aptly to convince, and (because anger begets anger, as love doth love) render the other less susceptible of conviction. Why are we yet to learn that the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God? What is gained by it? So little doth angry contention about small matters avail, that even they that happen to have the better cause lose by it, and their advantage cannot recompense the damage and hurt that ensues to the Church and to themselves. Our famous Davenant, speaking of the noted controversy between Stephen, Bishop of Rome, who, he says, as much as in him lay, did with a schismatical spirit tear the Church, and Cyprian, who with great lenity and Christian charity professes that he would not break the Lord's peace for diversity of opinion, nor remove any from the right of communion, concludes that erring Cyprian deserved better of the Church of Christ than orthodox Stephen. He thought him the schismatic whom he thought in the right, and that his orthodoxy, as it was accompanied, was more mischievous to the Church than the other's error. Nor can a man do that hurt to others, without suffering it more principally. The distemper of his own spirit, what can recompense! and how apt is it to grow in him; and, while it grows in himself, to propagate itself among others! Whereupon, if the want of love hinders the nourishment of the body, much more do the things which, when it is wanting, are wont to fill up its place. For as naturally as love begets love, so do wrath, envy, malice, calumny, beget one another, and spread a poison and virulency through the body, which necessarily wastes and tends to destroy it. How soon did the Christian Church cease to be itself, and the early vigour of primitive Christianity degenerate into insipid, spiritless formality, when once it became contentious! It broke into parties, sects multiplied, animosities grew high, and the grieved Spirit of love retired from it, which is grieved by nothing more than by bitterness, wrath, anger, &c., as the connection of these two verses intimates, Eph. iv. 30, 31-" Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption.-Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice." And to the same purpose is that, 1 Pet. ii. 1, 2, "Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby." By this means religion, once dispirited, loses its majesty and awfulness, and even tempts and invites the assaults and insultations of enemies.

4. It would oblige us to all acts of mutual kindness and friendship. If such a love did govern in us, we should be always ready to serve one another in love, to bear each other's burdens, to afford our mutual counsel and help to one another, even in our private affairs if called thereto; especially in that which is our common concern, the preserving and promoting the interest of religion, and to our uttermost strengthen each other's hands herein. It would engage us to a free, amicable conversation with one another upon this account; would not let us do so absurd a thing as to confine our friendship to those of our own party, which we might as

1 John Davenant was born in Watling Street in 1576, and educated at Queen's College, Cambridge, of which he became Master in 1614. He was a Divinity Professor at Cambridge, was sent by James I. to the synod of Dort, and in 1621 was made Bishop of Salisbury. He was a liberal Calvinist, and offended James I. by a discourse on Predestination. He died of consumption. John Howe is here quoting from a Latin exhortation to Christian unity published by Davenant at Cambridge in 1640, the year before his death, "Ad fraternam Communionem inter Evangelicas Ecclesias restaurandam Adhortatio." There was an English edition in the year of his death, 1641.

reasonably to men of our own stature, or to those whose voice and hair and look and mien were likest our own. It would make us not be ashamed to be seen in each other's company, or be shy of owning one another. We should not be to one another as Jews and Samaritans that had no dealing with one another, or as the poet notes they were to other nations; "Non monstrare vias eadem nisi sacra colenti" (Not so much as to show the way to one not of their religion). There would be no partition-wall through which love would not easily open a way of friendly commerce, by which we should insensibly slide, more and more, into one another's hearts. Whence also,

5. Prejudices would cease, and jealousies concerning each other. A mutual confidence would be begotten. We should no more suspect one another of ill designs upon each other, than lest our right hand should wait an opportunity of cutting off the left. We should believe one another in our mutual professions, of whatsoever sort, both of kindness to one another, and that we really doubt and scruple the things which we say we do.

6. This would hence make us earnestly covet an entire union in all the things wherein we differ, and contribute greatly to it. We are too prone many times to dislike things for the disliked persons' sake who practise them And a prevailing disaffection makes us unapt to understand one another, precludes our entrance into one another's mind and sense, which if love did once open, and inclined us more to consider the matters of difference themselves than to imagine some reserved meaning and design of the persons that differ from us, 'tis likely we might find ourselves much nearer to one another than we did apprehend we were, and that it were a much easier step for the one side to go quite over to the other. But if that cannot be,

7. It would make us much more apt to yield to one another and abate all that ever we can in order to as full an accommodation as is any way possible, that if we cannot agree upon either extreme, we might at least meet in the middle. It would cause an emulation who should be larger in their grants to this purpose: as it was professed by Luther when so much was done at Marburg towards an agreement between him and the Helvetians, that he would not allow that praise to the other party that they should be more desirous of peace and concord than he. Of which amicable conference, and of that afterwards at Wittenberg, and several other negotiations to that purpose, account is given by divers; and insisted on by some of our own great divines, as precedential to the concord they endeavoured between the Saxon and the Helvetian Churches of later time, as Bishop Morton, Bishop Hall, Bishop Davenant, in their several sentences or judg ments written to Mr. Dury 3 upon that subject.

And indeed when I have read the pacific writings of those eminent worthies, for the composing of those differences abroad, I could not but wonder that the same peaceable spirit did not endeavour with more effect the composing of

2 Thomas Morton, born at York in 1564, and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, was made chaplain to James I. in 1606, Bishop of Chester in 1615, of Lichfield and Coventry in 1618, and of Durham in 1632. He died in retirement in 1659 aged ninety-five.

3 John Dury (or Dureus) was a Scotch divine who spent forty years in the vain endeavour to reconcile Lutherans and Calvinists. He travelled to confer with divines in England, Geneva, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, &c., and wrote much to advance the iden of Christian union, which he made it the work of his life to strive for in a true spirit of brotherhood. His works were published between 1634 and 1674. One of them was "A Model of Church Government (1647). He is not to be confounded with John Dury (or Dureus), a Jesuit, who published in 1582 a reply to William Whitaker's answer to Edmund Campian.

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our own much lesser differences at home. But the things of our peace were (as they still are) hid from our eyes, with the more visibly just severity by how much they have been nearer us and more obvious to the easy view of any but an averse eye. It is not for us to prescribe (as was said) to persons that are now in so eminent stations as these were at that time; but may we not hope to find with such (and where should we rather expect to find it?) that compassion and mercifulness in imitation of the blessed Jesus, their Lord and ours, as to consider and study the necessities of souls in these respects, and at least willingly to connive at and very heartily approve some indulgences and abatements in the administrations of the inferior clergy, as they may not think fit themselves positively to order and enjoin? Otherwise I believe it could not but give some trouble to a conscientious conforming minister, if a sober pious person, sound in the faith and of a regular life, should tell him he is willing to use his ministry in some of the ordinances of Christ, if only he would abate or dispense with some annexed ceremony which in conscience he dare not use or admit of. I believe it would trouble such a minister to deal with a person of this character as a pagan because of his scruple, and put him upon considering whether he ought not rather to dispense with man's rule than with God's. I know what the same Bishop Davenant hath expressly said, that "He that believes the things contained in the Apostles' Creed,1 and endeavours to live a life agreeable to the precepts of Christ, ought not to be expunged from the roll of Christians, nor be driven from communion with the other members of any Church whatsoever." However, truly Christian love would do herein all that it can, supplying the rest by grief that it can do no

more.

8. It would certainly make us abstain from mutual censures of one another as insincere for our remaining differences. Charity that thinks no evil would make us not need the reproof, Rom. xiv. 4, "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant?" The common aptness hereunto among us shows how little that divine principle rules in our hearts, that in defiance of our rule and the authority of the great God and our blessed Redeemer, to whom all judgment is committed, and who hath so expressly forbidden us to judge lest we be judged (Matt. vii. 1), we give ourselves so vast a liberty, and set no other bounds to our usurped licence of judging, than nature hath set to our power of thinking-i.e. think all the mischievous thoughts of them that differ from us that we know how to devise or invent, as if we would say, "Our thoughts (and then, by an easy advance, our tongues) are our own, who is Lord over us?" I animadvert not on this as the fault of one party; but wheresoever it lies, as God knows how diffused a poison this is among them that are satisfied with the public constitutions towards them that dissent from them, and with these back again towards them, and with the several parties of both these towards one another. This uniting, knitting love would make us refrain, not merely from the restraint of God's laws in this case, but from a benign disposition, as that which the temper of our spirits would abhor from. So that such as are well content with the public forms and rites of worship, would have no inclination to judge them that apprehend not things with their understandings, nor relish with their taste, as persons that therefore have cut themselves off from Christ, and the body of Christ. They might learn better from the Cassandrian moderation and from the avowed sentiments of that man

1 Jeremy Taylor also, in his "Liberty of Prophesying," recommended this basis of Christian union. (See pages 285, 286.)

whose temper is better to be liked than his terms of union, who speaking of such as, being formerly rejected (meaning the Protestants) for finding fault with abuses in the Church, had by the urgency of their conscience altered somewhat in the way of their teaching and the form of their service, and are therefore said to have fallen off from the Church and are numbered among heretics and schismatics. It is, saith he, to be enquired how rightly and justly this is determined of them. For there is to be considered, as to the Church, the head and the body. From the head there is no departure but by doctrine disagreeable to Christ the head; from the body there is no departure by diversity of rites and opinions, but only by the defect of charity. So that this learned Romanist neither thinks them heretics that hold the head, nor schismatics, for such differences as ours are, from the rest of the body, if love and charity towards them remain. And again, where this love remains, and bears rule, it can as little be, that they who are unsatisfied with the way of worship that more generally obtains should censure them that are satisfied, as insincere merely because of this difference. It cannot permit that we should think all the black thoughts we can invent of them, as if because they have not our consciences they had none, or because they see not with our eyes they were therefore both utterly and wilfully blind.

Thomas Browne, born in Cheapside in 1605, was educated at Winchester School and Pembroke College, Oxford. He travelled in France and Italy, graduated in physic at the University of Leyden, and published, in 1634, after his return to London, a quaint, thoughtful book, entitled "Religio Medici" (The Religion of a Physician). Two years afterwards Dr. Browne settled at Norwich, where he became the leading physician. He was not knighted until thirty-seven years after his "Religio Medici" was published, and he died in 1682. His books on "Urn Burial," and on "Vulgar Errors," are not less interesting than his "Religio Medici," from which this passage is taken :

TRUE AFFECTION.

There are wonders in true affection; it is a body of enigmas, mysteries, and riddles; wherein two so become one, as they both become two. I love my friend before myself, and yet methinks I do not love him enough. Some few months hence, my multiplied affection will make me believe I have not loved him at all: when I am from him, I am dead till I be with him; when I am with him, I am not satisfied, but would still be nearer him. United souls are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truly each other; which being impossible, their desires are infinite, and proceed without a possibility of satisfaction. Another misery there is in affection, that whom we truly love like our own, we forget their looks, nor can our memory retain the idea of their faces; and it is no wonder for they are ourselves, and our affection makes their looks our own. This noble affection falls not on vulgar and common constitutions, but on such as are marked for virtue. He that can love his friend with this noble ardour, will, in a competent degree, affect all. Now, if we can bring our affections to look beyond the body, and cast an eye upon the soul, we have found the true object, not only of friendship, but charity; and the greatest happiness that we can bequeath the soul, is that wherein we all do place our last felicity, salvation; which, though it be not in our power to bestow, it is in our charity and pious invocations to desire, if not

procure and further. I cannot contentedly frame a prayer for myself in particular, without a catalogue for my friends; nor request a happiness wherein my sociable disposition doth not desire the fellowship of my neighbour. I never heard the toll of a passing-bell, though in my mirth, without my prayers and best wishes for the departing spirit. I cannot go to cure the body of my patient, but I forget my profession and call unto God for his soul. I cannot see one say his prayers, but instead of imitating him, I fall into a supplication for him, who, perhaps, is no more to me than a common nature and if God hath vouchsafed an ear to my supplications, there are surely many happy that never saw,me, and enjoy the blessing of my unknown devotions. To pray for enemies, that is, for their salvation, is no harsh precept, but the practice of our daily and ordinary devotions. I cannot believe the story of the Italian: our bad wishes and uncharitable desires proceed no further than this life; it is the devil, and the uncharitable votes of hell, that desire our misery in the world to come.

I can

To do no injury, nor take none, was a principle, which to my former years, and impatient affections, seemed to contain enough of morality; but my more settled years, and Christian constitution, have fallen upon severer resolutions. hold there is no such thing as injury; that if there be, there is no such injury as revenge, and no such revenge as the contempt of an injury; that to hate another, is to malign himself; that the truest way to love another, is to despise ourselves. I were unjust unto mine own conscience, if I should say I am at variance with anything like myself.

George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, was born in 1624 at Fenny Drayton in Leicestershire. Christopher Fox, his father, was a weaver, known for his integrity as "righteous Christie." George Fox, as a child, found his chief pleasure in reading the Bible. As a youth he was placed with a shoemaker, who also kept sheep, and in September, 1643, he wandered away for quiet meditation, exercised in mind upon religious questions. To save himself thought about clothes he made himself a durable suit of leather garments, which he wore for some years. In 1647 he began to preach in Dukinfield and Manchester, and at other places in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire; followers gathered about him who called themselves " "Friends," in sign of brotherly love, and resolved on strict obedience to the Bible in all things, and the separation of plain spiritual truth from external forms that sometimes usurped its place. One characteristic of his teaching was a strong sense of the need of the Spirit of God to enlighten those who interpret the voice of the same Spirit in others.

GEORGE FOX'S ACCOUNT OF HIS MISSION.

Of all the sects of Christendom with whom I discoursed, I found none that could bear to be told that they should come to Adam's perfection, into that image of God, that righteousness and holiness that Adam was in before he fell. Therefore, how should they be able to bear being told that any should grow up to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, when they cannot bear to hear that any shall come, whilst upon earth, into the same power and spirit that the prophets and apostles were in? Though it be a certain truth that none can understand these writings

aright without the aid of the same Spirit by which they were written.

The Lord God opened to me by his invisible power how "every man was enlightened by the divine light of Christ." I saw it shine through all, and that they who believed in it came out of condemnation to the light of life, and became the children of it; but they that hated it and did not believe in it were condemned by it, though they made profession of Christ. This I saw in the pure openings of the light, without the help of any man; neither did I then know where to find it in the Scriptures, though afterwards, searching the Scriptures, I found it. For I saw in the Light and Spirit, which was before the Scriptures were given forth, and which led the holy men of God to give them forth, that all must come to that Spirit if they would know God or Christ or the Scriptures aright, which Spirit they that gave them forth were led and taught by.

I was sent to turn people from darkness to the light, that they might receive Christ Jesus; for to as many as should receive Him in His light, I saw He would give power to become the sons of God, which I had obtained by receiving Christ. I was to direct people to the Spirit that gave forth the Scriptures, by which they might be led unto all truth, and up to Christ and God, as those had been who gave them forth, I was to turn them to the grace of God, and to the truth in the heart, which came by Jesus; that by this grace, they might be taught what would bring them salvation, that their hearts might be established by it, their words might be seasoned, and all might come to know their salvation nigh. I saw Christ died for all men, was a propitiation for all, and enlightened all men and women by His divine and saving light, and that none could be true believers but those that believed therein. I saw that the grace of God which brings salvation had appeared to all men, and that the manifestation of the Spirit of God was given to every man to profit withal. These things I did not see by the help of man, nor by the letter, though they are written in the letter; but I saw them in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ, and by His immediate Spirit and power, as did the holy men of God by whom the Scriptures were written. Yet I had no slight esteem of the Holy Scriptures; they were very precious to me, for I was in that Spirit by which they had been given forth, and what the Lord opened in me I afterwards found was agreeable to them. I could speak much of those things, and many volumes might be written, but all would prove too short to set forth the infinite love, wisdom, and power of God, in preparing, fitting, and furnishing me for the service He had appointed me to; letting me see the depths of Satan on one hand, and opening to me on the other hand the divine mysteries of His own everlasting kingdom.

When the Lord God and His Son Jesus Christ sent me forth into the world to preach His everlasting gospel and kingdom, I was glad that I was commanded to turn people to that inward light, spirit, and grace, by which all might know their salvation and their way to God; even that divine Spirit, which would lead them into all truth, and which I infallibly knew would never deceive any.

With and by this divine power and Spirit of God, and the light of Jesus, I was to bring people off from all their own ways, to Christ the new and living way; from their churches which men had made, and gathered to the Church of God, the general assembly written in heaven, which Christ is the head of; and off from the world's teachers made by men, to learn of Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, of whom the Father said, 'This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him;' and off from all the world's worships,

to know the Spirit of truth in the inward parts; and to be led thereby, that in it they might worship the Father of Spirits, who seeks such to worship Him, which Spirit they that worshipped not in knew not what they worshipped. I was to bring people off from all the world's religions which are in vain, that they might know the pure religion, might visit the fatherless, the widows, and the strangers, and keep themselves spotless from the world; then there would not be so many beggars—the sight of whom often grieved my heart, as it denoted so much hard-heartedness.

I was to bring them off from all the world's fellowships, prayings, and singings, which stood in forms without power, that their fellowship might be in the Holy Ghost, the eternal Spirit of God; that they might pray in the Holy Ghost, sing in the Spirit, and with the grace that comes by Jesus; making melody in their hearts to the Lord, who hath sent His beloved Son to be their Saviour, caused His heavenly sun to shine upon all the world, and through them all, and His heavenly rain to fall upon the just and the unjust (as His outward rain doth fall, and His outward sun doth shine upon all), which is God's unspeakable love to the world.

I was to bring people off from Jewish ceremonies, from heathenish fables, from man's inventions and windy doctrines, by which they blow the people about this way and the other way from sect to sect, and from all their beggarly rudiments, with their schools and colleges for making ministers of Christ-who are indeed only ministers of their own making, but not of Christ's; and from all their images, crosses, and sprinkling of infants, with their holy days (so called), and all their vain traditions, which they had got up since the apostles' days, which the Lord's power was against. In the dread and authority thereof I was moved to declare against them all, and against all that preached and not freely, as such who had not received freely from Christ.

Moreover, when the Lord sent me into the world, he forbad me to put off my hat to any, high or low; and I was required to thee and thou all men and women without any respect to rich or poor, great or small. And as I travelled up and down I was not to bid good-morrow or goodevening, neither might I bow or scrape with my leg to any one; this made the sects and professions rage.

In fairs also, and in markets, I was made to declare against their deceitful merchandise, cheating and cozening, warning all to deal justly, to speak the truth, to let their yea be yea, and their nay be nay, and to do unto others as they would have others do unto them; forewarning them of the great and terrible day of the Lord, which would come upon them all. I was moved also to cry against all sorts of music, and against the mountebanks playing tricks upon their stages, for they burdened the pure life, and stirred up people's minds to vanity. I was much exercised, too, with schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, warning them to teach children sobriety in the fear of the Lord, that they might not be nursed and trained up in lightness, vanity, and wantonness. I was made to warn masters and mistresses, fathers and mothers, in private families, to take care that their children and servants might be trained up in the fear of the Lord, and that themselves should be therein examples and patterns of sobriety and virtue to them.

But the black earthly spirit of the priest wounded my life; and when I heard the bell toll to call people together in the steeple-house, it struck at my life, for it was like a market-bell to gather people together, that the priest might set forth his wares for sale. Oh! the vast sums of money that are got by the trade they make of selling the Scriptures, and by their preaching, from the highest bishop to the lowest priest. What one trade in the world is comparable

to it? Notwithstanding the Scriptures were given forth freely, Christ commanded his ministers to preach freely, and the prophets and apostles denounced judgment against all covetous hirelings and diviners for money. But in this free spirit of the Lord Jesus was I sent forth to declare the word of life and reconciliation freely, that all might come to Christ, who gives freely, and renews us into the image of God, which man and woman were in before they fell.

The persecution brought on themselves, and borne with heroic simplicity, by Fox and his followers, through the zeal with which they carried out their protest against all that they accounted insincere or unscriptural, forms an interesting passage in English religious history. Fox died in 1690.

John Hales, born in 1584, was made Greek Professor at Oxford in 1612, had afterwards an Eton Fellowship, and died at Eton in the time of the Commonwealth, 1656. His best writings were published in 1659 as "Golden Remains of the Ever Memorable Mr. John Hales, of Eton College." This is a prayer from John Hales for peace in the English Church, closing a sermon on the text "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you" (John xiv. 27):

PRAYER FOR PEACE IN THE CHURCH.

When our friends and enemies do both jointly consent to lay open our shame, to whose judgment shall we appeal, or whither shall we fly? Whither? Even to thee, O Lord Christ; but not as to a judge: too well we know thy sentence. Thou hast sent us messengers of peace, but we, like Jerusalem, thy ancient love, have not understood the things belonging to our peace. O Lord, let us know them in this our day, and let them no longer be hidden from our eyes. Look down, O Lord, upon thy poor dismembered Church, rent and torn with discords, and even ready to sink. Why should the neutral or atheist any longer confirm himself in his irreligion by reasons drawn from our dissensions? Or why should any greedy-minded worldling prophesy unto himself the ruins of thy sanctuary, or hope one day to dip his foot in the blood of thy Church? We will hope, O Lord (for what hinders?), that notwithstanding all supposed impossibilities, thou wilt one day in mercy look down upon thy Sion, and grant a gracious interview of friends so long divided. Thou that wroughtest that great reconciliation between God and man, is thine arm waxen shorter? Was it possible to reconcile God to man? To reconcile man to man is it impossible? Be with those, we beseech thee, to whom the persecution of Church controversies is committed, and, like a good Lazarus, drop one cooling drop into their tongues and pens, too, too much exasperated each against other. And if it be thy determinate will and counsel that this abomination of desolation, standing where it ought not, continue unto the end, accomplish thou with speed the number of thine elect, and hasten the coming of thy Son our Saviour, that He may himself in person sit and judge, and give an end to our controversies, since it stands not with any human possibility. Direct thy Church, O Lord, in all her petitions for peace, teach her wherein her peace consists, and warn her from the world, and bring her home to Thee; that all those that love thy peace may at last have the reward of the sons of peace,