HENRY MORE.
It is little more than a nominal departure from the purpose of selecting lay examples in this chapter, to introduce Dr. Henry More, as another distinctive type of the spiritual life of the period—inasmuch as he was a clergyman in little more than name, and constantly eschewed public office. For after being appointed to a stall at Gloucester, he quickly resigned it to another person, and a deanery, a provostship, and two bishoprics he successively refused. Retirement and study were his delight. He has been commonly numbered amongst the members of the Cambridge school, but he—and there were others of that school more or less like him—ought to be regarded as a most decided Mystic. As an Eton boy, when wandering in the quaint old quadrangle, or in the beautiful playing fields, with his head on one side, and kicking the stones with his feet, he had, he says, a deep consciousness of the Divine presence; and believed that no deed, or word, or thought could be hidden from the Invisible yet All-seeing One. He early conceived an antipathy to Calvinism, in which he had been educated, and plunged himself, to use his own words, “head over ears” into the study of philosophy. He forsook Aristotle for Plato, and found a most congenial teacher in John Tauler, whose deep spiritual thoughts he drank in with avidity.
He was a philosopher, a friend of Cudworth, and a correspondent with Descartes. Imagination largely influenced his opinions, and in his enthusiastic reveries,—under the influence of which, he seemed unconscious of the outer world, and fancied himself to be living in a trance,—he conceived that he possessed an ethereal body, which “exhaled the perfume of violets.” Yet, Mystic as he was, he could criticise other Mystics, and find just the same fault with them, which others of a different turn of mind would find with him.
More says of Jacob Behmen:—He, “I conceive is to be reckoned in the number of those whose imaginative faculty has the pre-eminence above the rational: and though he was an holy and good man, his natural complexion, notwithstanding, was not destroyed, but retained its property still; and therefore his imagination, being very busy about Divine things, he could not, without a miracle, fail of becoming an enthusiast.”
It is further curious to couple with this, More’s opinion of the Quakers:—“To tell you my opinion of that sect which are called Quakers, though I must allow that there may be some amongst them good and sincere-hearted men, and it may be nearer to the purity of Christianity for the life and power of it than many others; yet, I am well assured, that the generality of them are prodigiously melancholy, and some few perhaps possessed with the devil.”[585]
As his philosophy is poetical so his poetry is philosophical; and his Psychozoia, or Life of the Soul, puzzles, if it does not weary its readers: yet it leaves the impression that he “believed the magic wonders which he sung;” and it has been well compared to a grotto, “whose gloomy labyrinths we might be curious to explore, for the strange and mystic associations they excite.”[586]
His philosophy and his poetry touched his religion, and he was wont to speak in language very different from that of the Anglican on the one hand, and from that of the Puritan on the other. “The oracle of God,” he remarked, “is not to be heard but in His Holy Temple, that is to say in a good and holy man thoroughly sanctified.” “This or such like rhapsodies,” he observes, relative to his Dialogues, “do I often sing to myself in the silent night, or betimes in the morning, at break of day, subjoining always, that of our Saviour, as a suitable Epiphonema to all, ‘Abraham saw my day afar, and rejoiced at it.’ At this window, I take breath, while I am choked and stifled with the crowd, and stench of the daily wickedness of this present evil world; and am almost wearied out with the tediousness and irksomeness of this my earthly pilgrimage.”[587] More felt deeply the sins and sorrows which he could not remove, yet a strain of holy peace ran through such melancholy; and it was doubtless from experience that he exclaimed—“Even the most miserable objects in this present life cannot divest him (the good man) of his happiness, but rather modify it, the sweetness of his spirit being melted into a kindly compassion in the behalf of others, whom, if he be able to help, it is a greater accession to his joy; and if he cannot, the being conscious to himself of so sincere a compassion, and so harmonious and suitable to the present state of things, carries along with it some degree of pleasure, like mournful notes of music, exquisitely well fitted to the sadness of the ditty.”[588] Yet More’s life was not all sentiment; he was charitable to the needy, and “his chamber door was an hospital.”
His death was like his life, holy, peaceful, happy; and even in his last hours, he could not help expressing his Christian hope in philosophical language—uttering the beautiful words of Cicero, which come so near the Gospel, “O præclarum illum diem,” &c., and declaring that he was going to join that blessed company, with whom, in a quarter of an hour, he would be as familiar as if he had known them for years.[589]
SIR THOMAS BROWNE.
Our notice of the phases of religious life in the Church of England would be defective, did we omit all reference to a distinguished, but eccentric individual, who has left his mark upon our religious literature. Eccentricity is sometimes the main distinction of a man’s religious life, and even in such cases there may be no room to doubt the genuineness of personal piety; but in the instance to which we now refer, there were distinguishing qualities of another and a worthier nature. Sir Thomas Browne was charged with being a Quaker, on what ground it is difficult to say; and a Roman Catholic, although the Pope honoured his Religio Medici with a place in the Index Expurgatorius; and an atheist, whilst all his writings bear witness to his reverence for the Divine Being.