The Press.
London, England, 1858-08-07 00:00:00

HE PRESS, AUGUST 7, 1858.

ventionality. He has a clerical or even a
womanly terror of anything improper. A tame
domestic genius, he avoids with a just instinct
the camps of Cavalier and Roundhead, the
abodes of a too reckless chivalry and a too self-
sufficient liberty of thought ; among divines and
casuists of Oxford, and :in the study of a theo-
logical student, his timorous imagination can
repose unscared.
Nor is the scene, though so tranquil in the
midst of a stirring strife, without its own peculiar
interest. Learned and pious men are here, hud-
dled together like a flock of sheep in a thunder-
storm. They have casuistical distinctions of
unprecedented subtlety; they have infinite pa-
tristic learning; they know all the decisions of
councils, the speculations of schoolmen, the
systems of Reformers. This erudition has been
digested with profound meditation; it is no lifeless
mass of information, for it is salted with honesty
and the most earnest piety. Yet it is powerless
in the time of trial ; it has no exorcism for the
spirit which has risen to frighten it in the midst
of its books. Doubtless a most instructive scene,
if only its meaning be rightly understood !

Mr. Heygate acknowledges that there was " a
want of adaptation" in the Church at this time.
The following passage will at once put the reader
in possession of his conception of the theological
aspect of the times :

Oxford was full of divines. The seventeenth century
is the bright as well as dark epoch of the Church of
England, during Ine existence between the Reformation
and the present times; blight with the revival of eccle-
siastical learning and of Catholic doctrines, but dark
with the hostile errors and passions which the Church
seemed more able to convict by argument, than to mitigate
or remove by her influence. There was a want of adapta-
tion in her—not to the times, which is cowardice ; but
to the wants of the tunes, which is wisdom and charity.
This is apparent enough in the cumbrous and unpopular
style of the orthodox sermons, strangely contrasting as it
does with the easy and amusing shallowness of many
modern discourses. Certainly judging from their remains,
it would seem that the orthodox clergy were not cal-
culated to cope with a popular movement, nor tc influence
the middle classes amongst whom it prevailed. They
cared too much for their matter and too little fcr their
auditors ; and being somewhat dry and hard in their
teaching, they played into the hands of the more popular
Puritan or Independent. Analyze a seventeenth century
sermon, and you are delighted with its ingenuity, instructed
by its accuracy, and informed by its abundance or matter;
but listen to it, and you are asleep in two minutes. E
contr., listen to many popular preachers, and you will
neither grow weary nor asleep ; but analyze what they
have said, and nothing is left. All is liquid. You may
put in your test, but you precipitate nothing.

This account, we think, is just in the main.
Certainly a sermon of the seventeenth century is
very dull ; certainly most modern sermons are
very shallow. But we consider Mr. Heygate's
reproof of the divines of the reign of Charles to
be far too mild. Ile seems to think that it was
inconvenient indeed that their sermons should
be unintelligible to the million, but at the same
time that it was rather an honour than a disgrace
to the preacher himself. It is certainly the first
merit of a preacher to understand his subject ;
but has Mr. Heygate measured the arrogance,
the unchristian want of sympathy with his
audience which must exist in that preacher who
can continue Sunday after Sunday to deliver
sermons which he knows or may easily know to
be beyond their comprehension ? If this was
the ordinary character of the sermons of the
Church of England at that time, our sentence
must be that the Church had forgotten her func-
tions, and deserved her fate. The preacher
might be scientifically accurate, but he was not
" doing the work of an Evangelist," and the
sentence of the poet upon him would deserve to
be affirmed :

that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least
That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs 1
The hungry sheep look up and are nut fed,
But swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw,
ltot inwardly and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace and nothing said :
But that two•handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.
It is not only true that the good sermons of that
age were above the comprehension of the people ;
these good sermons were the rare exception.
The country at large was miserably ill-provided
with clergy. From the first the English Re-
formation had been infected with secularity.
The last years of Elizabeth's reign had fostered
this spirit, and James did not mend the matter.
Baxter's account of the state of things in Shrop-

shire when he was a boy will give us a
England under the most learned ministry
ever had :—" In High Ercall, there
" readers in the course of six years;
" ignorant, and two of them immoral
" Eaton-Constantine there was
" eighty years of age, Sir William
" never preached; yet he had
" twenty miles apart from each
" sight failing, he repeated the prayers
" book ; but to read the lessons he ,
" common labourer one year, a tailor
" and, at last, his own son, the
" player and gamester in all the count
" and supplied one of his places.
" miles round were nearly a dozen more
"of the same description; poor
" readers, and most of them of dissoli
The same authority, not by any means
able to Cromwell, will give us a different
of the effects of the rebellion upon
we derive from Isaac Walton. These
words :—" I do not believe that ever
" so able and faithful a ministry f
" nation as it hath this day, and I
" nations on earth, if any, have the
" I am the change is so great within
" years that it is one of the greatest
" ever I had in the world to behold
" congregations are now plainly and
" taught that lived then in great obscurit
" many able faithful men are there
" county in comparison of what were
" graciously hath God prospered
" many that were little children in
" of the late troubles, so that they
" the most of their seniors ! How ,
" would I have gone twenty years ago
" have heard one of those ancient
" divines whose congregations are
" thin and their parts esteemed mean
" of the notable improvement of their

We believe that no man of that
free from party-spirit as Richard
certainly no man more eminently
himselfthe merits of both religious schools,
ing the learn►ng of Saunderson togetl
popular eloquence of Bunyan. "
more satisfied with Mr. Heygate's explanation
the decay of religion after the Restore
with his conception of the Church undr
first Stuarts. He makes Hammond

I seem to foresee a terrible falling away
zeal when this war is over, end how it may
which is good and rightly applied is the li
but misdirected zeal depraves and exhausts
the door for unbelief. There are some
Court who are weary of the very name
think nothing worth contending for but woi
prosperity. Rely upon it there will be a re
excitement as from an overbent bow, and
there is no right and no wrong, no truth
hood—in a word, indifference and unbelief
place of a zeal not according to knowledge.
This, no doubt, is the ordinary
matter ; yet it seems to require a
explanation and qualification before
accepted. The metaphor of the o'
implies that the relaxation ensued
excessive tension had been ; in other
the same persons who had begun
zeal ended in scepticism. This may
been true in some cases ; some Antinomians
have become infidels. But it would -
prove that the zeal of the Puritan
whole declined after the Restoration.
bitter repugnance to all religious zeal
in those who had never experienced
in the Court and amongst the Ca,
Ilobbism gained ground, and mi
relaxed. Nor was it by any deca
in the conquered party that the
Puritanism gradually grew obsoi,
country, but simply through the silencing
ministers for a period of thirty years.
not invariably true that persecution
object. The Reformation was crushed
in Spain and Italy, and in the same •
Puritan spirit was, if not destroyed?
sleep in England by the silence ford
upon the eloquence which had been •
it awake.

We have been compelled to defenc.,
against the uncompromising partizans
Ileygate. To him the state of
Puritanism superseded appears, as
Walton, a golden age of tranquil
contemplation, a peaceful time, when

re us a sample of
ministry it has
there were four
IFS ; all of then
moral men.
At
a a reader of
Lmit°
withoutgers, who
ad two livingtch other. His
prayers
3 he employed a
tailor another;
the best t 8 age.
mntry, got orders
R. Within a few
m more ministers
poor ignorant
lissolute lives."
ty means favour-
, different notion
Non religion than
These arc his
!ver England had
7 since it was a
d I fear that few
the like. Sure
thin these twelve
greatest joys that
old it. How many
7 and frequently
t obscurity ! How
there now in a
were then ! How
ed the studies of
in the beginning
they now cloud
low many miles
rs ago and less to
ncient reverend
are now grown
mean by reason
their juniors!"
that age was so
and Baxter, and
tly combined in
s schools, possess-
ogether with the
I. We are not
s explanation of
Restoration than
th under the two
and say :
may from re'igious
may. Zeal for that
he life of religion;
tausts it, and opens
me now about the
ime of religion, and
it worldly ease and
a recoil from this
, and men will ssy
ruth and no false-
belief will take the
.dge.
ry view of the
a great deal of
)efore it can be
se overbent bow
sued where the
)they words, that
;un in excessive
ay possibly have
kntinomians may
'mild be hard to
ritan party as a
storation. The
s zeal sprang up
:need it. It was
Cavaliers that
I morality was
r decay of zeal
he principles of
obsolete in the
silencing of their
)7 •
ears For it is
ution fails of its
crushed by force
same manner the
eyed, yet put to
forcibly imposed
cen used to keep
find Puritanism
tizanship of Mr. h
whic
[uil and learned
when the uncor-
air's tthoinogsld
Isaac