SANDERSON AND TAYLOR.
I shall be much obliged if any of your readers can explain the following coincidence between Sanderson and Jeremy Taylor. Taylor, in the beginning of the Ductor Dubitantium, says:
"It was well said of St. Bernard, 'Conscientia candor est lucis æternæ, et speculum sine macula Dei majestatis, et imago bonitatis illius;' 'Conscience is the brightness and splendour of the eternal light, a spotless mirror of the Divine Majesty, and the image of the goodness of God.' It is higher which Tatianus said of conscience, Μόνον εἶναι συνείδησιν Θεὸν, 'Conscience is God unto us,' which saying he had from Menander,
Βροτοῖς ἅπασιν ἡ συνείδησις Θεὸς.
"God is in our hearts by his laws; he rules in us by his substitute, our conscience; God sits there and gives us laws; and as God said unto Moses, 'I have made thee a God to Pharaoh,' that is, to give him laws, and to minister in the execution of those laws, and to inflict angry sentences upon him, so hath God done to us."
In the beginning of Sanderson's second lecture, De Obligatione Conscientiæ, he says:
"Hine illud ejusdem Menandri. Βροτοῖς ἅπασιν ἡ συνείδησις Θεὸς; Mortalibus sum cuique Conscientia Deus est, Quo nimirum sensu dixit Dominus se constituisse Mosen Deum Pharaoni; quod seis Pharaoni voluntatem Dei subinde inculcaret, ad cum faciendam Pharaonem instigaret, non obsequentem contentibus plagis insectaretur; eodem fere sensu dici potest, eundem quoque constituisse in Deum unicuique hominum singularium propriam Conscientiam."
Sanderson's Lectures were delivered at Oxford in 1647, but not published till 1660. The Dedication to Robert Boyle is dated November, 1659. The Ductor Dubitantium is dedicated to Charles II. after the Restoration, but has a preface dated October, 1659. It is not likely, therefore, that, Taylor borrowed from the printed work of Sanderson. Perhaps the quotations and illustrations which they have in common were borrowed from some older common source, where they occur associated as they do in these two writers. I should be glad to have any such source pointed out.
W. W.
Cambridge.