had published his treatise on the "Rise, Growth, and Danger of Socinianism," in which he had vehemently declared that the religion upheld by Laud was "not the true pure Protestant religion, but a hotchpotch of Arminianism, Socinianism, and Popery." Before he had time to correct the proof-sheets, he was summoned to preach before the House of Commons on the monthly fast, and sounded "Sion's memento and God's alarum" to the full satisfaction of his hearers. In 1646 he was sent to Oxford by parliament, with six other divines, with authority to preach in any pulpits of the University for six months, in order, as Neal quaintly words it, to "soften the spirits of the people." In 1647 he was made one of the visitors of the University, that he might reform by force the body which he failed to persuade. In 1648 he was appointed president of St. John's, a most strange successor of Laud,-and Margaret professor of divinity. If he could not retain these preferments, it was the fault, not of the Presbyterians, but of the Independents. He is a fine, and therefore an exaggerated, specimen of his class, orthodox among the orthodox, violent among the violent, earnest among the earnest. We cannot say that all Presbyterians were like him; but we may safely say that the Presbyterianism of that day was very much like him indeed.

Perhaps, as a mere representative of opinions, more objection can be taken to Chillingworth than to Cheynell. Chillingworth was no doubt hateful to the Presbyterians as a royalist as well as a divine. And his adherence to the king was no matter of pure theory. Whatever were his speculative objections to war, they were overruled by a practical disposition for fighting. His head, as Cheynell said, was full of engines as well as of scruples; he was not only a malignant clerk of Oxford, but also the queen's arch-engineer and grand intelligencer. Thus in his case political questions became inextricably mixed up with religious differences. When Cheynell wished to press him home in argument, he chose for discussion the thesis, Is tyranny God's ordinance? It was just possible for a quiet thinker, even in those troublous times, if favoured by fortune, insignificance, or a patron, and uniting the wisdom of the serpent to the harmlessness of the dove, to escape the notice of the diligent searchers after delinquency, malignity, and heresy. John Hales, who gained the title of "ever memorable" while toiling after something better than fame, is not quite a case in point; for he lost his fellowship at Eton in refusing to take the Engagement. But he had been allowed to retain it for a time without taking the covenant, and so far serves to show that the Presbyterians could make some approach to tolerance. But his history also proves that Laud,

with all his faults, could sometimes rise above mere tolerance, and could be actively and decidedly liberal.

Associated as John Hales was with Falkland and Chillingworth, he differed from them in one respect, which constitutes for the most part a bar to intimate friendship. He was a much older man. He was probably a student at Oxford when Chillingworth was born, and was appointed by the University to deliver the funeral oration of Sir Thomas Bodley when Falkland was only three years old. The two younger friends died within four months of each other, being respectively a little more than thirty and forty years old; but Hales lived on another twelve years, and passed the allotted age of three score years and ten. Falkland fell in battle; Chillingworth died from the consequences of a siege; Hales, stripped of his preferments, and not allowed to act as private tutor in a family, because to give him board and lodging would have amounted legally to harbouring a malignant, spent his last days in the house of an old servant, and was in an undesirable sense a helluo librorum, living on the proceeds of a partial sale of his library. His long life had not been without variety. He had been a fellow at Merton, like Cheynell, but many years before Cheynell's time. He had been Greek lecturer in his college, and Greek professor in the University. He had been the principal reliance of Sir Henry Savile in preparing for the press that fine edition of St. Chrysostom, which is unhappily too full of contractions for degenerate moderns to read. He had attended Sir Dudley Carleton, ambassador to the Hague, as his chaplain; had been present at the Synod of Dort, to which he went as a Calvinist, and at which, upon the well pressing of St. John_iii. 16 by Episcopius, he "bade John Calvin good night." But he was not of that false and untrustworthy temper of mind which flies immediately from one extreme to the other. A model convert, he was still among Calvinists as a Calvinist, and could use freely their technical phraseolgy, while he gave it a moderation which was his own. He knew when to speak and when to hold his tongue; indeed, if he erred at all in this respect, it was on the safer side of saying and writing too little. He published nothing except his oration at the funeral of Sir Thomas Bodley. When once he preached at St. Paul's Cross, he began by saying that he would not have been seen (he quite despaired of being heard) in that conspicuous pulpit, if he had had in his power the choice of his ways and the free management of his own actions; with no thirst after popular applause, he felt that a small, private, retired auditory better accorded with his will, and he believed that it better accorded with his abilities. He even declined to undertake the cure of souls, so entirely

did he devote himself to study. But his thoughts and his reading had no narrow or unworthy object. Once he was obliged, to some extent, to discuss his own conduct and principles; and then he wrote as follows: "The pursuit of truth hath been my only care ever since I first understood the meaning of the word. For this I have forsaken all hopes, all friends, all desires, which might bias me, and hinder me from driving right at what I aimed. For this, I have spent my money, my means, my youth, my age, and all I have, that I might remove from myself that censure of Tertullian,-suo vitio quis quid ignorat? If with all this cost and pains my purchase is but error; I may safely say, to err hath cost me more than it has many to find the truth; and truth itself shall give me this testimony at last, that if I have missed of her, it is not my fault, but my misfortune."

The pursuit of truth, even in matters of religion, is sometimes conducted in a hard unsympathetic spirit, with little apparent love of God or man. But this was not the case with John Hales in seeking truth, he found peace, the sister of truth. His soul, he said, in the opening words of his last will and testament, which was written in his closing days of poverty and trial, had long been bequeathed to the mercies of God in Christ, his only Saviour. Towards man he was alike tolerant in opinion and kind in practice. He would often say that he would renounce the religion of the Church of England to-morrow if it obliged him to believe that any other Christian should be damned, and that nobody would conclude another man to be damned who did not wish him so. His behaviour was full of the same overflowing charity; he was remarkable for his liberality to the poor, and for his general kindness and courtesy. Aubrey, who called on him at Eton after his sequestration, and found him living at an inn when ejected from the college, was received by him with much humanity. He describes him, at the time of the interview, which was within a year of his death, as a pretty little man, sanguine, of a cheerful countenance, very gentle and courteous, dressed in a kind of violet-coloured cloth gown with buttons and loops, and reading Thomas à Kempis. He was apparently a proficient in the philosophy of "tips," to an extent which would have delighted Mr. Thackeray; for we hear incidentally of his giving, in his poorer days, ten shillings to three Oxford students who called upon him when on a "frolic on foot" from that University to London. A year after his death, Pearson, who was in time to be Bishop of Chester, and a great authority in dogmatic theology, wrote an introductory notice to his Golden Remains, in which he could scarcely abstain from the language of unmixed panegyric. Hales, he informs his readers, was not only most truly and most strictly

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just in his secular transactions, most exemplarily meek and humble notwithstanding his perfections, but beyond all example charitable, giving to all, preserving nothing but his books to continue his learning and himself; of a nature so kind, so sweet, so courting all mankind; of an affability so prompt, so ready to receive all conditions of man, that it was nearly as easy a task for any one to be so knowing, as so obliging. One spot, indeed, in an almost faultless character, the shrewd and discerning Pearson-who contrived, with better worldly success than Hales, to be successively chaplain to the drunken Goring during the civil war, incumbent of a City church in the time of the Commonwealth, and rector, prebendary, archdeacon, master of Trinity, and bishop after the Restoration-thinks that he discerns, though he scarcely ventures to indicate it. "He took, indeed," observes Pearson, "a liberty of judging, not of others, but for himself; and if ever any man might be allowed in all matters to judge, it was he who had so long, so much, so advantageously considered, and, what is more, never could be said to have the least worldly design in his determinations."

A man like this, so learned, so wise, and so peaceable, was not likely to set up for a great discoverer of truth, and to trouble the world with his crotchets. His friends, indeed, complained of that genial and indulgent silence which had no touch of reserve; and we knew from Clarendon that he often said, with regard to certain points on which his sentiments differed from those which were generally received, that his opinions, he was sure, did him no harm; but he was far from being confident that they might not do others harm who entertained them. He himself, in one of his sermons, alludes pleasantly to a tale told by Julius Agricola, who, writing de animantibus subterraneis, reports of a certain kind of spirits that converse in minerals, and much infect those that work in them. Their manner when they come is, to seem to busy themselves according to all the custom of workmen: they will dig, and cleanse, and melt, and sever metals; yet, when they are gone, the workmen do not find that there is any thing done. So, observes Hales, fares it with a great part of the multitude who thrust themselves into the controversies of the times: they write books, move questions, frame distinctions, give solutions, and seem sedulously to do whatsoever the nature of the business requires; yet, if any skilful workman in the Lord's mines shall come and examine their work, he shall find them to be but spirits in minerals; and that with all this labour and stir there is nothing done. Devoted as he was to avoiding the fault which he censured, and to working out quietly his own fine vein of pure gold,

he was once, and once only, at all entangled in controversy. There is matter suggestive of reflection, both in the occasion and in its issue.

Hales had, apparently for the use of Chillingworth, written a small tract on schism, contained in less than two sheets of paper. It was passed from hand to hand, till, to the surprise and annoyance of its writer, it reached the Archbishop of Canterbury. Its opening words could scarcely have been pleasing to Laud. "Heresy and schism, as they are commonly used, are two theological scare-crows, with which they who use to uphold a party in religion, use to fright away such as, making inquiry into it, are ready to relinquish and oppose it, if it appear either erroneous or suspicious." As Laud read on, he must have found matter as little to his mind. Hales had been accustomed, in common discourse, to say that it was only pride and passion which kept the Christian world from agreeing upon such a liturgy as might bring the world into one communion; all doctrinal points upon which men differed in their opinions being to have no place in any liturgy. He wrote to the same effect in this little tract. "Why may I not go," he asked, "if occasion require, to an Arian church, so there be no Arianism expressed in their liturgy? And were liturgies and public forms of service so framed, as that they admitted not of particular and private fancies, but contained only such things as in which all Christians do agree, schisms on opinion were utterly vanished. For consider of all the liturgies that are, and ever have been, and remove from them whatever is scandalous to any party, and leave nothing but what all agree on, and the evil shall be, that the public service and honour of God shall in no wise suffer. Whereas, to load our public forms with the private fancies upon which we differ, is the most sovereign way to perpetuate schism unto the world's end. Prayer, confession, thanksgiving, reading of Scriptures, administration of sacraments in the plainest and the simplest manner, were matter enough to furnish out a sufficient liturgy, though nothing either of private opinion or of church pomp, of garments or prescribed gestures, of imagery, of music, of matter concerning the dead, of many superfluities which creep into the Church, under the name of Order and Decency, did interpose itself."

The clear and distinct assertion that, in cases of separation among Christians, those who would impose burdens on others and enforce an unnecessary conformity are really responsible for the schism; the evident longing for a simple, scriptural, and comprehensive liturgy, encumbered with a minimum of ceremonies; the strong censures on episcopal ambition, as the great cause of frequent, continuous, and bloody schisms; and all this