Brook (' Lives of the Puritans ' ||) testily criticises the entry. The conclusion was false, for the ' violence ' of the good AngeU was the ' fine frenzy ' of a man in awful earnest, in a fashion which Laud could not so much as apprehend. Still he is entitled to the full advantage of it, and to have it placed beside the kindred touch-
* Poems : Posthumous and Collected, vol. i. p. 109.
t ' Advanced.' The most has been made of this in the following acute and, in certain respects, valuable pamjihlet : — ' A Letter to the Kev. J. C. Ryle, A.B., in Reply to his Lecture on " Baxter and his Times." By a Clergyman of the Diocese of Exeter. Exeter, 1853. 8vo.'
X Diary, Nov. 14. 1626. § Ap. for 1634, pp, 325-6. |I Brook, iii. 236.
IXXX MEMOIR OF RICHARD SIBBES, D.D.
ing notices of his dying servants, his love for whom is remarkable.* But with every abatement, unless we are to blur the noblest names of the Christianity of England ; to write ' false ' against its truest, and refuse honour to men who, rather than fail in fealty to what they believed was written in the word of God, hazarded all that was dear to them ; unless we are to overtop the loftiest intellects by one of the lowest, and sanctified genius and learning by one who was no scholar, and even could not write tolerable English, we must denounce every attempt to exalt and extol the morbid craving for an impossible 'uniformity' of this hard, cruel, unlovingly zealous, and unlovable man, around whom there hangs but a single gentle memory of tenderness to frailty or mercy to penitence ; from whose pen there never once flowed one true word for Christ or the salva- tion of souls ; from whom, in his darkened end, there came not so much as that remorseful touch that wins our sympathy for a Stephen Gardiner, ' Erravi cum Petro at non fievi cum Petro.'-f Claver- house, the * bloody,' and the first Charles, the ' false,' have been idealised. We look upon their pensive faces, and feel how traitorous they must have been to their better nature. But Laud it is not pos- sible to idealise. The more, successive biographers have elucidated his history ; they have only the more made him a definite object of contempt. He Vv^as elevated above men who, by head and shoulders (and we know what the head includes), were taller than himself. I The stilts fell from beneath him, and he found his level, as ' im- becile ' (it is Lord Macaulay's word), as contemptible, as worthless a man as ever rose to power — a mitred Robespierre. A certain party are voluble in pronouncing their judgments upon the victims of Laud. It were to play false to truth to let them go unanswered ; and the present is undoubtedly an occasion demanding such answer and out-speaking. But —
' I say not that the man I praise
By that poor tribute stands more high, I say not that the man I blame Be not of purer worth than I ;
* Land's servants. I give one entry in Diary: — 'Sept. 23. 1621. — Thy. Mr Adam Torless, my ancient, loving, and faithful servant, tlien my steward, after he had served me full forty two years, died, to my great loss and grief.'
t Gardiner. Fuss's Judges of England, v. 370.
X A few wise words from ' Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowds' may enforce our remarks — ' Perhaps it is the secret thought of many that an ardent love of power and wealth, however culpable in itself, is nevertheless a proof of superior sagacity. But in answer to lliis it has been well remarked, that even a child can clench its little hand the moment it is born ; and if tliey imagine that the successful, at any rate, must bo sagacious, let tliem remember the saying of a phi]oso])ber, that the meanest reptiles are found at the summit of the loftiest pillars.' (Pp. 20-1.)
MEMOIR OF RICHARD SIBBES, D.D. Ixxxi
But when I move reluctant lips
For holy justice, human right, The sacred cause I strive to jilead
Lends me its favour and its might.'*
CHAPTER IX.
SIBBES'S 'introductions' TO WORKS OF CONTEMPORARIES.
Whitaker — Duke of York —Paul Bayne — Henry Scudder — Ezekiel Culverwell — Dr John Preston — John Smith — John Ball — Richard Capel.
But I turn the leaf, and pass on in our ' Memoir.' And it is a. pleasant change to turn from a Laud, chaffering over the breadth of a phylactery ; from a Mountagu, overwhelming holy men, such as Samuel Ward, with the ribaldry of a ' Gagg for the new gospel ! — no, a new gagg for an old goose ! ' from a Wren, tracking every ' two or three ' who sought to meet together in the name of the Lord, to Richard Sibbes at his post, discharging his duties as a minister of Christ through ' good and evil report,' and sus- taining the kindliest relationship with all the 'good men and true' of his contemporaries. There are pleasant memorials of the latter in various occasional productions, such as 'prefaces' and 'epistles dedicatory,' which Sibbes from time to time prefixed to good books of good men. These I would now bring together. They give us some very precious glimpses of his society, from a pretty early date to near the close. They are, indeed, so many little ' essays' on reli- gious subjects, written in his very best style, and breathing all the sweetness, and informed with all the spirituality, of hislargerwritings. Where can we turn to more felicitous words about ' faith,' and 'prayer,' and ' holiness,' and the 'Christian life' ? while there is a modesty of praise of the author introduced, whether living or dead, in striking contrast with the adulation then prevalent. First of all, I find among the ' Epicedia in Obitum Gul : Whitakeri,'t a copy of Greek verses to the memory of that truly great man, whose mother was Elizabeth Nowell, sister of Dr Alexander Nowell, and who, if he had found such a biographer as Nowell has in Archdeacon Churton, would be better known to the present generation. As a Master of Sibbes's own College of St John's, and as having married a sister first of Samuel and Ezekiel Culverwell, and next the widow of Dudley Fenner, and in every-day association with the Culverwells