The Age of Dryden

by Richard Garnett

John Tillotson (1630-1694).

Unlike South’s, the character of John Tillotson is no matter for controversy. With the possible exception of Archbishop Herring,[11] he was the most amiable man that ever filled the see of Canterbury, and was pronounced by the discerning and experienced William III. the best friend he had ever had and the best man he had ever known. To the meekness of the pastor Tillotson added the qualities of the statesman, and happy was it for the Church of England that such a man could be found to fill the primacy at such a time. As a master of oratory he is greatly inferior in eloquence to both Barrow and South, but historically is more important than either, for Addison was influenced by him, and his discourses long gave the tone to the English pulpit, affording the almost universally accepted model throughout the greater part of the eighteenth century.

Of these three great preachers South is certainly the greatest as respects eloquence and energy of diction. Almost every sentence is striking, and at the same time in perfect good taste. By so much, however, as he surpasses his rivals in purely literary qualities, does he fall below them in others even more essential to the preacher. His judgment is often greatly at fault, he commits himself to plainly untenable propositions, and enforces them with the confidence of one displaying self-evident truths. After a few experiences of this kind the reader begins to look upon him as a rhetorician, and to prefer the more cautious, but still vivid and vigorous ratiocination of Barrow; or the ‘sweet reasonableness’ of Tillotson, inferior to Barrow, as he to South, in the gifts of the consummate orator, but more truly persuasive in the gentleness of his expostulation and his transparent candour.

Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester (1635-1699), though a fine preacher, is less remembered in this capacity than for his unsuccessful controversy with Locke and his Origines Sacrae, a work of great learning in defence of the Church of England, which Coleridge in his Notes on Books emphatically prefers to the corresponding labours of Chillingworth. Coleridge was naturally prejudiced in favour of the antagonist of Locke, whose graces of mind and person, however, are attested by a dispassionate witness, Pepys.

Theology, apart from eloquence, is hardly entitled to a place in literary history; yet some of the theologians of the period were too illustrious to be passed over without mention. John Pearson, Bishop of Chester (1612-1686), ranks among the Fathers of the Church of England by his standard work on the Creed. ‘Pearson’s very dust,’ says Bentley, ‘is gold.’ Barrow’s great controversial treatise has been mentioned. George Bull, Bishop of St. David’s (1634-1710), achieved even more, for he extorted the thanks of the clergy of France by his Nicaenae Fidei Defensio (1685), written in Latin, but afterwards translated into English. The author’s object was to prove the orthodoxy of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, which had been disputed by several Protestant divines; the cost of publication was borne by the munificent Bishop Fell. The French prelates further paid Bull the equivocal compliment of wondering why in the world so excellent a man did not join the Church of Rome. Talis cum sis, utinam noster esses. Bull expounded his difficulties in a treatise on the corruptions of that church, the most popular of his works at home, but which, being written in English, failed to vindicate his position in the eyes of the Frenchmen. Next to these giants of learning may be named a very dissimilar person, Richard Baxter (1615-1691), whom moderate men had designated for a bishopric at the Restoration, but whom the Bartholomew’s Day of 1662 made a Nonconformist. He wrote one hundred and sixty-eight books, two of which have survived, A Call to the Unconverted and The Saints’ Everlasting Rest. The latter Professor Minto calls ‘a volume of pious thoughts that have a peculiar interest when we view them as the aspirations of an infirm man turning wearily from the distractions of a time utterly out of joint.’ The writings of George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, mostly belong to a previous period; but the No Cross, no Crown of William Penn (1644-1718) falls within Restoration literature. A far more important work is the Apology of Robert Barclay (1648-1690). This remarkable book, which has been recommended by bishops to theological students as the best available for many purposes, is the standard exposition of Quakerism, and undoubtedly ranks among the classics of its period. Mr. Leslie Stephen describes it as ‘one of the most impressive theological writings of the century: grave, logical, and often marked by the eloquence of lofty moral convictions.’ ‘The St. Paul of the Quakers,’ says Coleridge of the author. Barclay, the descendant of an old Scotch family, became a Quaker in 1667, following the example of his father. He underwent some persecution, but was in the main shielded by the favour of James II. His works were collected by Penn in 1692.

Two devotional writings of the age, besides Baxter’s, obtained sufficient currency to merit a place in the history of literature. The Whole Duty of Man, first published in 1658, is an excellent representative of the sobriety and sound sense characteristic of the Church of England. At the same time it must be confessed that it has more reason than unction, and seeks rather to menace and upbraid than to allure men into the religious life. At the present day it would be pronounced grievously deficient in fervour, servile in its political teachings, and too exclusive in its appeals to prudential and self-interested motives; but its adaptation to a positive and prosaic age was sufficiently evinced by a circulation enormous for the period. The authorship is involved in mystery: it is usually attributed to Archbishop Sterne or Lady Pakington; but Sterne can hardly have had time to write the seven other treatises ascribed, apparently with good ground, to the same author; and it is clearly not the composition of a woman. Evelyn attributes it on the authority of Archbishop Tenison to a Dr. Chaplin, of University College, Oxford, who cannot be traced. Lately Mr. Dobie, in the Academy, has ascribed it and its companions on strong grounds to Richard Allestree, Provost of Eton, an intimate friend of Bishop Fell. The Bishop appears to have copied some of them in his own hand, and certainly was acquainted with the authorship. The most important of the other works ascribed to the writer of The Whole Duty of Man are The Causes of the Decay of Christian Piety, The Gentleman and Ladies’ Calling, and The Government of the Tongue.

Another work of edification, which almost rivalled the popularity of The Whole Duty of Man, was the Practical Discourse concerning Death (1689), by William Sherlock (1641-1707), Master of the Temple and Dean of St. Paul’s, the divine whose tergiversations respecting the oath of allegiance to William and Mary are so amusingly detailed by Macaulay. It is a model of clear and forcible writing, but on the lowest plane of unspiritual selfishness. ‘How unreasonable is it for us to trouble ourselves about this world longer than we are like to continue in it!’ exclaims Sherlock, with the air of one apologizing for enunciating a truism.

John Ray (1628-1705).

Natural theology had a representative of much higher moral calibre than professional theology found in Sherlock in John Ray (1628-1705). Ray, a Cambridge man, prevented by scruples from ministering in the Church of England after the fatal legislation of 1662, but substantially accepting her doctrines, was the first English naturalist of eminence, and wrote chiefly in Latin, but composed his treatise on The Wisdom of God in the Creation in his mother-tongue. The anthropomorphism of this earnest, lucid, and ingenious book, the prototype of Paley’s, is a defect hardly to be avoided in an age when the Deity was almost universally conceived as an artificer; and yet Ray comes very near indeed to the conception of a power immanent in Nature. His style is limpid and persuasive; his reasoning cogent; his good sense is apparent in his discussion of spontaneous generation and the stories related in its support, although the caution and modesty of his temper sometimes incline him to defer too much to authority. He has no mercy, for example, on frogs rained from the sky, but will not, in the face of the testimony of eye-witnesses, carry scepticism to the point of disputing that they may have been occasionally found immured in the middle of stones.

Ray’s teleology had allies in Derham (1657-1735), an observant naturalist and author of Astro-Theology, and in the Hon. Robert Boyle, the best of men in disposition, and an admirable natural philosopher, but feeble and diffuse as a natural theologian.