self with warmth and spirit-the only instance in which his bland and benevolent disposition was betrayed into anything approaching to personal asperity. He went to London in 1657, and officiated in a private congregation of Episcopalians, till an offer was made him by the Earl of Conway to accompany him to Ireland, and act as lecturer in a church at Lisburn. Thither he accordingly repaired in 1658, fixing his residence at Portmore, on the banks of Lough Neagh, about eight miles from Lisburn. Two years appear to have been spent in this happy retirement, when, in 1660. Taylor made a visit to London, to publish his Ductor Dubitantium, or the Rule of Conscience in all her General Measures,' the most elaborate, but the least successful, of all his works. His journey, however, was made at an auspicious period. The Commonwealth was on the eve of dissolution in the weak hands of Richard Cromwell, and the hopes of the cavaliers were fanned by the artifice and ingenuity of Monk. Jeremy Taylor signed the declaration of the loyalists of London on the 24th of April; on the 29th of May, Charles II. entered London in triumphal procession, to ascend the throne; and in August following, our author was appointed bishop of Down and Connor. The Restoration exalted many a worthless parasite, and disappointed many a deserving loyalist; let us be thankful that it was the cause of the mitre descending on the head of at least one pure and pious churchman! Taylor was afterwards made chancellor of the university of Dublin, and a member of the Irish privy-council. The see of Dromore was also annexed to his other bishopric, on account of his virtue, wisdom, and industry.' These well-bestowed honours he enjoyed only about six years The duties of his episcopal function were discharged with zeal, mingled with charity, though he was denounced and persecuted by a body of fierce Presbyterians. The few sermons which we possess delivered by him in Ireland are truly apostolic, both in spirit and language. He died at Lisburn, of a fever, on the 13th of August 1667, in the fifty-fourth year of his age.

A finer pattern of a Christian divine never perhaps existed. His learning dignified the high station he at last attained; his gentleness and courtesy shed a grace over his whole conduct and demeanour; while his commanding genius and energy in the cause of truth and virtue, render him worthy of everlasting affection and veneration. We have alluded to the general character and style of Jeremy Taylor's works. A late eminent scholar, Dr. Parr, has eulogised his controversial writings: Fraught as they are,' he says, with guileless ardour, with peerless eloquence, and with the richest stores of knowledge-historical, cla-sical, scholastic, and theological- they may be considered as irrefragable proofs of his pure, affectionate, and dutiful attachment to the reformed church of England.' His uncontroversial writings, however, form the noblest monument to his memory. His peculiar tenets may be differently judged of by different sects. He was perhaps too prone to speculations in mat

ters of doctrine, and he was certainly no blinded devoted adherent of the church. His mind loved to expatiate on the higher things of time, death and eternity, which concern men of all parties, and to draw from the divine revelation its hopes, terrors, and injunctionsin his hands, irresistible as the flaming sword-as a means of purifying the human mind, and fitting it for a more exalted destiny. Theclogy is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge. In heaven, indeed, we shall first see, aud then love; but here on earth, we must first love, and love will open our eyes as well as our hearts; and we shall then see, and perceive and understand.'*

The Age of Reason and Discretion.

We must not think that the life of a man begins when he can feed himself or walk alone, when he can fight or beget his like, for so he is contemporary with a camel or a cow; but he is first a man when he comes to a certain steady use of reason, according to his proportion: aud when that is, all the world of men cannot tell precisely. Some are called at age at fourteen, some at one and twenty, some never; but all men late enough; for the life of a man comes upon him slowly and insensibly. But, as when the sun approaches towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns like those which decked the brows of Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because hima self had seen the face of God; and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly; so is a man's reason and his life. He first begins to perceive himself, to see or taste, making little reflections upon his actions of sense, and can discourse of flies and dogs, shells and play, horses and liberty: but when he is strong enough to enter into arts and little institutions, he is at first entertained with trifles and impertinent things, not because he needs them, but because his understanding is no bigger, and little images of things are laid before him, like a cock-boat to a whale, only to play withal: but, before a man comes to be wise, he is half dead with gouts and consumptions, with catarrhs and aches, with sore eyes and a worn-out body. So that, if we must not reckon the life of a man but by the accounts of his reason, he is long before his soul be dressed; and he is not to be called a man without a wise and an adorned soul, a soul at least furnished with what is necessary towards his well-being.

Aud now let us consider what that thing is which we call years of discretion. The young man is passed his tutors, and arrived at the bondage of a caitiff spiri; he has run from discipline, and is let loose to passion. The man by his time hath wit enough to choose his vice, to act his lust, to court his mistress, to talk confidently, and ignorantly, and perpetually; to despise his betters, to deny nothing to his appetite, to do things that, when he is indeed a man, he must for ever be ashamed of: for this is all the discretion that most men shew in the first stage of their manhood; they can discern good from evil; and they prove their skill by leaving all that is good, and wallowing in the evils of folly and an unbridled appetite. And by this time the young man hath contracted vicious habits, and is a beast in manners, and therefore it will not be fitting to reckon the beginning of his life; he is a fool in his understanding, and that is a sad death.

The Pomp of Death.

Take away but the pomps of death, the disguises, and solemn bugbears, and the actings by candlelight, and proper and fantastic ceremonies, the minstrels, and the noise-makers, the women and the weepers, the swoonings and the shriekings, the

* Via Intelligentiæ, a sermon preached by Jeremy Taylor to the university of Dublin.

nurses and the physicians, the dark room and the ministers, the kindred and the watches, and then to die is easy, ready, and quitted from its troublesome circumstances. It is the same harmless thing that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday, or a maid-servant to-day; and at the same time in which you die, in that very night a thousand creatures die with you, some wise men and many fools; and the wisdom of the first will not quit him, and the folly of the latter does not make him unable to die.

Marriage.

They that enter into the state of marriage cast a die of the greatest contingency, and yet of the greatest interest in the world, next to the last throw for eternity. Life or death, felicity or a lasting sorrow, are in the power of marriage. A woman, indeed, ventures most, for she hath no sanctuary to retire to from an evil husband; she must dwell upon her sorrow, and hatch the eggs which her own folly or infel icity hath produced; and she is more under it, because her tormentor hath a warrant of prerogative, and the woman may complain to God, as subjects do of tyrant princes; but otherwise she hath no appeal in the causes of unkinduess. And though the man can run from many hours of his sadness, yet he must return to it again; and when he sits among his neighbours, he remembers the objection that lies in his bosom, and he sighs deeply. The boys and the pealers, and the fruiterers, shall tell of this man when he is carried to his grave, that he lived and died a poor wretched person.

The stags in the Greek epigram, whose knees were clogged with frozen snow upon the mountains, came down to the brooks of the valleys, hoping to thaw their joints with the waters of the stream; but there the frost overtook them, and bound them fast in ice, till the young herdsmen took them in their stranger snare. It is the unhappy chance of many men, finding many inconveniences upon the mountains of single life, they descend into the valleys of marriage to refresh their troubles; and there they enter into fetters, and are bound to sorrow by the chords of a man's or woman's peevishness.

Man and wife are equally concerned to avoid all offences of each other in the beginning of their conversation; every little thing can blast an infant blossom; aud the breath of the south can shake the little rings of the vine, when first they begin to curl like the locks of a new weaned boy: but when by age and consolidatiou they stiffen into the hardness of a stem, and have, by the warm embraces of the sun and the kisses of heaven, brought forth their clusters, they can endure the storms of the north, and the loud noises of a tempest, and yet never be broken: so are the early unions of an unfixed marriage; watchful and observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind word. After the hearts of the man and the wife are endeared and hardened by a mutual confidence and experience, longer than artifice and pretence can last, there are a great many remembrances, and some things present, that dash all little unkindnesses in pieces..

There is nothing can please a man without love; and if a man be weary of the wise discourses of the apostles, and of the innocency of an even and a private fortune, or hates peace, or a fruitful year, he hath reaped thorns and thistles from the choicest flowers of Paradise; for nothing can sweeten felicity itself but love; but when a man dwells in love, then the breasts of his wife are pleasant as the droppings upon the Hill of Hermon; her eyes are fair as the light of heaven; she is a fountain sealed, and he can quench his thirst, and ease his cares, and lay his sorrows down upon her lap, and can retire home to his sanctuary and refectory, and his gardens of sweetness and chaste refreshments. No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society. It is fit that I should infuse a bunch of myrrh into the festival goblet, and, after the Egyptian manner, serve up a dead man's bones at a feast; I will only shew it, and take it away again; it will make the wine bitter, but wholesome. But those married pairs that live as remembering that they must part again, and give an account how they treat themselves and each other, shall, at that day of their death, be admitted to glorious esponsals; and when they shall live again, be married to their Lord, and partake of his glories, with Abraham and Joseph, St. Peter and St. Paul, and all the

married saints. All those things that now please us shall pass from us, or we from them; but those things that concern the other life are permanent as the numbers of eternity. And although at the resurrection there shall be no relation of husband and wife, and no marriage shall be celebrated but the marriage of the Lamb, yet then shall be remembered how men and women passed through this state, which is a type of that; and from this sacramental union all holy pairs shall pass to the spiritual and eternal, where love shall be their portion, and joys shall crown their heads, and they shall lie in the bosom of Jesus, and in the heart of God, to eternal ages.

The Progress of Sin

I have seen the little purls of a spring sweat through the bottom of a bank, and intenerate the stubborn pavement, till it hath made it fit for the impression of a child's foot; and it was despised, like the descending pearls of a misty morning, till it had opened its way and made a stream large enough to carry away the ruins of the undermined strand, and to invade the neighbouring gardens: but then the despised drops were grown into an artificial river, and an intolerable mischief. So are the first entrances of sin, stopped with the antidotes of a hearty prayer, and checked into sobriety by the eye of a reverend man, or the counsels of a single sermon: but when such beginnings are neglected, and our religion hath not in it so much philosophy as to think anything evil as long as we can endure it, they grow up to ulcers and pestilential evils; they destroy the soul by their abode, who at their first entry might have been killed with the pressure of a little finger.

He that hath passed many stages of a good life, to prevent his being tempted to a single sin, must be very careful that he never entertain his spirit with the remembrances of his past sin, nor amuse it with the fantastic apprehensions of the present. When the Israelites fancied the sapidness and relish of the flesh-pots, they longed to taste and to return.

So when a Libyan tiger, drawn from his wilder foragings, is shut up and taught to eat civil meat, and suffer the authority of a man, he sits down tamely in his prison, and pays to his keeper fear and reverence for his meat; but if he chance to come again and taste a draught of warm blood, he presently leaps into his natural cruelty. He scarce abstains from eating those hands that brought him discipline and food.

The Pannonian bears, when they have clasped a dart in the region of their liver, wheel themselves upon the wound, and with anger and malicious revenge strike the deadly barb deeper, and cannot be quit from that fatal steel, but, in flying, bear along that which theinselves make the instrument of a more hasty death: so is every vicious person struck with a deadly wound, and his own hands force it into the entertainments of the heart; and because it is painful to draw it forth by a sharp and salutary repentance, he still rolls and turns upon his wound, and carries his death in his bowels, where it first entered by choice, and then dwelt by love, and at last shall finish the tragedy by divine judgments and an unalterable decree.

Sinful Pleasure.

-Look upon pleasures not upon that side which is next the sun, or where they look beauteously, that is, as they come towards you to be enjoyed; for then they paint and smile. and dress themselves up in tinsel and glass gems and counterfeit imagery; but when thou hast rifled and discomposed them with enjoying their false beauties, and that they begin to go off, then behold them in their nakedness and weariness. See what a sigh and sorrow, what naked unhandsome proportions and a filthy carcase they discover; and the next time they counterfeit, remember what you have already discovered, and be no more abused.

The Skylark.

For so I have seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion inade irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing of his wings; till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over; and

then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the air, about his ministries here below.

Useful Studies.

Spend not your time in that which profits not; for your labour and your health, your time and your studies, are very valuable; and it is a thousand pities to see a diligent and hopeful person spend himself in gathering cockle-shells and little pebbles, in telling sands upon the shores, and making garlands of useless daisies." Study that which is profitable, that which will make you useful to churches and commonwealths, that which will make you desirable and wise. Only I shall add this to you, that in learning there are variety of things as well as in religion: there is mint and cummin, and there are the weighty things of the law; so there are studies more and less useful, and everything that is useful will be required in its time and I may in this also use the words of our blessed Saviour, These things ought you to look after, and not to leave the other unregarded.' But your great care is to be in the things of God and of religion, in holiness and true wisdom, remembering the saying of Origen, That the knowledge that arises from goodness is something that is more certain and more divine than all demonstration,' than all other learnings of the world.

Comforting the Afflicted

Certain it is, that as nothing can better do it, so there is nothing greater, for which God made our tongues, next to reciting his praises, than to minister comfort to a weary soul. And what greater measure can we have, than that we should bring joy to our brother, who with his dreary eyes looks to heaven and round about, and cannot find so much rest as to lay his eyelids close together-than that thy tongue should be tuned with heavenly accents, and make the weary soul to listen for light and ease; and when he perceives that there is such a thing in the world, and in the order of things, as comfort and joy, to begin to break out from the prison of his sorrows as the door of sighs and tears, and by little and little melt into showers and refreshment. This is glory to thy voice, and employment fit for the brightest angel. But so have I seen the sun kiss the frozen earth, which was bound up with the images of death, and the colder breath of the north; and then the waters break from their inclosures, and melt with joy, and run in useful channels; and the flies do rise again from their little graves in walls, and dance a while in the air. to tell that there is joy within, and that the great mother of creatures will open the stock of her new refreshment, become useful to mankind, and sing praises to her Redeemer. So is the heart of a sorrowful man under the discourses of a wise comforter; he breaks from the despairs of the grave, and the fetters and chains of sorrow; he blesses God, and he blesses thee, and he feels his life returning; for to be miserable is death, but nothing is life but to be comforted; and God is pleased with no music from below so much as in the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows, of supported orphans, of rejoicing, and comforted. and thankful persons.

* Sir Isaac Newton, a little before he died, said: 'I don't know what I may seem to the world, but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of Truth lay all undiscovered before me.'-Spence's

Anecuotes.

Who reads

Incessantly, and to his reading brings not

A spirit and judgment equal or superior

(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?),

Uncertain and unsettled still remains:

Deep versed in books. and shallow in himself,

Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys

And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge,

As children gathering pebbles on the shore.

Paradise Regained, Book iv.