Basire.
Isaac Basire, who had been chaplain to King Charles and to the Bishop of Lichfield, and who had held a Prebendal stall and a Rectory, being deprived of all his preferments, found refuge in Rouen, his native city, whilst his wife and children were encompassed by pecuniary difficulties at home. After travelling with pupils in Italy and elsewhere, he visited the islands of the Mediterranean, and also the shores of Greece—where he preached, by invitation of the Metropolitan, before his bishops and the clergy. He visited Naples and Sicily, where he officiated for some weeks on board ship. He went also to Aleppo and Jerusalem, had conferences with the Greek and Latin clergy, and interested himself in the Coptic Churches: at the same time he aimed at reforming the Eastern Christians, and endeavoured to promulgate the doctrines and formularies of English Episcopalians.[338] We are perfectly ready to honour a man who, in the hour of his spiritual mother's humiliation, and when driven from her altars, vindicated her priesthood, maintained her ritual, and diffused her principles; but we must add, that Basire attached most unjustifiable importance to certain ecclesiastical matters, and went beyond bounds in his episcopalian zeal, betraying, at the same time, a strong hatred to those who in England held the reins of government.
Jeremy Taylor.
Let us return to our own country, to trace other and more illustrious Episcopal confessors in their various retreats. Jeremy Taylor, after submitting to the drudgery of school-keeping in a Welsh village, found for a while a congenial and charming home at Golden Grove. There—to use some of his own richly-coloured words—as the highest branches of the wood stooped, and made a smooth path for the winds on the top of all its glories—and as the sun so gloriously opened the little eye of heaven and sent away the spirits of darkness, and called up the lark to matins, and gilded the fringes of a cloud, and wept great and little showers; and as the images of the trees hung over the water, and were reflected from the bottom, and as the lark rose from his bed of grass, and climbed above the clouds, and was beaten back with the loud sighing of an eastern wind—the great poet-preacher gathered images for his discourses. And again, as he heard the faint echo of a distant valley, and watched the little bee that feeds on dew, and pried into the ivy creeping at the foot of the oak, he found lessons of instructive piety to delight mankind. Looking at what Taylor there worked up into his marvellous imagination, it may be truly said, "the gold of that land was good;" but his temporary sojourn in a paradise-like retreat was followed by imprisonment in Chepstow Castle, and afterwards in the Tower of London, in consequence of incautious language which he used in reference to his Puritan oppressors, and because of a "superstitious" engraving of our Saviour at prayer, prefixed by his publisher to the "Collection of Offices." Taylor's theology, which was surpassed by his eloquence, brought him into trouble with the calmer and more careful Divines of his own Church, as well as with the Presbyterians; his "Treatise on Repentance" drawing tears from the eyes of Sanderson, who complained that his friend was pulling down the ancient landmarks of the Christian faith. His controversy with Jeanes, the Presbyterian, proved that Taylor had a quick temper—that instead of "receiving furies and indiscretions like a stone into a bed of moss and soft compliances," he could send out angry words like fire when the flint and steel come into collision. With ruffled temper, when the controversy was over, he remarked: "I have been so pushed at by herds and flocks of people that follow anybody that whistles to them, or drives them to pasture, that I am grown afraid of any truth that seems chargeable with singularity;" and thus it appears that he had to pay the penalty of unpopularity and opposition, which all men must pay who, whether right or wrong, venture to differ from the theological opinions of their brethren. In a nobler and sweeter tone he confessed, when the wings of his spirit were smoothed once more: "For my part I have learned to humble myself, and to adore the inscrutable paths of the Most High. God and truth are still the same, though the foundations of the world be shaken." And again: "We are reduced to that religion which no man can forbid—which we can keep in the midst of a persecution—by which the martyrs in the days of our fathers went to heaven—that by which we can be servants of God, and receive the Spirit of Christ, and make use of His comforts, and live in His love, and in charity with all men, and they that do so cannot perish." With exquisite delicacy and pathos, Taylor alludes to his poverty in a letter to Evelyn (1656): "Sir, I know not when I shall be able to come to London, for our being stripped of the little reliques of our fortune remaining after the shipwreck leaves us not cordage nor sails sufficient to bear me thither." Taylor is supposed, but not with any sufficient foundation, to have at one period held a pastoral charge in London; certainly he obtained induction to a Lectureship at Lisburn, in Ireland. Residing at Portmore, in the enjoyment of Lord Conway's hospitality, he found repeated there some of the charming scenes and also some of the associations and advantages of Golden Grove. Yet, again, the great preacher's repose was interrupted by a fanatical Presbyterian, who informed against him as a dangerous man who used the sign of the cross in baptism. Writing in 1659-60, Taylor remarks: "I had been in the worst of our winter weather sent for to Dublin by our late Anabaptist Commissioners, and found the evil of it so great that in my going I began to be ill, but in my return had my ill redoubled." The Restoration found him bringing through the press the Ductor Dubitantium.[339]
Sanderson and Hammond.
Of those who were ejected from the University of Oxford, Sanderson and Hammond were the most distinguished. Their story is amongst the most beautiful legends of the age, and their loving intercourse reminds us of the friendship of Basil and Gregory in far earlier times. As their lives were entwined round each other, so are their memories. Sanderson retired to Boothby parish, where he continued to minister according to Episcopalian rites, only disturbed occasionally by soldiers while he was reading prayers. They told him how God could be served more acceptably, and then they enforced their advice by tearing the liturgy to pieces. A prudent and affectionate Parliamentary friend recommended him not to be strict in reading all the prayers, "especially if the soldiers came to watch him," "for which reasons he did vary somewhat from the strict rules of the rubric." His admiring biographer sets down the form of confession which, perhaps in consequence of such advice, was used by this Divine, and it shews what minute variations were adopted by clergymen in order to evade the ordinance against the use of the Common Prayer Book.[340] Sanderson preached every Sunday, solicitously enquiring "what he might do to speak more plainly or more movingly: whether his extemporary wording might not be a defect, and the like." He daily read prayers, and the time between doing this and the hour of dinner he employed in instructing the children of the family with whom he lived; "observing diligently the little deviations of their manners, and applying remedies unto them."
After an abortive attempt had been made by some Royalists in the neighbourhood of Tunbridge to help the King, Hammond, then living there, felt obliged to remove; and, upon visiting his old tutor, Dr. Buckner, "in such a habit as that exigence made necessary," he, under his friend's hospitable roof, though "no valuer of trifles," had so extraordinary a dream that he could not then despise or ever afterwards forget it. "He thought himself and a multitude of others to have been abroad in a bright and cheerful day, when on a sudden there seemed a separation to be made, and he, with the far less number, to be placed at a distance from the rest; and then, the clouds gathering, a most tempestuous storm arose, with thundering and lightnings, with spouts of impetuous rain, and violent gusts of wind, and whatever else might add unto a scene of horror, particularly balls of fire, that shot themselves amongst the ranks of those that stood in the lesser party; when a gentle whisper seemed to interrupt those other louder noises, saying: Be still, and ye shall receive no harm. Amidst these terrors, the doctor falling to his prayers, soon after the tempest ceased, and that well-known cathedral anthem begun, Come, Lord Jesus, come away, with which he awoke. The correspondent event of all which he found verified signally in the preservation both of himself and his friends in doing of their duties; the which with much content he was used to mention. Beside, being himself taken to the choir of angels at the close of that land-hurricane of ours, whereof that dismal apparition was only a faint emblem, he gave thereby too literal a completion to his dream, and the unhappy credit of bordering upon prophecy."[341]
Sanderson.
Hammond went to see Sanderson at Boothby, when Hammond persuaded him to attempt the practice of memoriter preaching. Early on a Sunday morning, they walked to a neighbouring church, where the minister requested the favour of a sermon. Sanderson entered the pulpit, having previously put the MS. of the discourse, which he had committed to memory, into his friend's hands. The effort to preach in this way turned out a humiliating failure. The preacher, before he had delivered the third part of what he meant to say, became very confused, and "so lost as to the matter," that his learned auditor was frightened, and many of the village congregation discovered that there was something wrong. "Good doctor," said Sanderson, as they were returning home, "give me my sermon, and know that neither you nor any man living, shall ever persuade me to preach again without my books." "Good doctor," returned the other, "be not angry; for if I persuade you to preach again without book, I will give you leave to burn all those that I am master of."[342]
Another interesting glimpse of Sanderson is caught in "Walton's Lives." When he came up to London in 1655, the worthy angler met him near Little Britain, "in sad-coloured clothes—far from being costly." One can see the noble countenance of the man—with his lofty forehead, fine regular features, full round eyes, white moustache, and trimly-peaked beard;—only he was now dressed in lay attire, and that of a very humble kind, instead of appearing, as in his portrait, with surplice, scarf, and college cap. It was raining at the time, and he and Walton turned aside to gossip under a pent-house; when, the wind driving in their faces, they adjourned to "a cleanly house," where they had bread, cheese, ale, and a fire for their money. Their conversation naturally turned upon the Church; and Sanderson bewailed the abolishing of the Prayer Book and the use of extempore prayer, pronouncing the Collects "the most passionate, proper, and most elegant expressions that any language ever afforded." The Liturgy, the Psalms, and the language of devotion, he complained, had been exchanged for needless debates about free-will, election, and reprobation. Such lamentations no doubt formed the staple of much table-talk amongst the class to which the ejected Oxonian belonged; and in the contempt poured upon extempore prayer he manifested the onesidedness of Episcopalian prejudices. He and his opponents were not in a position to regard fairly each other's methods of devotion. Mutual war had exasperated the passions, so as to produce in both a stone-blindness to that which was good beyond their own narrow enclosures. The same tone of prejudice also led Sanderson to point at Puritanism another shaft—which larger acquaintance with human nature, and a deeper sense of justice, will lead the moral censor, with a slight modification of phraseology, to apply to hypocrites of all sects. They thought, said the Anglican Churchman, that "they might be religious first, and then just and merciful; that they might sell their consciences, and yet have something left that was worth keeping; that they might be sure they were elected, though their lives were visibly scandalous; that to be cunning was to be wise; that to be rich was to be happy, though their wealth was got without justice or mercy; that to be busy in things they understood not, was no sin." The writer and other clear-headed men besides him did not see, that after all, the charge of hypocrisy applies, not to the thoroughly honest, though fanatical Puritan of the Commonwealth, but to all such persons as for awhile assumed the livery of a sect for their own selfish ends: amongst whom were many who a few years afterwards declared, that they had been Episcopalian in heart throughout the whole period, and had only "submitted to the times." Curious, too, is it to find this distinguished man, at the end of his interesting conversation with Walton, starting the idea, that the way to restore the country to a more meek and Christian temper was to prepare a body of Church divinity in fifty-two homilies, each to be of such length as not to exceed a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes' reading.[343] Melancholy it is to learn that this scholar and Divine, in the year 1658, was in so low a condition as to be glad to receive £50 as a present from Dr. Barlow.