chase eternity." Thus also, at p. 286, he says, that "in heaven those great felicities which transcend all our apprehensions, are certainly to be obtained by leaving our vices and lower appetites;" meaning that "those felicities are not to be obtained without leaving these vices." At p. 305 he offers a very unwarranted view of the moral worth and efficacy of acts of martyrdom, when he says, "It is certain that such dyings or great sufferings are heroical actions, and of power to make great compensations and redemptions of time, and of omissions and imperfections." At p. 344, he describes Jesus as undertaking "a grief great enough to make up the imperfect contrition of all the saints."

It appears, from the dedication prefixed to the third part of this great work, in the first edition, that during its composition he had made a most valuable and important friendship, which exerted a considerable influence both on his personal happiness and on the course of his literary exertions. We allude to the intimacy which commenced about this period with the celebrated Richard Vaughan, earl of Carberry, and his singularly excellent countess. The earl of Carberry, whose seat of Golden Grove was situated in the same parish where Taylor's lot was now cast, had held a high military command on the king's side during the civil wars; but as his character and proceedings had always been mild and moderate, and as he was much respected and regarded by many among the opposite party, he had been allowed, after the triumph of the parliament, to compound for his estates on easy terms; and was thus enabled to extend the most valuable assistance to those of his own side-who, like Taylor, had suffered a more total shipwreck in the revolutionary tempest. The nature and extent of this distinguished person's liberality to Taylor, we shall allow the latter to explain in his own words. "My Lord," he says, "your great nobleness and religious charity have taken from me some portions of that glory which I designed to myself, in imitation of St Paul towards the Corinthian church, who esteemed it his honour to preach to them without a revenue; and though also, like him, I have a trade by which I can be more useful to others, and less burdensome to you; yet to you also, under God, I owe the quiet, and the opportunities, and the circumstances of that, as if God had so interweaved the support of my affairs with your charity, that he would have no advantages pass upon me but by your interest; and that I should expect no reward in the issues of my calling, unless your lordship have a share in the blessing." But while Taylor, under the protection and countenance of his excellent patrons, was thus reaping of their carnal things, he more than repaid their kindness by the abundance with which he sowed to them in spiritual things; having regularly officiated in their family in conducting the ministries of divine worship, according to the prescribed ritual of the church of England; so that, as he beautifully reminds the earl, "it was a blessing for which his lordship was to praise God that his family was like Gideon's fleece, irriguous

Of the

with a dew from heaven, when much of the vicinage was dry."
sermons delivered by him in the course of this domestic ministry, he after-
wards published a collection of fifty-two, one for every Sunday in the
year; to which, at a still later period, he added a supplement of ten dis-
courses, chiefly preached on public occasions. From these discourses we
have given very ample selections, occupying from the 1st to the 218th
page of the present work. They will be found, perhaps, beyond all the
other extracts in the volume, characterized by the luxuriance and the splen-
dour of Taylor's genius; and certainly inferior to none in the practical
wisdom, the knowledge of the human heart, and the applicability to actual
circumstances, which make us feel him amidst the conflagration of his
eloquence, and even the extravagancies of his fancy, still speaking directly
to our familiar consciousness, and for the uses of our daily practice. In
the extracts from these remarkable productions which this volume contains,
we have endeavoured to relieve the composition, as much as possible, from
that oppressive load of classical erudition and legendary lore with which
they are overlaid and stifled, rather than adorned; and which, if inappro-
priate at the best, appears ludicrously unsuitable to the circumstances in
which they profess to have been originally delivered, as addressed originally
in lord Carbery's private chapel, to the little congregation composed of
his patron's family and dependents. The paragraphs entirely composed of
such allusions, and which were not interwoven with the texture of the
work itself, have been entirely omitted; while, in the cases where they
could not be readily detached, or where they seemed especially appropriate,
the translations and paraphrases only which Taylor commonly subjoins to
the original quotations are retained. It is to be regretted that our sense
of editorial duty would not allow us to correct certain statements in the
course of these extracts, which, in a doctrinal point of view, seemed to us
erroneous and dangerous; and we, therefore, feel ourselves called upon
once more to recommend to the reader's attention the general caution
given before; while we point out more particularly the following special
instances, as perhaps the most glaring instances of rash and unsound ex-
pression which this part of the work contains. At page 20 he speaks
of men "working for eternal life, and performing such easy conditions
upon which it may be obtained." Speaking of the purification of the
heart, in p. 27, as leading to sanctification of the life, he says, "It also
causes that nothing spring from thence, but gums fit for incense,
and oblations for the altar of propitiation, and a cloud of perfume fit
to make atonement for our sins, and, being united to the great sacrifice
of the world, to reconcile God and man together." At p. 83 he has the
idea of "beginning to be reconciled to God by the renewed and hearty
purposes of holy living." In pronouncing the eulogy of the martyrs, he
introduces, in a saving clause, p. 103, "the incursions of their seldom
sins."

In conformity with his peculiar view of the spiritual life, as ad

mitting of a fall from a state of grace, we find him, p. 110, saying of a Christian overcome by a sudden temptation to a flagrant sin," he falls, and dies the death, and hath no new strengths but such as are to be employed for his recovery." And again, at p. 115, he states, "No good man ever commits one act of adultery; no godly man will, at any time, be drunk; or if he be, he ceases to be a godly man, and is run into the confines of death, and is sick at heart, and may die of the sickness-die eternally." At p. 151 he speaks as if in the endeavour to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling " we could present something of our own to God, proportionable to the great rewards of heaven." He surely extends too far the period of immunity from actual sin, when he says of the maiden of twelve years old raised by our blessed Saviour, that " she had not entered into the regions of choice and sinfulness," p. 199; and extenuates the malignity of that sin which remains until death, in the most thoroughly sanctified, when of the countess of Carberry he informs us, p. 208, that "her accounts with God were made up of nothing but small parcels, with passions and angry words, and trifling discontents, which are the alloy of the piety of the most holy persons."

The remarks which we have made, in regard at once to the merits and to the faults of the Evavros, may, with equal propriety, be extended to the next in order of our author's works, and of all his writings the most extensively and permanently popular-the Holy Living and Dyingbreathing, as they do, the same holy passion after spiritual purity and spiritual excellence-illuminated with the same fascinating decorations of fancy and of genius-displaying the same profound acquaintance with human nature and human life-and liable to the same reprehension, in regard to the too scanty infusion of those peculiar principles of Christinaity which, in the scriptural system, lie at the foundation of genuine holiness, as well as the occasional inaccuracies, and harshnesses of expression, which grate upon the ear of one who has been taught to hold fast the form of sound words. There is one idea occurring again and again in the latter of these treatises, which falls in too readily with the course of common apprehensions on this subject, not to be particularly noticed and reprehended; and that is, that the endurance of great temporal sufferings and calamities may help towards the more readily obtaining of eternal pardon. Thus in the prayer to be said in a storm at sea, p. 380, the petitioner is directed to "entreat that God would be pleased to unite his death to that of Jesus, and to accept it so united as a punishment for all his sins ;" and again, at p. 480, in the case of a sudden threatening of death, the sick man's friends are exhorted to pray "that the greatness of the calamity may be accepted of the Lord, as an instrument to procure pardon for his defects and degrees of unreadiness."

But Taylor, while he presided over the religion of his noble patron's family, was not content to minister only ex cathedrâ, and by the delivery

of formal and regular discourses. He did not forget the importance of the catechetical and the devotional parts of domestic religion; and, of his care in the conduct of these more private but not less useful departments of his duty, he has left us the proofs in the interesting little manual, which, in honour of the hospitable mansion where it was composed and first brought into use, he entitled the Golden Grove-divided into the three heads of "Things to be believed"-" Things to be done"-" Things to be asked;" followed by a series of hymns appropriate to the various festivals of the church, full of fancy, though defective in rhythm and taste. The very high value which Taylor justly put upon the devotional parts of religious service, is proved, not only by this publication, but by the edition of the Psalter, published first under the name of Lord Hatton, though now admitted to have been, in the greater part, the work of Jeremy Taylor-with titles and collects according to the matter of each psalm; by the large book of devotions, to which he has given the name of a "Collection of Offices, or Forms of Prayer in cases ordinary and extraordinary;" and by his favourite practice of interspersing all his practical works with acts of devotion and supplication suited to the subject and the circumstances.

In the preface to "The Golden Grove," Taylor had expressed, very vehemently and very freely, his sentiments of deep regret for the overthrow of the church of England, and his strong disapprobation of the procedure of those by whose instrumentality it was effected. These expressions attracted so much notice as to lead to the arrest of the author; though, in consistency with Cromwell's avowed contempt of " paper pellets," they do not seem to have been considered of so much importance, as to require that Taylor should be brought to trial, or subjected to more than a short restraint. His enlargement, however, did not continue long, as we find from a letter of his own, published in the latter part of 1665, that he was then, and had been for some months before, a prisoner (for what cause does not appear,) in Chepstow castle. It was again his lot, on this occasion, to experience the attention and courtesy, on the part of his political opponents, to which his genius and his character entitled him, but which it was not the less to their credit that they rendered; for the gentlemen," he remarks, "under whose custody I am, as they are careful of their charges, so they are civil to my person.' It is a strong proof, either of the prevailing respect for his general character, or of the conciliatory power of his personal manners, that he should thus repeatedly have had occasion to acknowledge "the generosity of noble enemies." But the year at which we have now arrived was overshadowed with other troubles than those we have mentioned, and, to Taylor's mind, more difficult to bear. Early in this year he gave to the world his "Unum Necessarium; or the Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, describing the Necessities and Measures of a Strict, a Holy, and a Christian Life, and rescued from Popular Errors"—in which he took upon him to controvert the orthodox doctrine

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of the church on the subjects of original sin, and the remainders of corruption in the regenerate; and advanced opinions amounting as nearly as possible, though he strongly disavowed the appellation, to the Pelagian views on these profound and perilous questions. The consequence was, a very general expression of dissatisfaction among the most eminent members of his own church, and particularly on the part of his friend and patron Warner, bishop of Rochester, and the venerable Sanderson who had been his colleague in the royal chaplaincy, and after the Restoration became bishop of Lincoln. Taylor laboured hard, in two or three successive pamphlets, to explain and to defend his own peculiar views in consistency with the representations of the Bible and the articles of his own church, but without making any impression or affording much satisfaction to his friends, and the controversy finally fell asleep, each party retaining its own position. In the course of this agitated and troublous year it should seem that Taylor first made the acquisition of a friendship which afterwards proved, in no ordinary measure, the support and solace of his life. It was that of the ingenious and amiable John Evelyn, in whose diary we find an entry in the following terms, under the month of March, 1655-"On the 31st, I made a visit to Dr Jeremy Taylor, to confer with him about some spiritual matters, using him thenceforward as my ghostly father, I beseech God Almighty to make me ever mindful of, and thankful for, his heavenly assistances." A considerable amount of highly interesting correspondence between these two distinguished individuals is still in existence, from which we shall introduce only one or two extracts that serve to bring out, very distinctly and pleasingly, the pervading influence of Christian piety and principle over our author's character in the intercourse of private friendship and the occurrences of domestic life. The first of our quotations alludes, with lively recollections of delight, to a visit which he had recently paid to Evelyn, at Sayes Court, where he met with Berkeley, Boyle, and Wilkins-and to a resolution which his friend had lately formed of giving to the world a translation, with notes, of the Latin poet Lucretius-an author whose works, although possessing many attractions to philosophical curiosity and poetical taste, yet, by the atheism of their principles and the nakedness of some of their descriptions, justly appeared to Taylor somewhat unfitted for the peculiar study of a Christian gentleman.

"HONOUR'D AND DEARE S',-I hope your servant brought my apology with him, and that I already am pardoned, or excused in your thoughts, that I did not returne an answer yesterday to your friendly letter. S', I did believe myself so very much bounde to you for your so kind, so friendly reception of mee in your Tusculanum, that I had some little wonder upon mee when I saw you making excuses that it was no better. S', I came to see you and your lady, and am highly pleased that I did so, and found all your circumstances to be an heape and union of blessings. But I have not either so great a fancy and opinion of the