Selections from the works of Taylor, Hooker Barrow, South, Latimer, Brown, Milton and Bacon

Front matter

C> b/ J i elections

FROM

THE WORKS OF TAYLOR, HOOKER, BARROW, SOUTH, LATIMER, BROWN, MILTON,

Preface

The first edition of these Selections was published in the year 1805; the second in 1807.* They have been for some years out of print ; — but my engagements during the last twenty years have been so incessant, that, with every anxiety to assist in extending to others the blessings with which the works of these holy men abound, I have only occasionally, and not without difficulty, been able to appropriate a few moments to this labour of love. I trust that it will not have been in vain. <c The delivery of knowledge is as of fair bodies of trees ; if you mean to use the shoot, as the builder doth, it is no matter for the roots ; but if you mean it to grow, as the planter

* The Prefaces to these editions are at the conclusion of this volume.

Vlll PREFACE.

doth, look you well that the slip has part of the root."* I please myself with thinking that some of these selections cannot but give immediate delight; and often, in my solitary walks through this noble city, more quiet to me than the retirement of academic bowers, I shall indulge the hope that this volume may, perchance, be opened by some young man who, at his entrance into life, is meditating upon that " suavissimavita indies sentire se fieri meliorem." May this little spark of holy fire direct him to the place where the star appears, and point to the very house where the babe lies. In the works of these ancient writers, which as so many lights shine before us, he will find what is better than rubies and gold, yea, than fine gold. He will learn not to be misled by the transient pleasures of life : but to seek for permanent happiness, where it can alone be found, in knowledge, in piety, and in charity.

London, November 28, 1828.

* Lord Bacon.

Contents

A,

Active Virtue, . . 359

Adam in Paradise . . . r 189

I. Idle Curiosity 149

Ignorance and Intelligence 217

Immoderate Grief 18

Immortality 349

Impatience 97

Intemperance 134. 137

Intellectual Superiority „ . . 337

Invisible World B , „ 345

J.

xii CONTENTS.

K.

Knowledge a Source of Delight

Knowledge avoids Misery to whichignorance is exposed 264

L.

Latimer, Bishop 159

Libels 364

Liberty 361

Licensers of the Press 364

Logical and Mathematical Parts of Mind 379

Love 195

Lover of Truth 392

Lukewarmness and Zeal 2S

Lust 100

M.

Marriage 26. 363

Memory 312

Mercy 157

Method and Arrangement 384

Miscellaneous 291. 327

Miseries of Man's Life 146

Milton 351

N.

Nature and Art 363

O.

Old Age 256

On Sinful Pleasures 104

CONTENTS. xiii

Order of Attaining Objects 216

P.

Paradise Lost 372

Passion and Reason 52

Passions 195

Patent and Latent Vice 876

Perfection in General 189

Perfection of Understanding 189

Perfection of the WilJ 194

Philosophising and Theorising , 377

Piety 270

Pleasures of the World 133

Pleasures of Understanding 66

Pleasure Sensual and Intellectual 182

Pleasure of Amusement 186

Pleasure of Great Place 185

Pleasure of Knowledge 388

Pleasure of Meditation 187

Pleasure of Piety.. 273

Pleasure of Pteligion 188

Pleasure of Study and Contemplation 243

Poet'sMorning 371

Power of Prayer 18

Practical Understanding 192

Prayer 3

Presence of God 67

Pride 342

Progress of Religious Sentiment 115

Progress of Sin 59

Prosperity of Fools 211

Prostitute , , 52

CONTENTS.

Q.

Queen Elizabeth 385

R.

Rash Judgment 340

Real and Apparent Happiness 142

Reason and Description 5

Reform 366

Religion of Mahomet 292

Religious Persecution 175. 294

Resurrection of Sinners 60

Return of Kindness 141

S.

Sacrament ^ 139

Shepherds 10

Sickness 57

Skeleton 292

Slander 113

South, Dr 179

Speculative Understanding 190

Student 333

Superstition 144

T.

Temperance 132

Toleration 23

Travelling 309

True and Mock Religion 45

U.

Universities 375

Utility 388

CONTENTS. XV

V.

Virtuous Mind 62

W.

Wisdom selects True Pleasures 261

Wisdom in its own Conceit . , , 292

Wit 276

BISHOP TAYLOR.

If these little sparks of holy fire which I have heaped together do not give life to your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy.

Epistle Dedicatory to Taylor's Life of Christ.

E

SELECTIONS.

ON PRAYER.

Prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of recollection, the seat of meditation, the rest of our cares, and the calm of our tempest ; prayer is the issue of a quiet mind, of untroubled thoughts, it is the daughter of charity, and the sister of meekness ; and he that prays to God with an angry, that is, with a troubled and discomposed spirit, is like him that retires into a battle to meditate, and sets up his closet in the out quarters of an army. Anger is a perfect alienation of the mind from prayer, and therefore is contrary to that attention, which presents our prayers in a right line to God. For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and unconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing of his wings; till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over, and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing as if it had learned musick and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the air about his ministries here below : so is the prayer of a good man, &c*

Prayers are but the body of the bird ; desires are its angel's wings. +

EDUCATION.

Otherwise do fathers, and otherwise do mothers handle their children. These soften them with kisses and imperfect noises, with the pap and breast milk of soft endearments; they rescue them from tutors, and snatch them from discipline; they desire to keep them fat and warm, and their feet dry, and their bellies full ; and then the children govern, and cry, and prove fools and

* The Return of Prayers, Serm. v. p. 33. f Worthy Communicant, sec. 4.

FROM BISHOP TAYLOR.

troublesome, so long as the feminine republic does endure. But fathers, because they design to have their children wise and valiant, apt for counsel or for arms, send them to severe governments, and tie them to study, to hard labour, and afflictive contingencies. They rejoice when the bold boy strikes a lion with his hunting spear, and shrinks not when the beast comes to affright his early courage. Softness is for slaves and beasts, for minstrels and useless persons, for such who cannot ascend higher than the state of a fair ox, or a servant entertained for vainer offices ; but the man that designs his son for nobler employments, — to honours and to triumphs, to consular dignities, and presidencies of councils, loves to see him pale with study, or panting with labour, hardened with sufferings, or eminent by dangers.*

AGE OF REASON AND DISCRETION.

We must not 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

* Holy Dying, ch. iiL 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 oneand-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 approaching 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 mattens, 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 shows 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 mans 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

FROM BISHOP TAYLOR.

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 consumption, 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.

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 is run from discipline and is let loose to passion. The man by this time hath wit enough to chuse his vice, to act his lust, to court his mistress, to talk confidently, and ignorantly, and perpetually : to despise his betters, to deny nothing to his appetite, to do things that when he is indeed a man he must for ever be ashamed of: for this is all the discretion that most men show in the first stage of their manhood. They can discern good from evil ; and they prove their skill by leaving all that is good, and wallowing in the evils of folly and an unbridled appetite. And by this time the young man hath

B contracted vicious habits, and is a beast in manners, and therefore it will not be fitting to reckon the beginning of his life ; he is a fool in his understanding, and that is a sad death, &c„*

ON DEATH.

I shall entertain you in a charnel-house, and earn- your meditation awhile into the chambers cf death, where you shall find the rooms dressed up with melancholick arts, and fit to converse with your most retired thoughts, which begin with a sigh, and proceed in deep consideration, and end in a holy resolution. It is necessary to present these bundles of cypress. t

The autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us, and the winter's cold turns them into sharp diseases, and the spring brings flowers to strew our hearse, and the summer gives green turf and brambles to bind upon our graves, \

It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every person, and it is visible to us who are alive. Reckon but from the spritefulness cf

* Holy Dying, ch. i. f Dedication to Holy Dying. X Holy Dying.

FROM BISHOP TAYLOR.

youth and the fair cheeks and the full eyes of childhood, from the vigorousness and strong flexure of the joints of five-and-twenty to the hollowness and dead paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror of a three days' burial, and we shall perceive the distance to be very great and very strange. But so I have seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and at first it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's fleece: but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age; it bowed the head, and broke its stalk; and at night having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell, &c.

The wild fellow in Petronius that escaped upon a broken table from the furies of a shipwreck, as he was sunning himself upon the rocky shore, espied a man rolled upon his floating bed of waves,* ballasted with sand in the folds of his garment, and

* Like a common-weed,

The sea-swell took her hair.

KEATS.

carried by his civil enemy the sea towards the shore to find a grave : and it cast him into some sad thoughts : that per adventure this man's wife in some part of the continent, safe and warm, looks next month for the good man's return ; or it may be his son knows nothing of the tempest ; or his father thinks of that affectionate kiss which still is warm upon the good old man's cheek ever since he took a kind farewell, and he weeps with joy to think how blessed he shall be when his beloved boy returns into the circle of his father's arms. These are the thoughts of mortals, this the end and sum of all their designs : a dark night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a broken cable, an hard rock and a rough wind dashed in pieces the fortune of a whole family, and they that shall weep loudest for the accident are not yet entered into the storm, and yet have suffered shipwreck. Then looking upon the carcase, he knew it, and found it to be the master of the ship, who the day before cast up the accounts of his patrimony and his trade, and named the day when he thought to be at home. See how the man swims who was so angry two days since ; his passions are becalmed with the storm, his accounts cast up, his cares at an end, his voyage done, and his gains are the strange events of death.

Of all the evils of the world which are reproached with an evil character, death is the most innocent of its accusation.*

* To the same effect Bishop Taylor says, in another part of his Holy Dying, — ' Take away but the pomps of death, the disguises, and solemn bug-bears, and the actings by candlelight, and proper and phantastick ceremonies, the minstrels and the noise-makers, the women and the weepers, the swoonings and the shriekings, the nurses and the physicians, the dark room and the ministers, the kindred and the watches, and then to die is easy, ready, and quitted from its troublesome circumstances. It is the same harmless thing that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday, or a maid-servant to-day ; and at the same time in which you die, in that very night a thousand creatures die with you, some wise men and many fools ; and the wisdom of the first will not quit him, and the folly of the latter does not make him unable to die.' And in an essay ascribed (erroneously, I think,) to Lord Bacon, he says, ' I have often thought of death, and I find it the least of all evils.' But in the same essay the author says, ' Death arrives gracious only to such as sit in darkness, or lie heavy burthened with grief and irons ; to the poor Christian that sits bound in the galley ; to despairful widows, pensive prisoners, and deposed kings : to them whose fortune runs back, and whose spirits mutiny ; unto such death is a redeemer, and the grave a place for retiredness and rest. These wait upon the shore of death, and waft unto him to draw near, wishing above all others to see his star, that they might be led to his place, wooing the remorseless sisters to wind down the watch of their life, and to break them off before the hour.'

IMMODERATE GRIEF.

Solemn and appointed mournings are good expressions of our dearness to the departed soul, and

One of the sweetest of our modern poets says, —

And hark ! the nightingale begins its song, ' Most musical, most melancholy' bird ! A melancholy bird ? Oh, idle thought!

In nature there is nothing melancholy.

So sings the sweet poet. Are these the mere fancies of the brain, illusions of the imagination, or does philosophy echo what the poet sings ? Let us try this by seeing whether in death, which is as natural as life, there is not something melancholy? Is there nothing melancholy in a death-bed ; in the agony and last contentions of the soul ; the reluctancies and unwillingnesses of the body; the forehead washed with a new baptism, besmeared with a cold sweat, tenacious and clammy, apt to make it cleave to the roof of the coffin ; the nose cold and undiscerning ; the eyes dim as a sullied mirror; the feet cold ; the hands stiff? How many of us have contemplated with admiration the graceful motion of the female form ; the eye sparkling with intelligence ; the countenance enlivened by wit, or animated or soothed by feeling ? Is there nothing sad in the consciousness that in a few short years, perhaps in the next moment, sensation and motion will cease ; the body lose its warmth, the eyes their lustre, and the lips and cheeks become livid ? Is there nothing melancholy in the of his worth, and our value of him ; and it hath its praise in nature, and in manners and public consciousness that these are but preludes to other changes ? Will the poet still say,

Oh, idle thought!

In nature there is nothing melancholy 1

And will philosophy echo what the poet sings ?

It certainly is true that this is no new song of the poets. Bacon (whether truly or not is the question) says, — Knowledge mitigates the fear of death; for, if a man be deeply imbued with the contemplation of mortality and the corruptible nature of all things, he will easily concur with Epictetus, who went forth one day, and saw a woman weeping for her pitcher of earth that was broken ; and went forth the next day, and saw a woman weeping for her son that was dead; and therefore said, ' Heri vidi fragilem frangi; hodie vidi mortalem mori.' And therefore Virgil did excellently and profoundly couple the knowledge of causes and the conquest of all fears as concomitant:

If any of my readers is desirous to discover the portion of truth and of error which these opinions of poets and philosophers contain, it is necessary to proceed with caution, and separately to examine the different causes which compose the painful associations with which death is accompanied : consisting, as it does, of a complication of terrors, aiding each other customs. Something is to be given to custom, something to fame, to nature, and to civilities, and and becoming formidable by their united operation, let him read Tucker's valuable Essay on Death, in vol. vii. of his admirable work on the Light of Nature : and let him remember that Lord Bacon, in his Doctrine of all the Motions in Nature, says, 1 The political motion is that by which the parts of a body are restrained from their own immediate appetites or tendencies, to unite in such a state as may preserve the existence of the whole body. Thus, the spirit, which exists in all living bodies, keeps all the parts in due subjection ; when it escapes, the body decomposes, or the similar parts unite — as metals rust, fluids turn sour: and in animals, when the spirit which held the \ its together escapes, all things are dissolved and return to their own natures or principles : the oily parts to themselves, the aqueous to themselves, &c. upon which necessarily ensues that contusion of parts, observable in putrefaction.' So true it is, that in nature all is beauty ! that notwithstanding our partial views, and distressing associations, the forms of death misshapen as we suppose them, are but the tendencies to union in similar natures.

In this spirit was the inscription written which is now on the monument of Lord Bacon. He died in the year 1626; and, according to his wish, is buried in the same grave with his mother. Near to him lies his faithful secretary; and although only a few letters of his name, scarcely legible, can now be traced, he will ever be remembered for his affectionate attachment to his master and friend. Upon the monument which he raised to Lord Bacon, who appears,

FROM BISHOP TAYLOR.

to the honour of the deceased friends; for that man is esteemed to die miserable, for whom no friend or relative sheds a tear, or pays a solemn sigh. Some showers sprinkled upon my grave would do well and comely.

But that which is to be faulted in this particular is, when the grief is immoderate and unreasonable : and Paula Romana deserved to have felt the weight of St. Hierom's severe reproof, when at the death of every of her children she almost wept herself into her grave.* sitting in deep but tranquil thought, he has inscribed this epitaph : —

Is not decomposition, in the sight of omniscience, as beautiful as union ?

* Ought we in our grief for the loss of each other, to murmur at the order of nature, at the dispensations of Providence, or ought we to remember that—

. . . . • . . They are not lost

Who leave their parents for the calm of heaven.

And it hath been observed, that those greater and stormy passions do so spend the whole stock of grief, that they presently admit a comfort and contrary affection ; while a sorrow that is even and temperate goes on to its period with expectation and the distances of a just time. The Ephesian woman that the soldier told of in Petronius was the talk of all the town, and the rarest example of a dear affection to her husband. She descended with the corpse into the vault, and there being attended with her maiden resolved to weep to death, or die with famine or a distempered sorrow : from which resolution, nor his nor her friends, nor the reverence of the principal citizens, who used the intreaties of their charity and their power, could persuade her. But a soldier that watched

That they who love their friends most tenderly Still bear their loss the best There is in love, A consecrated power, that seems to wake Only at the touch of death from its repose In the profoundest depths of thinking souls, Superior to the outward signs of grief, Sighing or tears, — when these have past away. It rises calm and beautiful, like the moon, Saddening the solemn night, yet with that sadness Mingling the breath of undisturbed peace.

CITY OF THE PLAGUE.

seven dead bodies hanging upon trees just over against this monument, crept in, and a while stared upon the silent and comely disorders of the sorrow : and having let the wonder awhile breath out at each others eyes, at last he fetched his supper and a bottle of wine, with purpose to eat and drink, and still to feed himself with that sad prettiness. His pity and first draught of wine made him bold and curious to try if the maid would drink ; who, having many hours since felt her resolution faint as her wearied body, took his kindness, and the light returned into her eyes, and danced like boys in a festival : and fearing least the pertinaciousness of her mistress* sorrows should cause her evil to revert, or her shame to approach, assayed whether she would endure to hear an argument to persuade her to drink and live. The violent passion had laid all her spirits in wildness and dissolution, and the maid found them willing to be gathered into order at the arrest of any new object, being weary of the first, of which like leeches they had sucked their fill till they fell down and burst. The weeping woman took her cordial, and was not angry with her maid, and heard the soldier talk. And he was so pleased with the change, that he, who at first loved the silence of the sorrow, was more in love with the musick of her

c returning voice, especially which himself had strung and put in tune : and the man began to talk amorously, and the woman's weak head and heart were soon possessed with a little wine, and grew gay, and talked, and fell in love ; and that very night, in the morning of her passion, in the grave of her husband, in the pomps of mourning, and in her funeral garments, married her new and stranger guest.*

THE POWER OF PRAYER.

Prayer can obtain every thing, it can open the windows of heaven, and shut the gates of hell ; it can put a holy constraint upon God, and detain an angel till he leave a blessing ; it can open the treasures of rain, and soften the iron ribs of rocks, till they melt into tears and a flowing river: prayer can unclasp the girdles of the north, saying to a mountain of ice, Be thou removed hence, and cast into the bottom of the sea ; it can arrest the sun in the midst of his course, and send the swiftwinged winds upon our errand; and all those strange things, and secret decrees, and unrevealed transactions which are above the clouds, and far beyond the regions of the stars, shall com-

* Holy Dying.

FROM BISHOP TAYLOR.

bine in ministry and advantages for the praying man.*

ON THE GOODNESS OF THE ALMIGHTY.

As the sun sends forth a benign and gentle influence on the seed of plants, that it may invite forth the active and plastick power from its recess and secrecy, that by rising into the tallness and dimensions of a tree it may still receive a greater and more refreshing influence from its foster father, the prince of all the bodies of light ; and in all these emanations the sun itself receives no advantage but the honour of doing benefits : so doth the Almighty father of all the creatures ; he at first sends forth his blessings upon us, that we by using them aright should make ourselves capable of greater ; while the giving glory to God, and doing homage to him, are nothing for his advantage, but only for ours ; our duties towards him being like vapours ascending from the earth, not at all to refresh the region of the clouds, but to return back in a fruitful and refreshing shower ; and God created us, not that we can increase his felicity, but that he might have a subject receptive of felicity from him.

* Worthy Communicant.

Does not God send his angels to keep thee in all thy ways ? are not they ministering spirits sent forth to wait upon thee as thy guard ? art not thou kept from drowning, from fracture of bones, from madness, from deformities, by the riches of the divine goodness ? Tell the joints of thy body doest thou want a finger? and if thou doest not understand how great a blessing that is, do but remember how ill thou canst spare the use of it when thou hast but a thorn in it. The very privative blessings, the blessings of immunity, safeguard, and integrity , which we all enjoy, deserve a thanksgiving of a whole life. If God should send a cancer upon thy face, or a wolf into thy breast, if he should spread a crust of leprosy upon thy skin, what wouldest thou give to \>e but as now thou art ?*

LUKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL.

He that is w r arm to-day and cold to-morrow, zealous in his resolution and weary in his practices, fierce in the beginning, and slack and easy in his progress, hath not yet well chosen what side he will be of. For religion cannot change though we do ; and, if we do, we have

* The Mercy of the Divine Judgments. Serm.xii. p. 286. 8. 95.

FROM BISHOP TAYLOR.

left God \ and whither he can go that goes from God, his own sorrows will soon enough instruct him. This fire must never go out ; but it must be like the fire of heaven ; it must shine like the stars, though sometimes covered with a cloud, or obscured by a greater light ; yet they dwell for ever in their orbs, and walk in their circles, and observe their circumstances ; but go not out by day nor night, and set not when kings die, nor are extinguished when nations change their government. So must the zeal of a Christian be, a constant incentive of his duty ; and though sometimes his hand is drawn back by violence or need, and his prtyers shortened by the importunity of business, and some parts omitted by necessities and just compliances ; yet still the fire is kept alive, it burns within when the light breaks not forth, and is eternal as the orb of fire, or the embers of the altar of incense.