FULLER'S CHURCH HISTORY.
B. I. cent. 5.
PELAGIUS:—Let no foreiner insult on the infelicity of our land in
bearing this monster.
It raises, or ought to raise, our estimation of Fuller's good sense and the general temperance of his mind, when we see the heavy weight of prejudices, the universal code of his age, incumbent on his judgment, and which nevertheless left sanity of opinion, the general character of his writings: this remark was suggested by the term 'monster' attached to the worthy Cambrian Pelagius—the teacher Arminianismi ante Arminium.
B. II. cent. 6. s. 8.
Whereas in Holy Writ, when the Apostles (and the Papists commonly call
Augustine the English apostle, how properly we shall see hereafter,)
went to a foreign nation, 'God gave them the language thereof, &c.'
What a loss that Fuller has not made a reference to his authorities for this assertion! I am sure he could have found none in the New Testament, but facts that imply, and, in the absence of all such proof, prove the contrary.
Ib. s. 6.
Thus we see the whole week bescattered with Saxon idols, whose pagan
gods were the godfathers of the days, and gave them their names. 'This
some zealot may behold as the object of a necessary reformation,
desiring to have the days of the week new dipt, and called after other
names'. Though indeed this supposed scandal will not offend the wise,
as beneath their notice, and cannot offend the ignorant, as above
their knowledge.
A curious prediction fulfilled a few years after in the Quakers, and well worthy of being extracted and addressed to the present Friends.
Memorandum.—It is the error of the Friends, but natural and common to almost all sects,—the perversion of the wisdom of the first establishers of their sect into their own folly, by not distinguishing between the conditionally right and the permanently and essentially so. For example: It was right conditionally in the Apostles to forbid black puddings even to the Gentile Christians, and it was wisdom in them; but to continue the prohibition would be folly and Judaism in us. The elder church very sensibly distinguished episcopal from apostolic inspiration; the episcopal spirit, that which dictated what was fit and profitable for a particular community or church at a particular period,—from the apostolic and catholic spirit which dictated truth and duties of permanent and universal obligation.
Ib. cent. 7.
This Latin dedication is remarkably pleasing and elegant. Milton in his classical youth, the aera of Lycidas, might have written it—only he would have given it in Latin verse.
B. x. cent. 17.
Bp. of London. May your Majesty be pleased, that the ancient canon may
be remembered, 'Schismatici contra episcopos non sunt audiendi'. And
there is another decree of a very ancient council, that no man should
be admitted to speak against that whereunto he hath formerly
subscribed.
And as for you, Doctor Reynolds, and your sociates, how much are you
bound to his Majestie's clemencye, permitting you contrary to the
statute 'primo Elizabethae', so freely to speak against the liturgie
and discipline established. Faine would I know the end you aime at,
and whether you be not of Mr. Cartwright's minde, who affirmed, that
we ought in ceremonies rather to conforme to the Turks than to the
Papists. I doubt you approve his position, because here appearing
before his Majesty in Turkey-gownes, not in your scholastic habits,
according to the order of the Universities.
If any man, who like myself hath attentively read the Church history of the reign of Elizabeth, and the conference before, and with, her pedant successor, can shew me any essential difference between Whitgift and Bancroft during their rule, and Bonner and Gardiner in the reign of Mary, I will be thankful to him in my heart and for him in my prayers. One difference I see, namely, that the former professing the New Testament to be their rule and guide, and making the fallibility of all churches and individuals an article of faith, were more inconsistent, and therefore less excusable, than the Popish persecutors. 30 Aug. 1824.
N.B. The crimes, murderous as they were, were the vice and delusion of the age, and it is ignorance to lack charity towards the persons, Papist or Protestant; but the tone, the spirit, characterizes, and belongs to, the individual: for example, the bursting spleen of this Bancroft, not so satisfied with this precious arbitrator for having pre-condemned his opponents, as fierce and surly with him for not hanging them up unheard.
At the end. Next to Shakspeare, I am not certain whether Thomas Fuller, beyond all other writers, does not excite in me the sense and emotion of the marvellous;—the degree in which any given faculty or combination of faculties is possessed and manifested, so far surpassing what one would have thought possible in a single mind, as to give one's admiration the flavour and quality of wonder! Wit was the stuff and substance of Fuller's intellect. It was the element, the earthen base, the material which he worked in, and this very circumstance has defrauded him of his due praise for the practical wisdom of the thoughts, for the beauty and variety of the truths, into which he shaped the stuff. Fuller was incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced, great man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men. He is a very voluminous writer, and yet in all his numerous volumes on so many different subjects, it is scarcely too much to say, that you will hardly find a page in which some one sentence out of every three does not deserve to be quoted for itself—as motto or as maxim. God bless thee, dear old man! may I meet with thee!—which is tantamount to—may I go to heaven!
July, 1829.