George Herbert, the fifth of Richard Herbert's seven sons, was born at Montgomery Castle on the 3rd of April, 1593, and was in his fourth year when his father died. He was educated at home by his mother for the next eight years, and then sent to Westminster School. In his fifteenth year, being a king's scholar, he was sent on to Trinity College, Cambridge, and, young as he was, he had already entered into controversy on church questions of the day. When, after the accession of James to the English throne, the Millenary Petition represented the desire of many of the clergy for further reformation in the Church, the Universities signified their displeasure. Cambridge passed a grace that whosoever opposed by word or writing or any other way the doctrine or discipline of the Church of England, or any part of it, should be suspended, ipso facto, from any degree already taken, and be disabled from taking any degree for the future. Oxford published a formal answer to the petition and condemnation of the petitioners. Andrew Melville, Rector of St. Andrews, a leading minister of the Scottish Church, then satirised the Universities (in 1604) in a Latin poem entitled "Anti-Tami-Cami-Categoria," that is, accusation against Thames and Cam-Oxford and Cambridge. George Herbert, as a schoolboy, retorted with "Epigrams Apologetical," which were not printed until 1662. They could only have been published by one who shared the unwisdom of a boyish partisan. George Herbert went to Cambridge in May, 1609, graduated as B.A. early in 1613, and as M.A., at the age of twenty-three, in 1616, year of the death of Shakespeare. In January, 1620, George Herbert was elected Public Orator, and thus obtained what he said was "the finest place in the University, though not the gainfullest, yet that will be about £30 per annum.

free, though foreseen, and predestined only through foreknowledge. 2. Of Redemption; that Christ atoned for the sins of all men and of each man, though none but those who believe in Him can be partakers of the benefit. 3. Of Original Sin; that true faith cannot come to the natural man without help of the Grace of God-that is, regeneration by the Holy Ghost, which is the gift of God through Christ. 4. Of Effectual Grace; that this Divine Grace begins, advances, and perfects whatever is good in man; wherefore every good work proceeds from God alone, but His Grace, offered to all, does not force men to act against their inclinations, and may be resisted by the impenitent sinner. 5. Of Perseverance; that God helps the truly faithful to remain so, though-and upon this at first opinion among Arminians differed-the regenerate may lose true justifying faith, fall from a state of Grace, and die in their sins. These opinions were, it will be seen, mainly protests against Calvin's views of Predestination. The Remonstrants were left free to hold their opinions until 1618, when the States General convoked at Dort a Synod of thirty-eight Dutch and Walloon divines, five professors from different universities, and twenty-one lay elders, with ecclesiastical deputies from most of the States of the United Provinces, and from the churches of the Palatinate, Hesse, Switzerland, Bremen, England, and Scotland. The Synod of Dort condemned the Arminians, banished their ministers, and submitted to trial their ablest defenders, Barnevelt, Grotius, and Hoogarbetz. Barnevelt was executed; Grotius and Hoogarbetz were condemned to perpetual imprisonment. Arminian opinion spread through the Reformed Churches of Europe, and was favoured by James I. and Charles I. because they looked upon the Calvinistic Puritans as enemies, and had more trust in a body of Reformers who had parted from them and were persecuted by them. The strict Calvinist disliked an Arminian almost as much as a Roman Catholic. Under the Stuarts royal preference of a divine tinged with Arminian opinions was so marked, that when Bishop George Morley was asked what the Arminians held," his answer was, "All the best bishoprics and deaneries in England."

But the commodiousness is beyond the revenue, for the Orator writes all the University letters, be it to the king, prince, or whoever comes to the University." The commodiousness of the office was, that it enabled a man who sought advancement at court to show his ability to the king, and make himself agreeable. Public orators before him had used the post as a stepping-stone to court preferment, and during the rest of the reign of James I. George Herbert waited upon his Majesty, a courtly and a witty fortunehunter. He got in 1623-as a layman-the sinecure rectory of Whitford in Flintshire, which was worth £120 a year, and had once been given to Philip Sidney when he was a boy of ten. But the death of James I. on the 27th of March, 1625, put an end to all George Herbert's further hopes in that direction.

CHAPTER IX.

UNDER CHARLES I. AND THE COMMONWEALTH. GEORGE HERBERT, RICHARD SIBBES, THOMAS FULLER, JOHN HOWE, GEORGE FOX, RICHARD BAXTER, JEREMY TAYLOR, JOHN MILTON, AND OTHERS.-A.D. 1625 To A.D. 1660.

He

GEORGE HERBERT, still a layman, was in July, 1626, year of the death of Francis Bacon, made a prebendary of Leighton Ecclesia or Leighton Bromswald, in Huntingdonshire, with a stall in Lincoln. repaired the church of the place. In 1627 his mother died, and George Herbert retired from his office of Public Orator. He left Cambridge, weak in health, for he was consumptive, and stayed for a time with his brother, Sir Henry Herbert, at Woodford, in Essex. In 1629 he was at Dauntsey, in Wiltshire, the seat of the Earl of Danby, with whom he was connected by his mother's second marriage. She had married Sir John Danvers. At Dauntsey his health improved. In March, 1629, he married Jane Danvers, a kinswoman of his stepfather and of Lord Danby. George Herbert had resolved now to take holy orders. His kinsman Philip, Earl of Pembroke, obtained for him the living of Bemerton, with a little church within a mile or two of the great house at Wilton, half way between Wilton and Salisbury. George Herbert found Charles I. and his Court with the Earl, at Wilton, when he went there, and on the 26th of April, 1630, the Bishop of Salisbury inducted him into his living. George Herbert's church at Bemerton supplied the needs of a thinlyscattered population, though it would perhaps have been overcrowded by a congregation of fifty. There he laboured for not quite three years, marked for death by consumption, lodged in a slight hollow of pleasant but over-watered meadow-land, most favourable to the growth of his disease. The supreme beauty of George Herbert's life was in its close at Bemerton from the beginning of his ministration there in April, 1630, when he was thirty-seven years old, to his death at the age of forty. He was buried under the altar of his church on the 3rd of March, 1633. According to his wish, no word of inscription marks his resting-place. The little church remains,

and is still used for week-day prayers, but near it there has been built a handsome memorial church.

For his own use he set down in a little book his view of the duties of "the Country Parson," treating of his knowledge; the parson on Sundays; his praying; his preaching; his charity; his comforting the sick; his arguing; his condescending; the parson in his journey; the parson in his mirth; the parson with his churchwardens; the parson blessing the people. "His chiefest recreation," says Izaak Walton, was music, in which heavenly art he was a most excellent master, and composed many divine hymns and anthems, which he set and sung to his lute or viol; and though he was a lover of retiredness, yet his love to music was such that he went usually twice every week, on certain appointed days, to the cathedral church in Salisbury, and at his

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return would say, 'that his time spent in prayer and cathedral music elevated his soul, and was his heaven upon earth.' But before his return thence to Bemerton he would usually sing and play his part at an appointed private music-meeting; and to justify this practice he would often say, 'Religion does not banish mirth, but only moderates and sets rules to it.'"' George Herbert's sacred poems, expressing a pure spirit of worship that shone in these last years of his life through all his actions, were published under the title of "The Temple" in 1633, soon after his death. The opening verses, entitled "The Church Porch," are counsels as to the mind with which the temple should be entered, of which these are a few examples that may serve as an abridgment of the whole :

FROM GEORGE HERBERT'S CHURCH PORCH. Thou whose sweet youth and early hopes inhance

Thy rate and price, and mark thee for a treasure, Hearken unto a Verser, who may chance

Rhyme thee to good, and make a bait of pleasure:
A verse may find him who a sermon flies,
And turn delight into a sacrifice.

Yet ev'n the greatest griefs

May be reliefs,

Could he but take them right and in their ways. Happy is he whose heart

Hath found the art

To turn his double pains to double praise.

Christopher Harvey, born in 1597, was the son of a preacher at Bunbury, in Cheshire.1 His mother, in 1609, took in second marriage another preacher, Thomas Pierson, of Brampton-Brian, on the borders of Radnor and Hereford. Christopher in 1613 entered Brasenose College as a poor scholar, graduated as B.A. in 1617, M.A. in 1620. He was living by the Wye, at Whitney, in Hereford-perhaps as curate before he became rector there after the death of his predecessor, in December, 1630. For half a year, from September, 1632, to March, 1633, Christopher Harvey left Whitney to be head-master of the Grammar School at Kington; but he returned to Whitney, and four more children were born there, making a family of five, before November, 1635, when Sir Robert Whitney of Whitney presented him to the vicarage of Clifton-on-Dunsmore, in Warwickshire. Here he had four more children, of whom one, named Whitney, died in infancy, and then he himself died at the age of sixty-six, in 1663. In 1647, the Vicar of Clifton published anonymously "The Synagogue, or Shadow of the Temple. Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations in imitation of Mr. George Herbert," of which there was a fourth edition in his lifetime (1661). In the same year he published "Schola Cordis,2 or the Heart of itself gone away from God, brought back again to Him, and instructed by Him. In forty-seven Emblems." This (left with the old spelling unaltered) is the thirtyfifth

THE ENLARGING OF THE HEART.

How pleasant is that now which heretofore
Mine heart held bitter-sacred learning's lore!
Enlarged hearts enter with greatest ease

The straitest paths, and runne the narrowest wayes.

Christopher Harvey and his "Synagogue" received this praise from Izaak Walton