his sermons shows that they had a distinction
which most sermons of the time lacked; and they amply justified
the praise. 'He had a way of gaining people's hearts and teaching
their consciences, which bore some resemblance to the apostolical
age. ' But Bull's sermons, in the eyes of his own age, were the least
of his works. Nelson sent his Judicia Ecclesiae Catholicae to
Bossuet, by whom it was presented to the French episcopate; and
the great French theologian returned the congratulations of the
whole clergy of France' for his defence of the Divinity of Christ.
His Harmonia Apostolica, and, of his sermons, that on the Fall,
were, also, titles to high fame. But it is the matter rather
than the manner which places Bull among the glories of the
Caroline age.
So far, we have considered writers who were closely allied with
20
a
E, L, VIII,
CH. XII.


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306 Divines of the Church of England
the national life. The church of England, in the years which fol-
lowed the restoration was the institution round which most affection,
and most controversy, gathered; and its representatives were pro-
minent in the public eye. Nonconformist writers, whether Roman
Catholic or protestant, had very little influence; they were not
conspicuous for learning, and their defective education left them
without a valuable literary weapon. It was different with another
body which came into existence at a crisis in the national history.
When William and Mary were called to the throne by the
convention parliament, there was a large number of clergy who
thought it impossible to take the oath of allegiance anew, the
sovereign to whom they had already taken it being still alive.
The doctrine of the Divine right of kings, Hobbism, the theory of
passive obedience, united to confirm their refusal. And a large
number of conscientious men, with the primate of all England at
their head, went into voluntary exile from the main current of
national life. It was natural that among such men should be some
of the leaders of the learning and literature of the age. Sancroft
bimself had ceased to contribute to literature or learning; but, in
his day, he had wielded the pen adroitly. His Fur Praedestinatus,
a delightful satire on Calvinism, was an early work; but arch-
bishops cannot afford to be satirical in print, and, when he became
a non-juror, Sancroft refrained from all written works. His chap-
lain Henry Wharton did not long remain attached to the party;
but his sympathies were certainly with the high church and high
tory theory. The testimony of a great historian of the nineteenth
century to Wharton's greatness cannot be passed over. "This
wonderful man,' wrote bishop Stubbs, 'died in 1695 at the age of
thirty, having done for the elucidation of English Church History
more than anyone before or since. But his eminence is that of
the scholar and investigator rather than of the man of letters.
Among the definite members of the non-juring body were several
who combined these characteristics. No survey of this chapter of
English literature would be complete which did not mention the
work of Ken and Kettlewell, of Dodwell and Hickes.
Thomas Ken was one of those religious writers in whom a
beautiful soul shines through the words which express the sin-
cerity of their appeal. The motto of his writings might well be
the words which he set at the head of all his letters—'All glory be
to God. ' He wrote only when he felt deeply. Ichabod tells of his
disappointment with the church after the recovery of 1660. Of
1 Preface to Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum, 2nd edition.


## p. 307 (#329) ############################################

Ken and Kettlewell.
Hickes and Dodwell 307
three sermons, the best is that for 'the Funeral of the Right Hon.
the Lady Margaret Mainard, at Little Easton, in Essex, June 30,
1682. ' In it, he commemorated a 'gracious woman' whose good-
ness he knew from an intimate acquaintance of twenty years, and
through the confessional, as that of one who 'never commited any
one mortal sin. Here, sorrow was chastened by the delightful
memory of virtue: the charm of which he wrote gave a lightness
to his style, and a felicity of touch, which greater writers might
have envied. But all his writing, it is easy to see, was unstudied
in form. His poetry, simple and flowing, came readily from his
pen; his prose, which often embodies anxious thought, is still
an excellent example of the prose which educated men naturally
wrote in his day. And, if he could write tenderly, he could
also write severely, as his letter to archbishop Tenison shows
(written because, as he thought, the deathbed of queen Mary
had not been made to bring her to repentance for her un-
dutifulness towards her father). John Kettlewell, himself a saint,
had a natural affinity with Ken: his work was essentially practical
and devotional; almost all his books treat of Christian duty and
privileges, sacrament and creeds, and their manner is of a piece
with their matter. George Hickes, on the other hand, and Henry
Dodwell, were scholars first and men of piety afterwards. The
former was a student from his youth, a collector of manuscripts
and antiquities: he learnt Hebrew that he might discuss rabbinical
learning with the extraordinary duke of Lauderdale; and 'Anglo-
Saxon and Meso-Gothic,' it seems, for his own pleasure; and his
Linguarum veterum septentrionalium thesaurus grammatico-
criticus et archaeologicus is a marvel of erudition and industry.
Hickes's style is sharp in controversy; in general literature-con-
cerned, chiefly, with the burning questions of nonconformity and of
the oaths—it is coloured by the diversity of his learning; and he
shows, like several of his friends among the non-jurors, the influence
of the early liturgies in which he was thoroughly at home. If Hickes
was the most learned clerk, Henry Dodwell was the most learned
layman, among those who refused the oath to William and Mary.
His friend Francis Brokesby preserved his memory in a Life
published in 1715, in which the ‘Accomplishments and Attain-
ments of the ‘lay-dictator' are profusely eulogised in a style of
crabbed pedantry from which the subject of the biography had
quite escaped. Dodwell is not an easy writer ; but, then, his
subjects are not easy. He is mathematical and theological, eager
to quote and overwhelm with authority. Were the literary work
20-2


## p. 308 (#330) ############################################

308 Divines of the Church of England.
of the non-jurors, in both divisions—those who returned to com-
munion with the national church and those who abstained to be
estimated by the writings of those we have named, its value to
literature, apart from its services to learning, would be adjudged
small. But Robert Nelson, in his Companion for the Festivals
and Fasts (1704), produced one of the most popular of all religious
books, and the success which he achieved was deserved by the
sincerity of his writing. Nelson did for the church of England in
prose, what Keble, more than a century later, did in poetry. He
showed the romance of its past, the nobility of its ideal, the purity
of its forms of prayer. His book, though it is not more than good,
certainly not great, literature, had an influence which good work
does not always achieve. It caught exactly the religious tone of
honourable men trained in the traditions of anglicanism, such as
Clarendon or Evelyn, or of typical characters, imaginary but very
real, like Sir Roger de Coverly or Sir Charles Grandison. The
religion which Nelson represented was that which Herbert has im-
mortalised, the religion of an English gentleman; and his writing
l
has the quietness and confidence which belongs to the character.
The period of the later Caroline divines, from 1660 to 1700,
has no conspicuous literary merit: it is a period of learning and
commonsense rather than of conspicuous originality. Moreover,
it may be observed how little it was associated with European
culture or indebted to foreign influence. Ken read Spanish and
may very likely have been influenced by the holy life of Pavillon
a model French bishop. Many English ecclesiastics treated
French ecclesiastics with courtesy. But English preachers did
not take the French for their model, and English theologians
seemed to pay little heed to what was being said over sea. There
could be no greater contrast than that between the attitude of the
Elizabethans and the later Carolines towards foreign literature-
between Hooker, for example, and Barrow or Bull. Interest in
the church abroad, in the east among the oppressed Christians in
Turkey, and in the assertion of Gallican liberties, began, it is true,
to grow at the end of the century, and it was fostered by the non-
jurors; but, for the most part, English theology remained apart
from the current of European thought. Its expression was
becoming more simple, more direct, more typically national.


## p. 309 (#331) ############################################

CHAPTER XIII
LEGAL LITERATURE
I
IN order to treat at all adequately the subject of legal
literature in the seventeenth century, it seems necessary to make
a rapid survey of the writings of the earlier periods-indeed, to go
back to the very origines juridicales, and that for two reasons.
First, because English law, even more than English liberty, had
'broadened down from precedent to precedent'; so that the key
to the legal literature of the seventeenth century has to be sought
among the records of its predecessors. Secondly, because the
great law-writers of the Stewart era-whether, as in the case of
Selden, drawn by the spirit of science, or whether, as in that of
Coke, driven by the condition of the system of law which they
were administering, and by the exigencies of party politics—were
antiquaries, whose works consisted largely of commentaries upon
the legal scriptures of their patriarchal forerunners. Hence, if we
desire to understand either the principles of Stewart law or the
nature of the legal literature of the seventeenth century, we must
go
back to the sources.
English legal literature may be said to have had its beginning
when, about A. D. 600, king Ethelbert of Kent, newly converted to
Christianity, put into writing the dooms of his folk juxta exempla
Romanorum? . The influence that moved him came from the
Roman church, the model that guided him was furnished by the
Roman empire; but—and this is the remarkable fact—both the sub-
stance and the language of the laws of Ethelbert were Kentish.
They stand unique in legal history as 'the first Germanic laws that
were written in a Germanic tongue? ' Further, they typify the
1 Bede, Hist. Eccles. Bk. 11, c. 5.
· Pollock and Maitland, Hist. of English Law, vol. , p. 11; Brunner, Deutsche
Rechtsgeschichte, vol. 1, p. 283.


## p. 310 (#332) ############################################

310
Legal Literature
-
general relation of English law to Roman law through many suc-
ceeding centuries. English law owes much to Rome—both civil
and ecclesiastical Rome-in respect of unifying principles, general
ideas, logical arrangement and symmetrical form ; but, in sub-
stance, it is of native growth. The lead given by Ethelbert of
Kent, and his successors, was followed, after the lapse of a
hundred years, by Ine of Wessex, and, towards the close of the
eighth century, by Offa of Mercia. With the codification of the
laws of Mercia, the first era of the history of English legal literature
was closed. It had seen the embodiment of ancient tradition in
writing.
It was succeeded by the era of the capitularies, which add to,
and amend, the previous codes; and here, again, England stands
apart from the continent of Europe. On the continent, during
the three centuries of chaos that followed the break up of the
Carolingian empire, general legislation ceased. But, in England,
a long and almost continuous line of strong kings—Alfred, Edward,
Athelstan, Edmund, Edgar, Canute-issued administrative ordi-
nances, which reveal the activity of a resolute central government.
Taken as a whole, they constitute a very notable body of primitive
Teutonic law.
The Norman conquest, however, led to complications. The
administration of the English law fell into the hands of persons,
mainly clerics, who were ignorant not merely of the law itself, but
even of the language in which it was promulgated. The English
people clamoured for Laga Eadwardi, that is, for the law as it
had been observed during the reign of the Confessor. The Normans,
for their part—those who were rulers, by means of formal inquests,
and private persons, from such sources as were available-made
sincere efforts to find out what Laga Eadwardi was, and to
render it accessible to the clerical mind through the medium of
Latin translations. The works that resulted mark the third period
of the history of legal literature in England (1066—1166).