word must be said of the irreligious, and it is here that the contrast between those days and our own comes out most strongly. Between every party in the Church then and now there is a parallel, but the immense body of indifference and practical atheism, as well as the militant atheism of a smaller section in our own day, is without a counterpart. There was a certain measure of indifference without doubt; there were always scoffers, worldly-minded men and women without an interest beyond the pleasure and amusement of the moment, but they were discountenanced, out of fashion, so to speak; they had the grace of shame, and more often than not, like poor Carew, they repented and made a good end. A certain amount of atheism and materialism were to be found. Sir Thomas Browne quotes, not without an implication of its truth, the saying current in Italy, Ubi tres medici duo athei, but the sceptic of that age shrugged his shoulders and went his way; he did not attack the Church; that was left to the religious enthusiast who thought his own doctrine the more spiritual.

Bishop Earle's notion of a 'Skeptic' comes very near an actual description of Chillingworth, whom he must have had opportunity of knowing well in frequent meetings at Great Tew, and who certainly was not an unbeliever according to modern ideas, but would rather be described as a man of unsettled opinions. He is,' says the satirical bishop, 'toss'd to and fro, putting his foot in 'heresies as tenderly as a cat into water, overthrown by Bellarmin, swayed by Socinus and Vorstius.' This reads like a tolerably accurate diagnosis of Chillingworth's religious history.

There was a great deal of free discussion, and in such a house as Falkland's, an open unreserved expression of convictions or of half-formed views, which must have been dangerous in times when conformity was a thing to be legally insisted on under pains and penalties. However, probably all the guests knew and could trust each other,

1 Earle's Microcosmography.

though they might hold the most divergent opinions. Misunderstandings and false reports of what was said or held did notwithstanding get about, and it is not surprising to find that old gossip Aubrey asserting that Falkland was himself a Socinian. It is true that he

was one of the first in England to procure and read the writings of Socinus, but he it was who, when Chillingworth was bitten, as he was with every fresh heresy, completely worsted him in argument, as Sunderland testified. Falkland's sisters, on the other hand, were persuaded that he was at heart a Catholic, and only withheld from joining his mother's church by a resolution he had made of not changing his religion till he was forty, an age he did not live to see. So open was his mind, so winning the beauty of his character, that men of every shade of opinion have always desired to claim him for their own. Macaulay would see in him a Puritan at heart, while to Matthew Arnold he is the martyr of sweetness and light. He was wide-minded in an intolerant age, with imagination enough to put himself in the place of others and see things from their point of view; he liked to make himself acquainted with opinions before he condemned them, but he certainly died in full communion with the Church of England, since his last act before going into the battle, in which he laid down his life, was to receive the Blessed Sacrament at the hands of an English priest.

The religious influences brought to bear on him were diverse there was first his mother, whose self-sacrificing devotion to the Church of her adoption cannot but have touched his warm heart; there was his wife, no less saintlike in her piety, of a somewhat rigid and narrow Protestantism; while among his inner circle of friends every shade of opinion might be found. One member of his household, whose name is never prominent, since his silent and melancholy temper kept him always in the background, was his chaplain Hugh Cressy, who later became a Roman Catholic and a Benedictine monk, under

the name of Serenus. He wrote many books, amongst them a History of the Church in Brittany, and from all we glean of him was a man with whom Falkland was likely to have much intimate converse. Two members of the old circle, Hyde and Dr. Earle, were much grieved at the alteration they found in him after his conversion, and deplored it to each other. Methinks apostacy too 'cholerick a word towards so a friend,' writes Hyde, but wishes that he had remained a layman. His friends, says Wood, find great mutations in him as to parts and 'vivacitie, and he seemed to some to be possessed with 'strange notions, and to others a reserved person, little 'better than a melancholic.' Perhaps these 'strange

' notions' were the ideas of the Quietists which he imbibed from intercourse with Molinos.

Two strong influences there were to keep Falkland loyal to the church of his baptism; they were his friendship with Edward Hyde, who was a churchman of the simple old-fashioned sort, and for whose opinions he had the highest respect, and the example of the king. It cannot but have had a marked effect on a mind so open to religious influences as was his, in his daily intercourse with Charles, to see him maintaining, whether in the dissipations of the court or the distractions of the camp, the same strict rule of prayer and meditation, to find that neither the threats of foes nor the advice of well-meaning friends could shake the constancy of his resolve to maintain intact the church whose appointed guardian he was; and although Falkland was frequently provoked with him for not following what he considered the wisest and most statesmanlike course, the serenity and fortitude with which the king met adverse fortune showed that his religion was not a mere form. He was,' said Hyde, who had equal opportunities for intimate knowledge, 'the best Christian 'I have ever known.'

CHAPTER XIV

THE RELIGIOUS LIFE

AFTER the dissolution of the religious houses throughout the country, the life devoted exclusively to the service of God must be sought chiefly in the parsonage, and there were to be found holy lives not unworthy to be set beside those of a St. Francis d'Assisi or a St. Vincent de Paul. The ideal to which such lives should conform is very beautifully pictured by George Herbert in his Country Parson, and the more convincingly inasmuch as his own portrait, drawn by the hand of Izaak Walton, corresponds closely with it.

It was marked by a strictness in strong contrast with the easy-going laxity of the century which preceded and the one which followed, a strictness which the Evangelical revival of Wesley and Whitfield endeavoured to restore, and which the Tractarian Movement more successfully brought back, at the least as an ideal to be aimed at. The Country Parson was to wed Holy Poverty; 'knowing 'that country folk live hardly, he must not be greedy to get, nor niggardly to keep . . . he avoids all luxury, especially drinking, because it is the most popular vice.' The rule of his life as regards money is to simplicity in living, and charity to the poor. His fare plain but wholesome, the plenishing of his house simple, 'but clean, 'whole and sweet; his apparel plain, but reverend and 'clean, without spots or dust or smell; the purity of his 'mind breaking out and dilating itself even in his body,

'clothes, and habitation.' We may perceive here the niceness of the man whose only fault, while he lived in the world, was said by his tutor to have been 'that he kept himself too much retired, and at too great a distance 'from all his inferiors; and his clothes seemed to prove 'that he put too great a value on his parts and parentage.'

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The country parson's character for uprightness must be unblemished; 'because country people do much esteem 'their word, it being the Life of Buying and Selling, the Parson must be strict in keeping his; his yea is yea, ' and nay, nay.' He should have a knowledge of tilling and pasturage and all farming operations, not only in order that he may manage his own glebe with discretion, but also that he may enter intelligently into the anxieties and troubles of his parishioners. But his chief study is that of Holy Scripture, comparing passage with passage, aided by commentaries and the writings of the Fathers. 'From them, the Schoolmen, and later writers he hath composed a body of Divinity which is the store house ' of his sermons. . . This body he made by way of 'expounding the Church Catechism; to which all divinity 'may easily be reduced. For it being indifferent in itself 'to choose any method, that is best to be chosen of < which there is likeliest to be most use. Now catechising 'being a work of singular and admirable benefit to the church of God, and a thing required under canonical ' obedience, the expounding of our catechism must needs 'be the most useful form.' He must also be versed in cases of conscience, that he may be able to direct souls.

The conception of the priestly office is very striking. The priest appears before God 'not as himself alone, but 'as presenting with himself the whole congregation; 'whose sins he then bears, and brings with his own to the heavenly Altar to be bathed and washed in the 'Sacred Laver of Christ's Blood.' Not only is his own manner reverent and grave, but he instructs his people in reverent behaviour; 'by no means enduring either talking,