Volume Iii Part 29 (1/2)

'Ea omnia super Christo Pilatus, et ipse jam pro sua conscientia Christia.n.u.s, Caesari tum Tiberio nuntiavit.'

Apologet, ii. 624. See the account in Eusebius. Hist. Eccl. ii. 2.--Ed.]

[Footnote 3: See 'M. T. Ciceronis de Republica quae supersunt. Zell.

Stuttgardt'. 1827.--Ed.]

[Footnote 4: See 'supra'.--Ed].

[Footnote 5: Folio. 1693.--Ed.]

[Footnote 6: See The Church and State.--Ed.]

NOTES ON JEREMY TAYLOR.

I have not seen the late Bishop Heber's edition of Jeremy Taylor's 'Works'; but I have been informed that he did little more than contribute the 'Life', and that in all else it is a mere London booksellers' job. This, if true, is greatly to be regretted. I know no writer whose works more require, I need not say deserve, the annotations, aye, and occasional animadversions, of a sound and learned divine. One thing is especially desirable in reference to that most important, because (with the exception perhaps of the 'Holy Living and Dying') the most popular, of Taylor's works, 'The Liberty of Prophesying'; and this is a careful collation of the different editions, particularly of the first printed before the Restoration, and the last published in Taylor's lifetime, and after his promotion to the episcopal bench. Indeed, I regard this as so nearly concerning Taylor's character as a man, that if I find that it has not been done in Heber's edition, and if I find a first edition in the British Museum, or Sion College, or Dr. Williams's library, I will, G.o.d permitting, do it myself. There seems something cruel in giving the name, Anabaptist, to the English Anti-paedo-baptists; but still worse in connecting this most innocent opinion with the mad Jacobin ravings of the poor wretches who were called Anabaptists, in Munster, as if the latter had ever formed part of the Baptists' creeds. In short 'The Liberty of Prophesying' is an admirable work, in many respects, and calculated to produce a much greater effect on the many than Milton's treatise on the same subject: on the other hand, Milton's is throughout unmixed truth; and the man who in reading the two does not feel the contrast between the single-mindedness of the one, and the 'strabismus' in the other, is--in the road of preferment.

GENERAL DEDICATION OF THE POLEMICAL DISCOURSES. [1]

Vol. vii. p. ix.

And the breath of the people is like the voice of an exterminating angel, not so killing but so secret.

That is, in such wise. It would be well to note, after what time 'as'

became the requisite correlative to 'so,' and even, as in this instance, the preferable subst.i.tute. We should have written 'as' in both places probably, but at all events in the latter, transplacing the sentences 'as secret though not so killing;' or 'not so killing, but quite as secret.' It is not generally true that Taylor's punctuation is arbitrary, or his periods reducible to the post-Revolutionary standard of length by turning some of his colons or semi-colons into full stops.

There is a subtle yet just and systematic logic followed in his pointing, as often as it is permitted by the higher principle, because the proper and primary purpose, of our stops, and to which alone from their paucity they are adequate,--that I mean of enabling the reader to prepare and manage the proportions of his voice and breath. But for the true scheme of punctuation, [Greek: h_os emoige dokei], see the blank page over leaf which I will try to disblank into a prize of more worth than can be got at the E.O.'s and little goes of Lindley Murray. [2]

Ib. p. xv.

But the most complained that, in my ways to persuade a toleration, I helped some men too far, and that I armed the Anabaptists with swords instead of s.h.i.+elds, with a power to offend us, besides the proper defensitives of their own ... But wise men understand the thing and are satisfied. But because all men are not of equal strength; I did not only in a discourse on purpose demonstrate the true doctrine in that question, but I have now in this edition of that book answered all their pretensions, &c.

No; in the might of his genius he called up a spirit which he has in vain endeavored to lay, or exorcise from the conviction.

Ib. p. xvii.

For episcopacy relies not upon the authority of Fathers and Councils, but upon Scripture, upon the inst.i.tution of Christ, or the inst.i.tution of the Apostles, upon a universal tradition, and a universal practice, not upon the words and opinions of the doctors: it hath as great a testimony as Scripture itself hath, &c.

We must make allowance for the intoxication of recent triumph and final victory over a triumphing and victorious enemy; or who but would start back at the aweless temerity of this a.s.sertion? Not to mention the evasion; for who ever denied the historical fact, or the Scriptural occurrence of the word expressing the fact, namely, 'episcopi, episcopatus?'? What was questioned by the opponents was,

1;--Who and what these 'episcopi' were; whether essentially different from the presbyter, or a presbyter by kind in his own 'ecclesia', and a president or chairman by accident in a synod of presbyters: