had not St. Edmund thrown his arms about him when he made him a Monk.

At a particular time, when he was informed that some of the convent grumbled at some act of his, he said to me, then sitting by him, "Good God! there is need enough that I should remember that dream wherein it was dreamed of me, before I was made Abbot, that I was to rage among them as a wolf. True it is that above all earthly things I dread lest the convent behave in such a way that I shall be compelled so to rage; but even so it is when they say or do anything against my will, I bring to mind that dream of theirs, and although I do rage, 'tis in my own soul, groaning and gnashing my teeth in secret, doing violence to myself lest I should actually rage in word or deed with them, and

'Strangulat inclusus dolor, et cor astuat intus."
"My inward dolour chokes me,
And my heart is all burnt up."

JEREMY TAYLOR.

I.-HIS THEOLOGY.

In the brief sketch of this eminent man which we gave in our last Number, we intimated that though in many respects he occupied a high position on the list of Divines, so that his works will always find a place in the library of the theologian, yet that he was by no means free from errors of great magnitude, and leading, practically, where not powerfully checked by a true, though in some respects a mistaken, piety, to serious mischief. Before Luther became a Reformer, his inward struggles had led him to the true source of peace and power, as made known in the New Testament, and especially in the Epistles to the Galatians and the Romans. A sense of personal want had brought him to a saving acquaintance with the doctrine of justification by faith; and when called to survey the evils of the religious system existing in his day, it was in the light of this doctrine that he discovered them, and by its application that he sought their correction. But before the system of Popery became fully formed and dominant, and that it had room for such developement as made its evils apparent, its principles had been received into the professing church, and their influence, at an early period, was very powerful and extensive. These principles may be described as an undue attachment to externalism in religion, together with what amounted to a substitution of it for that spirituality in which, as religion essentially consists, so must it primarily commence: as also with a mistaken persuasion as to the value, first of certain particular works and sufferings, such as literal withdrawment from the world, celibacy, voluntary mortification, &c.,and then of works generally. Externalism, asceticism, and human merit were dwellers in the Church long before Popery, as such, was known: indeed, it was from their growth and fructification that the religious portion of the Papal system proceeded.

Now, though against the Popery of his own day, as an existing system, held by a body of living professors, Jeremy Taylor was a powerful combatant, (on some points his controversial writings are still among the best in the English language,) yet he was far from being a Protestant of the Reformation-that is, as we must think, the scripturalschool. His mind was strongly imaginative; all its tendencies were romantic and mystical; and the writings of the Fathers of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, and even later, when error had not become visibly demoralizing, but was often connected with true and even heroic piety, exercised a most powerful effect upon him. He therefore laid great stress on what have in our day been called church principles; and what he says on justification, and faith, and their co-relative subjects, is strongly marked by the mistakes of his system. His views of human corruption were very limited and obscure; and either for the young Christian or the young student, he is often a very unsafe guide. They only can profitably study Jeremy Taylor whose "senses are exercised by reason of use to discern good and evil."

But all who can read him safely, will always read him with great advantage, and great pleasure. Laying aside all that belongs to his particular school, when they meet with it, his exalted piety, his fervent devotion, his pure morality, his earnest appeals to the conscience, cannot fail either to instruct or to impress. Seldom has any Christian man sat down to read a portion of Jeremy Taylor's devotional writings, without being able to close his book in a better frame of mind than that in which it was opened. And though what may be referred to as his ascetic tendencies are strongly apparent in his "Holy Living," and "Holy Dying," yet if any person clearly understands, and truly experiences, justification by faith, these two treatises, generally bound up together, can never be read without profit. Through the native corruption of our hearts, the doctrine of living by faith too often is connected with antinomian perversions; and even good writers on the subject sometimes express themselves with an inadvertency which, to unestablished minds, may be very injurious. Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying" will furnish a useful balance to such errors. If sometimes he seems to be too severe, yet the heart sometimes requires a severe counsellor; and, if err we must, it is safer to err on the side of strictness than of laxity. Perhaps his best work is his "Great Exemplar; or, Considerations on the History of our Saviour Jesus Christ." It is a collection of doctrinal and practical reflections suggested by the events, in their order, stated in the narrative of the Evangelists. It is full of beautiful language, as well as rich in valuable thought. But so are his "Sermons," too; and we are not sure, after all, whether we do not find ourselves, generally, thinking that the best portion of Taylor's works which we happen to have read last.

11.-HIS STYLE.

But to give a complete view of this, we should require every page in at least one monthly Number of our work; and we cannot help feeling how little justice we can do to this branch of our undertaking in the very limited space we can allot to its execution. Taylor has justly been called the Homer of Divines. His writings abound in figures often exquisitely beautiful; showing that though he had not the gift of composing poetry, as poetry includes a suitable body of verse, as well as an animating soul of feeling, yet he possessed (as is the case with many) a truly poetical mind. He had an eye for all that was beautiful, whether in material or spiritual nature; and often, by reference to the first, most happily illustrated the last.

Opening our book for the task of selection, -difficult through abundance, and only painful because, whatever we give, we shall have the feeling that there will be much left that we shall almost think is still better, we find before us that glorious sermon which he has entitled, "The Miracles of the Divine Mercy;" and in the pages on which we have thus casually opened, we see two passages that will confirm all that we have said, unless the taste of our readers be very different from what we believe it to be. We give them, not as the best we could find, but as the first we have met, and as being quite sufficient for our purpose.

"For so the light of the world in the morning of the creation was spread abroad like a curtain, and dwelt no where, but filled the expansum with a dissemination great as the unfoldings of the air's looser garments, or the wilder fringes of the fire, without knots, or order, or combination; but God gathered the beams in his hand, and united them into a globe of fire, and all the light of the world became the body of the sun; and he lent some to his weaker sister that walks in the night, and guides a traveller, and teaches him to distinguish a house from a river, or a rock from a plain field. So is the mercy of God; a vast expansum' and a huge ocean; from eternal ages it dwelt round about the throne of God, and it filled all that infinite distance and space that hath no measures but the will of God: until God, desiring to communicate that excellency and make it relative, created angels, that he might have persons capable of huge gifts; and man, who he knew would need them. And though angels were objects of God's bounty, yet man only is, in proper speaking, the object of his mercy: and the mercy which dwelt in an infinite circle, was confined to a little ring, and dwelt here below; and here shall dwell below, till it hath carried all God's portion up to heaven, where it shall reign in glory upon our crowned heads for ever and ever!"

"And thus it was that God punished us, and visited the sin of Adam upon his posterity. He threatened we should die, and so we did, but not so as we had deserved: we waited for death and stood sentenced, and are daily summoned by sicknesses and uneasinesses; and every day is a new reprieve, and brings a new favour, certain as the revolution of the sun upon that day; and at last when we must die by the irreversible decree, that death is changed into a sleep, and that sleep is in the bosom of Christ, and there dwells all peace and security, and it shall pass forth into glories and felicities. We looked for a Judge, and behold, a Saviour! we feared an Accuser, and behold, an Advocate! we sat down in sorrow, and rise in joy; we leaned upon rhubarb and aloes, and our aprons were made of the sharp leaves of the Indian fig-trees, and so we fed, and so were clothed; but the rhubarb proved medicinal, and the rough leaf of the tree brought its fruit wrapped up in its foldings: and round about our dwelling was planted a hedge of thorns, and bundles of thistles, the aconite and the briony, the nightshade and the poppy; and at the root of these grew the healing plantain, which, rising up into a tallness by the friendly invitation of a heavenly influence, turned about the tree of the cross, and cured the wounds of the thorns, and the curse of the thistles, and the malediction of man, and the wrath of God."

And though the beautiful and tender might be most congenial to his disposition, yet that he could expatiate on the terrible with distinguishing accuracy and mighty force, the following extract from the sermon on "Christ's Advent to Judgment" will show. The latter sentences of it are awfully sublime. Homer has no imagery to be compared to them. The sources, indeed, whence Taylor drew were inaccessible to the blind bard of antiquity; but only a Taylor could have clothed his thoughts in words so echoing the sense, and with imagery so admirably suited to his subject.

Speaking of the universality of the judgment, and arguing that its terrors are not lessened by being shared by so many, he compares it to the "deluge of waters upon the old world," in which, he says, "every man saw his neighbour perish, and the neighbours of his dwelling, and the relatives of his house,