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of Canterbury, who would needs have him preach before him; which he performed not less to his wonder than satisfaction. His discourse was beyond exception and beyond imitation: yet the wise prelate thought him too young; but the great youth humbly begged his grace to pardon that fault, and promised, if he lived, he would mend it. However, the grand patron of learning and ingenuity thought it for the advantage of the world, that such mighty parts should be afforded better opportunities of study and improvement, than a course of constant preaching would allow of; and to that purpose he placed him in his own college of All Souls in Oxford; where love and admiration still waited upon him: which, so long as there is any spark of ingenuity in the breasts of men, must needs be the inseparable attendants of so extraordinary a worth and sweetness. He had not been long here, before my lord of Canterbury bestowed upon him the rectory of Uphingham in Rutlandshire, and soon after preferred him to be chaplain to king Charles the Martyr, of blessed and immortal memory.

"This great man had no sooner launched into the world, but a fearful tempest arose, and a barbarous and unnatural war disturbed a long and uninterrupted peace and tranquillity, and brought all things into disorder and confusion; but his religion taught him to be loyal, and engaged him on his prince's side, whose cause and quarrel he always owned and maintained with a great courage and constancy; till at last, he and his little fortune were shipwreck'd in that great hurricane that overturned both church and state. This fatal storm cast him ashore in a private corner of the world, and a tender providence shrouded him under her wings, and the prophet was fed in the wilderness; and his great worthiness procured him friends, that supplied him with bread and necessaries. In this solitude he began to write those excellent discourses, which are enough of themselves to furnish a library, and will be famous to all succeeding generations for their greatness of wit, and profoundness of judgment, and richness of fancy, and clearness of expression, and copiousness of invention, and general usefulness to all the purposes of a Christian: and by these he soon got a great reputation among all persons of judgment and indifferency, and his name will grow greater still, as the world grows better and wiser.

"When he had spent some years in this retirement, it pleased God to visit his family with sickness, and to take to himself the dear pledges of his favour, three sons of great hopes and expectations, within the space of two or three months: and though he had learned a quiet submission unto the divine will, yet the affliction touched him so sensibly, that it made him desirous to leave the country; and going to London, he there met my lord Conway, a person of great honour and generosity; who making him a kind proffer, the good man embraced it, and that brought him over into Ireland, and settled him at Portmore, a place made for study and contemplation, which he therefore dearly loved; and here he wrote his Cases of Conscience, a book that is able alone to give its author immortality.

"By this time the wheel of providence brought about the king's happy restoration, and there began a new world, and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, and out of a confused chaos brought forth beauty and order, and all the three nations were inspired with a new life, and became drunk with an excess of joy! Among the rest, this loyal subject went over to congratulate the prince and people's happiness, and bear a part in the universal triumph.

"It was not long ere his sacred majesty began the settlement of the church, and the great doctor Jeremy Taylor was resolved upon for the bishoprick of Down and Connor; and, not long after, Dromore was added to it: and it was but reasonable that the king and church should consider their champion, and reward the pains and sufferings he underwent in the defence of their cause and honour. With what care and faithfulness he discharged his office, we are all his witnesses; what good rules and directions he gave his clergy, and how he taught us the practice of them by his own example. Upon his coming over bishop, he was made a privy-counsellor; and the University of Dublin gave him their testimony, by recommending him for their vice-chancellor; which honourable office he kept to his dying day.

"Nature had befriended him much in his constitution, for he was a person of a most sweet and obliging humour, of great candour and ingenuity; and there was so much of salt and fineness of wit, and prettiness of address in his familiar discourses, as made his conversation have all

the pleasantness of a comedy, and all the usefulness of a sermon. His soul was made up of harmony; and he never spake but he charmed his hearer, not only with the clearness of his reason, but all his words, and his very tone and cadencies were strangely musical.

"But, that which did most of all captivate and enravish, was the gaiety and richness of his fancy: for he had much in him of that natural enthusiasm that inspires all great poets and orators; and there was a generous ferment in his blood and spirits, that set his fancy bravely to work, and made it swell, and teem, and become pregnant to such degrees of luxuriancy, as nothing but the greatness of his wit and judgment could have kept it within due bounds and measures.

"And indeed it was a rare mixture, and a single instance, hardly to be found in an age: for the great trier of wits has told us, that there is a peculiar and several complexion required for wit, and judgment, and fancy; and yet you might have found all these in this great personage, in their eminency and perfection. But that which made his wit and judgment so considerable, was the largeness and freedom of his spirit, for truth is plain and easy to a mind disentangled from superstition and prejudice; he was one of the ExλEKTIKOι, a sort of brave philosophers that Laërtius speaks of, that did not addict themselves to any particular sect, but ingeniously sought for Truth among all the wrangling schools; and they found her miserably torn and rent to pieces, and parcelled into rags, by the severa contending parties, and so disfigured and misshapen, that it was hard to know her; but they made a shift to gather up her scattered limbs, which, as soon as they came together, by a strange sympathy and connaturalness, presently united into a lovely and beautiful body. This was the spirit of this great man: he weighed men's reasons, and not their names, and was not scared with the ugly visors men usually put upon persons they hate, and opinions they dislike; not affrighted with the anathemas and execrations of an infallible chair, which he looked upon only as bugbears to terrify weak and childish minds. He considered that it is not likely any one party should wholly engross truth to themselves; that obedience is the only way to true knowledge; that God always, and only, teaches docible

and ingenuous minds, that are willing to hear, and ready to obey according to their light; that it is impossible a pure, humbled, resigned, godlike soul should be kept out of heaven, whatever mistakes it might be subject to in this state of mortality; that the design of heaven is not to fill men's heads, and feed their curiosities, but to better their hearts, and mend their lives. Such considerations as these made him impartial in his disquisitions, and gave a due allowance to the reasons of his adversary, and contend for truth, and not for victory.

"And now you will easily believe that an ordinary diligence would be able to make great improvements upon such a stock of parts and endowments. But to these advantages of nature, and excellency of his spirit, he added an indefatigable industry, and God gave a plentiful benediction; for there were very few kinds of learning but he was a great master in them. He was a

rare humanist, and hugely versed in all the polite parts of learning; and had thoroughly concocted all the ancient moralists, Greek and Roman, poets and orators; and was not unacquainted with the refined wits of the later ages, whether French or Italian.

"But he had not only the accomplishments of a gentleman, but so universal were his parts, that they were proportioned to everything; and though his spirit and humour were made up of smoothness and gentleness, yet he could bear with the harshness and roughness of the schools, and was not unseen in their subtleties and spinosities, and upon occasion could make them serve his purpose.

"His skill was great, both in the civil and canon law, and casuistical divinity; and he was a rare conductor of souls, and knew how to counsel and to advise; to solve difficulties, and determine cases, and quiet consciences. He understood what the several parties in Christendom have to say for themselves, and could plead their cause to better advantage than any advocate of their tribe; and when he had done, he could confute them too; and show, that better arguments than ever they could produce for themselves, would afford no sufficient ground for their fond opinions.

"It would be too great a task to pursue his accomplishments through the various kinds of literature: I shall

content myself to add only his great acquaintance with the fathers and ecclesiastical writers, and the doctors of the first and purest ages both of the Greek and Latin church; which he has made use of against the Romanists, to vindicate the church of England from the challenge of innovation, and prove her to be truly ancient, catholic, and apostolical.

"But religion and virtue is the crown of all other accomplishments; and it was the glory of this great man, to be thought a christian, and whatever you added to it, he looked upon as a term of diminution: and yet he was a zealous son of the church of England; but that was because he judged her (and with great reason) a church the most purely christian of any in the world. In his younger years he met with some assaults from popery; and the high pretensions of their religious orders were very accommodate to his devotional temper; but he was always so much master of himself, that he would never be governed by any thing but reason, and the evidence of truth, which engaged him in the study of those controversies; and to how good purpose, the world is by this time a sufficient witness.

"He was a person of great humility; and, notwithstanding his stupendous parts, and learning, and eminency of place, he had nothing in him of pride and humour, but was courteous and affable, and of easy access, and would lend a ready ear to the complaints, yea to the impertinencies, of the meanest persons. His humility was coupled with an extraordinary piety; and, I believe, he spent the greatest part of his time in heaven; his solemn hours of prayer took up a considerable portion of his life; and, we are not to doubt, but he had learned of St. Paul to pray continually; and that occasional ejaculations, and frequent aspirations and emigrations of his soul after God, made up the best part of his devotions. But he was not only a good man God-ward, but he was come to the top of St. Peter's gradation, and to all his other virtues added a large and diffusive charity; and whoever compares his plentiful incomes with the inconsiderable estate he left at his death, will be easily convinced that charity was steward for a great proportion of his revenue. But the hungry that he fed, and the naked that he clothed, and the distressed that he sup

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