painful to children; both of them composed hymns and psalms proportioned to the capacity of common congregations; both, nearly at the same time, set the glorious example of publicly recommending and supporting general toleration, and the liberty both of the pulpit and the press.

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To these antitheses and coincidences others may be added. The prelate, in his younger days, approached Roman Catholicity in religion with as much sincerity and ability as Bossuet, in the same age, approached Protestantism in his "Exposition of the Roman Catholic Faith," both with the view of reconciling differences, and restoring the purity of the Christian Church. Milton, on the contrary, who wore "his heart upon "his sleeve," could so little disguise his hatred of Popery, during his travels through Italy, that it hindered him from receiving the full share of honours that his congenial soul inspired in that land of fine art and poetry. Nay, when his politic friend, Sir Henry Wotton, who, to use his own words, was "a man sent "abroad to lie for the good of his country," could not dissuade him from avowing his principles of reform among a people with whom Atheism was more pardonable than Protestant heresy.

TAYLOR, however, detested Popery as cordially as Milton, who has been charged with being a Papist in

* The Bishop's work is entitled "THEOLOGIA ECLECTICA, a Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying," that is preaching, in which he shows the folly of persecuting other men's faith, and the iniquity of persecuting different opinions.

disguise, a Pyrrhonist, a Calvinist, a Socinian, a Deist, an Atheist; but Milton knew that calling names did but a temporary injury; for, according to their notions, he says, in his recently-recovered treatise ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, " to have branded any one at random with this opprobrious mark" (heresy, which, in another work he calls "a Greek apparition," and railing in an unknown tongue), "is to have refuted him, without any trouble, by a single word.”

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OF MILTON'S antipapistical feelings, take but one instance out of the many. In his treatise on true Religion (Prose works vol. iv. p. 226), he says, "the Papal antichristian Church permits not her laity to read the Bible in their own tongue; our Church, on the contrary, hath proposed it to all men. Neither let the countryman, the tradesman, the lawyer, the physician, the statesman excuse himself, by his much business, from the studious reading thereof." Although, from Bishop's Taylor's tendencies to HighChurch and Monarchical principles, and his desire to promote the unity of the Christian Church, we must not expect to find in any of his writings, violent language towards the Roman Catholic Church, yet we can readily perceive an evident repugnance to many of its forms and doctrines. Speaking, in his Life of Christ, of the danger of riches to the Church, he thus admonishes his brethren of the Church of Rome," if it be dangerous in any man to be rich, which discomposes his steps, in his journey to Eternity; it is not so proportionate to Christ's poverty and the inheritance of the

Church to be sedulous in acquiring great temporalities, and putting Princes in jeopardy, and States into care for securities, lest all the temporal should run into ecclesiastical possessions." In the chapter on the Last Supper, he calls it emphatically the Sacrament, not one of the Sacraments, and says, "some so observe the literal sense of the words, that they understand them also in a natural; some so alter them by metaphors and preternatural significations, that they will not understand them in a proper sense." And adds, "we see it, we feel it, we taste it, and we smell it to be bread; and by Philosophy we are led into a belief of that substance, whose accidents these are, as we are to believe that to be fire, which burns and flames and shines." This is neither calling hard names, nor merely repudiating a doctrine; it is better, for by argument founded on reason, he disproves it. In another place he tells them, that this question "hath divided the Church, almost as much as the Sacrament hath united it, and which can only serve the purposes of the Schools, and of evil men, to make questions for that, and factions for these." And still more emphatically, he says, "they that are forward to believe the change of substance, can intend no more, but that it be believed verily to be the body of our Lord. And if they think it impossible to reconcile its being bread, with the verity of being Christ's body, let them remember, that themselves are put to more difficulties, and to admit of more miracles, and to contradict more sciences, and to

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refuse the testimony of sense, in affirming the special manner of Transubstantiation."

ONE more coincidence between these distinguished men, may be mentioned. Both eminently pious, eminently charitable, unsurpassed in kindness and love to their fellow-men, have, in affairs of conscience and of eternal import, at times expressed themselves so strongly, that tolerant as both were known to be, both have been gravely charged with great intolerance. Like Shakspeare's Hamlet, to his erring mother, they spoke daggers but used none."

SUCH a passage occurs in Bishop Taylor's second sermon, on the Advent of Christ, when, "in thoughts that breathe and words that burn," he gives vent to a fervid denunciation of those who, vicious themselves, have become the active cause of vice and crime and misery in others. It is as follows:-" But when this Lion of the tribe of Judah shall appear, then Justice shall strike, and Mercy shall not hold her hands; she shall strike sore strokes, and Pity shall not break the blow. As there are treasures of good things, so hath GOD a treasure of wrath and fury, and scourges and scorpions; and then shall be produced the shame of lust, and the malice of envy, and the groans of the oppressed, and the persecutions of the saints, and the cares of covetousness, and the troubles of ambition, and the indolence of traitors, and the violence of rebels, and the rage of anger, and the uneasiness of impatience, and the restlessness of unlawful desires; and by this time the monsters and diseases will be numer

ous and intolerable, when God's heavy hand shall press the sanies, and the intolerableness, the obliquity and the unreasonableness, the amazement and the disorder, the smart and the sorrow, the guilt and the punishment, out from all our sins, and pour them into one chalice, and mingle them with an infinite wrath, and make the wicked drink of all the vengeance, and force it down their unwilling throats with the violence of devils and accursed spirits." The worst that can be said of this passage is, that it is a rhetorical flourish of pulpit oratory, painting in vivid colours the sufferings of evil-doers, to deter his hearers and his readers from crime.

SIMILAR ardent passages, implying the punishment of the guilty in proportion to their guilt, and to an extent beyond conception, occur in the prose works of Milton; yet, although he declared, what all unprejudiced minds believe," that in his whole life he never spake against a man even that his skin should be grazed," together with his acknowledged humanity and goodness of heart, exemplified, inter alia, by his repeatedly using his interest in favour of royalists, the case of Sir William Davenant, for instance; yet he was accused of meaning personally, Archbishop Laud, the Earl of Strafford, Bishop Hall, Archbishop Usher, and other supporters of monarchy. In like manner has Bishop Taylor been accused of personal attacks upon Hampden, Hazelrig, Hollis, Pym, Fairfax, Ireton, and Milton, although he named them not, and used his ardent eloquence against depravity, crime and