You look through them only into the infinite vague of Black and the Inane. "Heats and jealousies," says Lord Clarendon himself: "heats and jealousies," mere crabbed whims, theories and crotchets; these induced slow, sober, quiet Englishmen to lay down their plows and work; and fly into red fury of confused war against the best-conditioned of Kings! Try if you can find that true. Skepticism writing about Belief may have great gifts; but it is really ultra vires there. It is Blindness laying down the Laws of Optics.

Cromwell's third Parliament split on the same rock as his second. Ever the constitutional Formula: How came you there? Show us some Notary parchment! Blind pedants: "Why, surely the same power which makes you a Parliament, that, and something more, made me a Protector!" If my Protectorship is nothing, what in the name of wonder is your Parliamenteership, a reflex and creation of that?

Parliaments having failed, there remained nothing but the way of Despotism. Military Dictators, each with his district, to coerce the Royalist and other gainsayers, to govern them, if not by act of Parliament, then by the sword. Formula shall not carry it, while the Reality is here! I will go on, protecting oppressed Protestants abroad, appointing just judges, wise managers, at home cherishing true Gospel ministers; doing the best I can to make England a Christian England, greater than old Rome, the Queen of Protestant Christianity; I, since you will not help me; I, while God leaves me life! Why did he not give it up; retire into obscurity again, since the Law would not acknowledge him? cry several. That is where they mistake. For him there was no giving of it up! Prime Ministers have governed countries, Pitt, Bombal, Choiseul; and their word was a law while it held but this Prime Minister was one that could not get resigned. Let him once resign, Charles Stuart and the Cavaliers waited to kill him; to kill the Cause and him. Once embarked, there is no retreat, no return. This Prime Minister could retire no-whither except into his tomb.

One is sorry for Cromwell in his old days. His complaint is incessant of the heavy burden Providence has laid on him. Heavy; which he must bear till death. Old Colonel Hutchinson, as his wife relates it, Hutchinson, his old battle mate, coming to see him on some indispensable business, much against his will, Cromwell "follows him to the door," in a most fraternal, domestic, conciliatory style; begs that he would be

reconciled to him, his old brother in arms; says how much it grieves him to be misunderstood, deserted by true fellow-soldiers, dear to him from of old: the rigorous Hutchinson, cased in his Republican formula, sullenly goes his way. And the man's head now white; his strong arm growing weary with its long work! I think always too of his poor Mother, now very old, living in that Palace of his; a right brave woman; as indeed they lived all an honest God-fearing Household there : if she heard a shot go off, she thought it was her son killed. He had to come to her at least once a day, that she might see with her own eyes that he was yet living. The poor old Mother! What had this man gained; what had he gained? He had a life of sore strife and toil, to his last day. Fame, ambition, place in History? His dead body was hung in chains; his "place in History,"—place in History forsooth! has been a place of ignominy, accusation, blackness, and disgrace; and here, this day, who knows if it is not rash in me to be among the first that ever ventured to pronounce him not a knave and liar, but a genuinely honest man! Peace to him. Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us? We walk smoothly over his great rough heroic life; step over his body sunk in the ditch there. We need not spurn it, as we step on it! Let the Hero rest. It was not to men's judgment that he appealed nor have men judged him very well.

CONTENTEDNESS IN ALL ESTATES AND
ACCIDENTS.

BY JEREMY TAYLOR.

(From "The Rule and Exercise of Holy Living.")

[JEREMY TAYLOR: An English theologian; born at Cambridge, August 15, 1613; died at Lisburn, Ireland, August 13, 1667. He was the son of a barber, and received his degree at Cambridge. He was probably a chaplain during the Civil War, later became a schoolmaster, and after the Restoration was made bishop of Down and Connor, in Ireland. He published "Episcopacy Asserted against the Acephali and Aërians, New and Old” (1642), “Discourse on the Liberty of Prophesying" (1647), "The Great Exemplar of Sanctity and Holy Life" (1649), “The Rule and Exercise of Holy Living” (1650), and “Ductor Dubitantium" (1660).]

VIRTUES and discourses are like friends, necessary in all fortunes; but those are the best which are friends in our sad

nesses, and support us in our sorrows and sad accidents: and, in this sense, no man that is virtuous can be friendless; nor hath any man reason to complain of the Divine Providence, or accuse the public disorder of things, or his own infelicity, since God hath appointed one remedy for all the evils in the world, and that is a contented spirit: for this alone makes a man pass through fire, and not be scorched; through seas, and not be drowned; through hunger and nakedness, and want nothing.

For since all the evil in the world consists in the disagreeing between the object and the appetite, -as when a man hath what he desires not, or desires what he hath not, or desires amiss,-he that composes his spirit to the present accident hath variety of instances for his virtue, but none to trouble him; because his desires enlarge not beyond his present fortune and a wise man is placed in the variety of chances, like the nave or center of a wheel in the midst of all the circumvolutions and changes of posture, without violence or change, save that it turns gently in compliance with its changed parts, and is indifferent which part is up and which is down; for there is some virtue or other to be exercised, whatever happens; either patience or thanksgiving, love or fear, moderation or humility, charity or contentedness; and they are every one of them equally in order to his great end and immortal felicity: and beauty is not made by white or red, by black eyes and a round face, by a straight body and a smooth skin; but by a proportion to the fancy.

No rules can make amiability, our minds and apprehensions make that and so is our felicity: and we may be reconciled to poverty and a low fortune, if we suffer contentedness and the grace of God to make the proportions. For no man is poor, that does not think himself so: but if, in a full fortune, with impatience he desires more, he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition. But, because this grace of Contentedness was the sum of all the old moral philosophy, and a great duty in Christianity, and of most universal use in the whole course of our lives, and the only instrument to ease the burdens of the world and the enmities of sad chances, it will not be amiss to press it by the proper arguments by which God hath bound it upon our spirits: it being fastened by reason and religion, by duty and interest, by necessity and conveniency, by example, and by the proposition of excellent rewards, no less than peace and felicity.

Contentedness in all estates is a duty of religion; it is the great reasonableness of complying with the Divine Providence

which governs all the world, and hath so ordered us in the administration of His great family. He were a strange fool that should be angry because dogs and sheep need no shoes, and yet himself is full of care to get some. God hath supplied those needs to them by natural provisions, and to thee by an artificial: for He hath given thee reason to learn a trade, or some means to make or buy them; so that it only differs in the manner of our provision and which had you rather want, shoes or reason? And my patron that hath given me a farm is freer to me than if he gives a loaf ready baked. But, however, all these gifts come from Him, and therefore it is fit He should dispense them as He pleases; and if we murmur here, we may at the next melancholy be troubled that God did not make us to be angels or stars. For, if that which we are or have do not content us, we may be troubled for everything in the world which is besides our being or our possessions.

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God is the master of the scenes; we must not choose which part we shall act; it concerns us only to be careful that we do it well, always saying, if this please God, let it be as it is: and we, who pray that God's will may be done in earth as it is in heaven, must remember that the angels do whatsoever is commanded them, and go wherever they are sent, and refuse no circumstances and if their employment be crossed by a higher decree, they sit down in peace and rejoice in the event; and, when the Angel of Judæa could not prevail in behalf of the people committed to his charge, because the Angel of Persia opposed it, he only told the story at the command of God, and was as content, and worshiped with as great an ecstasy in his proportion as the prevailing Spirit. Do thou so likewise: keep the station where God hath placed you, and you shall never long for things without, but sit at home feasting upon the Divine Providence and thy own reason, by which we are taught that it is necessary and reasonable to submit to God.

For, is not all the world God's family? Are not we His creatures? Are we not as clay in the hand of the potter? Do not we live upon His meat, and move by His strength, and do our work by His light? Are we anything but what we are from Him? And shall there be a mutiny among the flocks and herds, because their Lord or their Shepherd chooses their pastures, and suffers them not to wander into deserts and unknown ways? If we choose, we do it so foolishly that we cannot like it long, and most commonly not at all: but God, who can do

what He pleases, is wise to choose safely for us, affectionate to comply with our needs, and powerful to execute all His wise decrees. Here therefore is the wisdom of the contented man, to let God choose for him: for when we have given up our wills to Him, and stand in that station of the battle where our great General hath placed us, our spirits must needs rest while our conditions have for their security the power, the wisdom, and the charity of God.

Contentedness in all accidents brings great peace of spirit, and is the great and only instrument of temporal felicity. It removes the sting from the accident, and makes a man not to depend upon chance and the uncertain dispositions of men for his well-being, but only on God and his own spirit. We ourselves make our own fortunes good or bad; and when God lets loose a tyrant upon us, or a sickness, or scorn, or a lessened fortune, if we fear to die, or know not to be patient, or are proud, or covetous, then the calamity sits heavy on us. But if we know how to manage a noble principle, and fear not death so much as a dishonest action, and think impatience a worse evil than a fever, and pride to be the biggest disgrace, and poverty to be infinitely desirable before the torments of covetousness; then we who now think vice to be so easy, and make it so familiar, and think the cure so impossible, shall quickly be of another mind, and reckon these accidents among things eligible.

But no man can be happy that hath great hopes and great fears of things without, and events depending upon other men, or upon the chances of fortune. The rewards of virtue are certain, and our provisions for our natural support are certain; or, if we want meat till we die, then we die of that disease, and there are many worse than to die with an atrophy or consumption, or unapt and coarser nourishment. But he that suffers a transporting passion concerning things within the power of others is free from sorrow and amazement no longer than his enemy shall give him leave; and it is ten to one but he shall be smitten then and there where it shall most trouble him: for so the adder teaches us where to strike, by her curious and fearful defending of her head. The old Stoics when you told them of a sad story, would still answer: "Tí πрòs μé; What is that to me?" "Yes, for the tyrant hath sentenced you also to prison. "Well, what is that? He will put a chain upon my leg, but he cannot bind my soul." "No: but he will kill you. "Then I'll die. If presently, let me go, that I may presently

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