And all that band them to resist
His uncontrollable intent;

His servants He with new acquist

Of true experience, from this great event,
With peace and consolation hath dismist,
And calm of mind all passion spent."

In this spirit Milton finished his work, and held fast the confidence of his young life firm unto the end. On Sunday, the 8th of November, 1674, God took him into the Paradise above, into the nearer sight of those things which he had seen afar off, and was persuaded of by faith.

CHAPTER XIV.

JEREMY TAYLOR, BUNYAN, AND BAXTER.

ALTHOUGH the seventeenth century was a time of religious contention, the strife was not, for the most part, a battle for the essential truths of Christianity against its foes, but rather a warfare of opinion amongst its followers in regard to matters of detail. There was among all parties a strong, deep faith in the essential truths of religion, and a very earnest aspiration after a holy faithful life. It was a matter of deep concern to find out the right, and, at all costs, to hold fast to it. Even in the heat of the conflict, it is impossible to shut our eyes to this, unless we are wilfully determined to misrepresent to ourselves the true spirit at work on all sides, and are seeking to exalt one party at the expense of truth. This depth of earnestness and this firm grasp of the first principles of the same religion is an immortal bond of union between those who to a mere partisan seem to be separated by a great gulf from one another; and it is this which really brings into closest relation three such writers as Jeremy Taylor in the Church, Richard Baxter the Presbyterian, and John Bunyan among the Baptist section of the Independents. In strong faith and holy aspiration they rise together above the controversies of contending sects, and leave behind them works which have an enduring life of use and preciousness for every age and every form of Christianity. We take these three great men as representing each of the religious divisions of the time, and we shall find them all three engaged in the

political conflict-Taylor a chaplain to the Royal army, Baxter chaplain to Cromwell's Ironsides, Bunyan a soldier in the Royalist army. Then we find all three suffering imprisonment Taylor for his Church principles, under the rule of the Independents; Baxter and Bunyan for their Nonconformity, at the restoration of the Church; and in each case the time of imprisonment was a resting-time, used for writing books for the service and help of all Christians. Each left witness also that--

"Stone walls do not a prison make.
Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage."

Jeremy Taylor was the son of a barber at Cambridge. He was born in 1613. After an elementary education at the Free School, he entered Caius College as a sizar in 1626. At twenty he took his M. A. degree, and was admitted into holy orders. John Bunyan that year was a little boy five years old, playing, perhaps, with the pots and kettles which his father mended; and Richard Baxter was a lad of thirteen working hard at school.

Soon after Taylor's ordination, a college friend of his, who was Lecturer at St. Paul's, asked him to take his place for a while. Tayior went up to London, and began to preach. Very soon his natural eloquence and the peculiar beauty of his style attracted much attention. Archbishop Laud sent for him to preach before him, and was so much charmed by his sermon that he procured for him a Fellowship at All Souls', Oxford, and made him one of his chaplains. In 1637 Juxon, Bishop of London, gave Taylor the living of Uppingham. Here he married, and lived for the next five years such a life as Herbert's in his quiet country parish. Then the war broke out, and Taylor joined the Royal army at Oxford as chaplain. Of his life at this time

we know but little; he had launched on the "stormy sea of troubles" of which he afterwards speaks, for in the same year that he joined the army he lost his wife, and was deprived by the Parliament of his living. His home at Uppingham was now entirely broken up, and he followed the fortunes or rather misfortunes of the Royal army. In 1644 we find him in Wales, where he was taken prisoner by the Parliamentary troops-probably at the taking of Cardigan Castle. How long he remained a prisoner is not known, but the Royal cause was daily losing ground; and the next year the battle of Naseby decided the fortunes of the Royalists.

When Taylor was released he determined on remaining in Wales, for here he thought he might live in greater quietness than in England, "where," as he says, "the great storm had dashed the vessel of the Church all in pieces." He joined another clergyman, William Nicholson, afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, in opening a school. They took together a house called Newton Hall, at Llanvihangel, near Grongar Hill, in Carmarthenshire. About this time Jeremy Taylor married his second wife, who had property in Carmarthenshire, and this also may have helped to fix him in Wales.

Here Taylor found a quiet time for thought over the conflicting questions and difficulties of the day, and for meditation on the higher duties of individual life. Here he found good work to do in his school, and in instructing those around him; and here he met with friends whose perfect sympathy and constancy of love refreshed his heart after the changes and troubles of the stormy time. These friends were Lord and Lady Carbery, who lived at the great house of Llanvihangel called the Golden Grove.

Lord Carbery had been on the king's side during the war, but he was a man greatly respected by both parties, and was allowed after the battle of Marston Moor to retire

to the Golden Grove, and live quietly on his estate. Lady Carbery was a woman of great goodness and sweetness of character, and was a true friend of Taylor's until her death. About three or four years afterwards Lord Carbery married again, and his second wife we have met with before; she was the Lady Alice Egerton, for whom Milton had written the part of the Lady in the masque of “ Comus ;" and the high principle and purity which Milton taught in his beautiful poem, and which he saw, perhaps, that she then truly represented, she preserved through life. As Lady Alice Carbery she became also the friend of Jeremy Taylor.

We have seen that Taylor now had leisure for calm thought over the troubles of the time. He saw how the divisions, the strife, and the persecutions arose from two main ideas which were held the strongest by the best and truest of men. These were, on the one hand, the fair dream of one united Church; and, on the other, the earnest desire that Christians should be faithful to God's truth in doctrine and form. The first led Laud and others like-minded to seek by persecution to force the Puritans into the Church, and the second led the Puritans to attempt to do away with the Church when the power passed into their hands. But men like Milton and Taylor saw that for the unity of the Church there must be a wider extension of freedom and more love, for it is simply impossible that all shall see things alike, and no healing of the enmity between Christians could be brought about by trying to make them all hold the same opinions; the only way to peace was through each granting liberty to another to differ from himself, and yet loving him as a brother all the time. Milton and Taylor, thus one in their larger view and wider love, differed in the details of their plan. Milton would allow small separate congregations of persons who agreed in their opinions, trusting to a general spirit of love for uniting them as Christian brethren in one