who shall say how the history of unhappy Ireland might have been changed, if at the Restoration each province had been blessed with a Jeremy Taylor?

The Ductor Dubitantium,' or 'Doubters' Guide,' was, no doubt, regarded by its author as his great work, the one which was to perpetuate his fame. And, in truth, few English works rival it in learning and ingenuity; yet, instead of being as Taylor doubtless hoped it would be, the treasure-house where generations of Englishmen might find resolution of painful doubts, it has become the amusement of a few retired students. And this by no fault of the author; even in his lifetime Hobbes appealed to the common intellect with greater force and directness; and before the race of the 'old cavaliers' had quite passed away, Locke's famous Essay gave a new direction to metaphysical and ethical enquiry. Our limits forbid us to offer even an outline of the discussions contained in Taylor's Opus Magnum; we can but mention briefly its leading characteristics. He published the book, he tells us in the preface, because his countrymen were almost wholly unprovided with casuistical treatises, and so were forced to go down to the forges of the Philistines to sharpen every man his share and his coulter, his axe, and his mattock,' and by answers from abroad their needs were very ill supplied. English literature, it is true, in Taylor's time was not absolutely destitute of casuistical works; but none of these older works are comparable in range with the Ductor Dubitantium,' nor do they discuss the grounds of morality with the same completeness. The Ductor' is not, as is perhaps sometimes imagined, a mere collection of cases and resolutions for the use of those who 'direct' souls, such as had been common for many generations in the Roman Church; though it does discuss special cases, it is in the main a treatise on moral philosophy, grounded on the belief that man has an intuitive perception of right and wrong; Taylor teaches, as Abelard had done long before, that the ground of morality is the will of God revealed to us through Conscience, as well as through Holy Scripture; God is in our hearts by His laws; he rules us by His substitute, our conscience.' Conscience therefore is, says Taylor characteristically, the household guardian, the spirit or angel of the place.' On this foundation he builds his ethical edifice. He discusses the various kinds of conscience, distintinguishing, perhaps with more subtlety than profit, the right, the confident, the probable, the doubtful, and the scrupulous conscience; thence he proceeds to treat of the obligations of conscience in relation to the natural law, to the ceremonial law, and to the law of Christ; thence to human positive law, whether Vol. 131.-No. 261.

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of states, or of the Church, or of the several families of which states are composed; his last book he devotes to the consideration of the nature and causes of good and evil, and of the efficient and final causes of human actions. It is in that part which relates to the probable or thinking conscience' that he introduces a magnificent sketch of the probabilities on which faith in Christianity is founded; a sketch which contains some of his most splendid passages. The work is not free from grave faults; his casuistic reading tended to make him sometimes over-subtle and unreal in his distinctions, he does not always keep a firm grasp of his principles, and his illustrations are sometimes-to say the least-injudicious; yet we cannot help admiring the exhaustive learning, the ample illustration, and the eloquence maintained with unflagging vigour to the close. Taylor, as we have already said, was jostled from the course by a crowd of lighter-footed and less-burdened competitors; but if he cannot compete with Butler in calmness and justness of intellect, nor with Paley in clearness of style. and arrangement, his work remains unrivalled among English ethical works for breadth of learning and stately harmony of diction.

The work of Taylor's, which is, on the whole, most original and characteristic, is undoubtedly the Liberty of Prophesying,' his great plea for freedom in the formation and expression of opinion. In other works Taylor did but adorn forms of literature which were common before his time; but in his plea for toleration he is epoch-making; few had risen to that height of contemplation at which the fainter lines vanished from the surface of the ecclesiastical world, none had expressed with so much vigour and eloquence the thoughts of a large and charitable heart on the divisions of Christendom. In ages to come, Taylor's fame will, perhaps, rest even more on his 'Liberty of Prophesying' than on his incomparable sermons.

Like many of the greatest works of genius, like Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity' and Milton's 'Areopagitica,' the 'Liberty of Prophesying' was an 'occasional' work; it was called forth by the necessities of the time. It first made its appearance in 1647, one of the most critical periods of the great struggle. That it had any political end in view we do not believe; but there can be no doubt that Taylor's conviction of the evil of intolerance was quickened by the sight of the miseries inflicted on the country by a war of religion. Only a man whose soul, 'like a star, dwelt apart' from the passion and turmoil of the time could have conceived the thought of 'persuading the rough and hard-handed soldiers to have disbanded themselves pre

sently,'

sently,' at the voice of charity and reason; if he had been a politician, we should perhaps haye smiled at his simplicity; in a Christian preacher we honour the faith in the power of love and truth, which led him to cast his little cruse of oil on the troubled waters, even in their wildest rage.

The argument of the Liberty of Prophesying' has two ends in view; on the one hand it deals with the great question of terms of communion, and the social and ecclesiastical considerations involved in it; on the other, it discusses the duty of a civil government with respect to the forms of Christianity which exist within its jurisdiction. With regard to the first of these he holds that no dogmas ought to be made necessary conditions for admission to the membership of a church, but such as can be propounded infallibly. What then are these dogmas? The greater part of the theological propositions about which Christendom is divided he sets aside, as being either not revealed, or not perfectly clear, or not necessary; the various authorities to which men have attributed infallibility he sweeps aside in succession; neither ecclesiastical tradition, 'nor Councils, nor Popes, nor Fathers of the Church, nor the Church itself in its diffusive capacity,' can in his judgment claim immunity from error in interpreting Scripture or propounding dogmatic sentences. How then are we to find guidance for our steps? He answers, following the line of thought which Hooker had indicated half-acentury earlier, 'in the due exercise of Reason.' The supreme authority of Scripture is assumed throughout the discussion; this being assumed, reason proceeding upon the best grounds is the best judge.' Not that he is unaware that human reason often judges wrongly; but he thinks that its errors, if not wilful, are venial, and he sees that, right or wrong, a man who judges at all must needs use his own judgment, just as a man who sees at all must needs use his own eyes, however imperfect. It may be wisest to choose a guide once for all, and follow him always; still, this choice is the act of the individual reason; and Taylor himself is not well assured whether intrusting himself wholly with another, be not a laying up his talent in a napkin ;'* he fears lest he sin in not using the talent which is death to hide.' The conclusion arrived at is, that no proposition can be laid down as necessary to Christian communion beyond those contained in the Apostles' Creed, which the Apostles, or the holy men their contemporaries and disciples, composed to be a rule of faith to all Christians.' † With

* Sec. 10, s. 3.

Taylor is perhaps not quite ingenuous in this. Though it be true that a creed, or rule of faith, descended from Apostolic times, he can hardly have supposed that

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With regard to the civil government, Taylor's view appears to be of this kind; that it is no more oppressive for a sovereign prince to require from his subjects the knowledge of that which is open to the 'common sense' of mankind in theology, than in morals or politics; a man may as well be presumed to know the leading facts of the Christian revelation, as to know that theft is contrary to law, and that the magistrate is to be obeyed.Hence, his whole discussion relates to those who receive the articles of the Apostles' Creed, the reception of which he had already maintained to be of universal obligation; all who receive these articles are to be tolerated, unless their tenets are such as to be dangerous to the civil government or to public morality.. This leads him to discuss the special cases of the Roman Catholics and the Anabaptists. With regard to the former, he will not allow that the mere falsehood of their speculative doctrines is a sufficient reason for persecuting them; the body politic is no judge of dogma; Gallio was right-Taylor was almost alone in that age in thinking so-when he said, if it be a question of words and names, and of your laws, I will be no judge of such matters; '. but he condemns them for holding principles both leading to ill life and subversive of civil government; and as our duties in respect of morality and obedience to the law of the land are plain and obvious, he who preaches doctrines contrarient to them is to be condemned as a traitor, or a 'destroyer of human society.' And similarly with regard to the Anabaptists. He will not allow that their objection to infant-baptism is any good reason for persecuting them, or for excluding them from Christian communion; for there is, he holds (rather to the scandal of some of his contemporaries), no command of Scripture, nor even any canon of the Church within the first four centuries, to oblige children to the susception of it;' but with regard to their opinion on government, he lays it down in the strongest manner that the safety and well-being of the State is, and ought to be, the paramount consideration with the civil ruler, and that, therefore, he cannot tolerate the preaching of such doctrines as 'that it is not lawful for princes to put malefactors to death, nor to take up defensive arms, nor to minister on oath, nor to contend in judgment;' such principles as these 'destroy the bands of civil societies, and leave it arbitrary to every vain or vicious. person whether man shall be safe, or laws be established, or a murderer hanged, or princes rule;' nay, we must put any sense

this particular form, and no other, was Apostolic; for he refers to passages in Irenæus, Tertullian, and Cyprian, which are not consistent with such a supposition. Compare Coleridge, Notes on English Divines,' i. 209 ff.

* Sec. 20, s. 5.

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whatever upon passages of Scripture, which seem to support such doctrines, rather than have it supposed that Christianity should destroy that which is the only instrument of justice, the restraint of vice and the support of bodies politic.' *

In a word Taylor lays it down in the clearest manner, that the civil government is not concerned with opinions, however false or absurd, unless they prejudice the government as such; in that case, they must be suppressed as offences against government, not as speculative opinions. But in all this he contemplates a state composed of none but such as agree in accepting the article of the Apostles' Creed; and this, it may be said, is not complete toleration. True, it is not; but in Taylor's time the acceptance of this theory would in fact have produced almost complete toleration, for in spite of individual aberrations, there was then no sect which would not have accepted the simple statement of the objects of Christian faith contained in the Apostles' Creed; their disputes lay in another region altogether; and if he advocated a scheme which might have put an end to division and persecution then, he is not to be blamed if he did not provide for a state of things which did not exist until long afterwards. His work marks the highest level to which toleration of different opinions had then advanced, for even Milton's treatises on toleration did not cover all Taylor's ground; and when, some generations later, the proposition to which Taylor's arguments in fact tended, that the State should tolerate all opinions whatever not dangerous to government or to society, was frankly and unconditionally maintained, it was maintained rather on the ground of the indifference of religions, than on the ground that Christianity inculcates the largest charity towards those who merely differ in opinion. Even now, few probably are prepared to receive Taylor's dictum, that involuntary error is not to be anathematized, and that 'heresy is not an error of the understanding, but an error of the will.'

We spoke just now of Milton and his noble defence of toleration. There is on this point so much community of spirit between him and Taylor, that we almost wonder to find them on opposite sides in the great struggle. Yet we ought not to wonder; for the objects which lay nearest the heart of Taylor and Milton alike were the dominant objects with no party; each

Sec. 19. It is of course evident, from what is here stated, that the 'Anabaptists' of the seventeenth century had nothing in common with the respectable "Baptists' of our day, except their objection to pædo-baptism.

+ Moreover, Milton's treatise on 'Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes,' which contains the most noteworthy coincidences with the 'Liberty,' did not appear until 1659.

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