Scotch people, to force the covenant upon the Episcopal clergy in England, seven thousand of them went forth from their livings to encounter poverty and danger. An anecdote of Prideaux, the deprived Bishop of Worcester, will illustrate the straits to which they were subjected. When he was asked by a friend how he did, he replied, "Never better in my life, only I have too great a stomach, for I have eaten that plate which the sequestrators left me. I have eaten a great library of excellent books. I have eaten a great deal of linen, much of my brass, some of my pewter, and now I am come to eat iron, and what will come next I know not." Unordained Puritans were put into their places; and the one fifth of the value of the livings which in every case was nominally by the directions of Parliament to be given to the deprived clergyman, rarely found its way to his help. The clergy and their families were thus not merely left to perish with want, but were denounced, persecuted, maltreated, exiled, and slain. On the restoration of the monarchy these Puritan intruders were, with great injustice it seems to us, permitted to remain in the livings into which they had been thrust, oftentimes in opposition to the wishes of the parishioners and of the patron, and always to the detriment of the real incumbent, provided that they accepted Episcopal ordination, and used the Liturgy, or as they in their dull jocundity called it the lethargy of the Church of England. A certain number, about one thousand, of which the chief were Baxter and Calamy, declined to consent even to this compromise. These men had admiring followers who would more than compensate them for their apparent self-denial, and in a book of sermons now before us it is amusing to observe how these Nonconformists pose as injured martyrs in their addresses to their congregations, when the real truth of the matter is that they were simply removed from what originally they had no right to enjoy, and that even that mortification would have been spared them if they had been willing to conform to the ordinances of the Church, the property of which they held in usurped and illegal possession. Their complaints resemble the whinings of the detected thief when he has been compelled to disgorge the goods that he has purloined. During the regime of Puritanism in England not merely had all innocent sports and pleasures been forbidden, but scandalous deeds of sacrilege had been committed. The horses of Puritan dragoons were stabled in S. Paul's Cathedral. In several churches the chancels were turned into shambles, and the carcases of oxen and sheep were cut up on the Holy Table, while throughout the sacred edifices men smoked and drank. In other churches swine were baptized in the font. Painted windows, carved images, elaborate tracery, rare treasures of ecclesiastical art, were recklessly destroyed. The bodies of departed saintly men, such as Archbishop Parker, were exhumed, treated with gross indignity, and finally buried in heaps of manure. Everything reverent, everything lovely, everything of good repute seemed to awaken the wrath of these illiterate fanatics. No wonder that licentiousness and irreligion followed on the Restoration, when all the innocent joys of life had been forbidden, and all the sacred objects of religious reverence desecrated during the supremacy of Puritanism. At Peterborough Cosin did not long continue; the king at first thought of promoting him to the Deanery of Durham, but afterwards bethinking him how considerable were his learning and piety, and how severe had been his sufferings, he conferred on him the Bishopric of Durham. With the Diocese of Durham, Cosin was already familiar from his intimacy with Bishop Neile, and from the fact that he had held a prebend in that glorious Cathedral which rising boldly on a rock over the river Wear, was erected to be, as Scott in "Harold the Dauntless" says, "half Church of GOD, half castle 'gainst the Scots." It would be impossible for a Cathedral to occupy a more commanding position, and dull must be the soul that could contemplate unmoved from, say, such a point as Prebend's Bridge, the noble fane as it rises over the wooded banks of the murmuring river. "Fair on the halfseen stream the sunbeams danced And fair between the gothic turrets glanced. Over the diocese glorified by the possession of such a Cathedral Cosin was now called to preside. At Westminster Abbey on December 2, 1660, he was consecrated Bishop of Durham; the consecration sermon being preached by the celebrated Dr. Sancroft, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury and chief of the Non-jurors. Over the Prince Bishopric of Durham, (Durham was until the time of Van Mildert a county palatine in which all power was lodged in the hands of the episcopal ruler,) Cosin presided truly as a Prince Bishop. He reformed many abuses that had crept in during the late anarchy. By his courtesy and hospitality he won over many of those who were hostile to or alienated from the Church. By his sincerity and care for the performance of public worship, he aroused a spirit of reverence throughout the diocese. During the Savoy Conference, in which he took part, and in which an effort was made, although as it turned out an unsuccessful effort, to arrange some terms of religious agreement between Nonconformists and Churchmen, he won general approval by his conciliatory manners. In the revision of the Prayers that resulted from that abortive conference he took an important part, and to him we owe amongst other contributions the version, as we have it at present in our Book of Common Prayer, of the "Veni Creator Spiritus." This hymn, supposed to have been originally composed by S. Ambrose, is to be found in the services of the Roman Catholic Church for Pentecost from a very early date. It is to be met with too in the Service for the Consecration of a Bishop in the Roman Catholic Church as early as 1100. It was inserted into the Service for the Ordination of a Priest in that Church some three hundred years later. The Lutheran Churches have adopted it in their form of the ordination of a Priest. In the first Ordinal of King Edward VI. it was translated into English metre. The neater, more compact, and more modern form which is now generally used at the ordination of a Priest, a form that commences, "Come, HOLY GHOST, our souls inspire," we owe to Cosin. This translation made by Cosin of the "Veni Creator Spiritus" is the sole composition of that bishop that is to be found in "Hymns Ancient and Modern." It is there placed amongst the hymns for Whitsuntide, and is numbered 157. Amongst the several characteristics for which the episcopacy of Cosin at Durham was remarkable, the most striking was the lavish and yet intelligent generosity with which he expended on charitable objects the greater part of the emoluments of his See. For eleven years he held the Bishopric of Durham, and during that period he bestowed it is known in charity twenty-two thousand pounds. This sum from the altered value of money would be equivalent to at least one hundred thousand in the present day. When we remember that he had returned from abroad in an entirely impoverished condition, and that he was not in possession of any private means, we readily perceive what a considerable portion of his official income he must have devoted to charitable purposes. In addition to this expenditure, of which there is a public record, and which was bestowed for the most varied beneficent objects in the most varied localities, there were his continual acts of private benevolence of which no memorial, at least on earth, is to be found. His public acts of beneficence were expended upon the Cathedrals of Durham, Norwich, and S. Paul's, London. But besides these he contributed to the relief of Christian captives amongst the Moors in Algiers, to the help of the distressed royalists, many of whom were left utterly destitute by their thoughtless King Charles II., to the assistance of the poor in Durham, York, Peterborough, Norwich, Bishop Auckland, Darlington, Stockton, Gateshead, Brancepeth, Chester-le-Street, Houghton-le-Spring, Northallerton, Creeke, Howden, Lichfield, to the restoration of the Chapel of Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham and Auckland in the time of Edward I., a chapel that the Puritan Sir A. Haselrigg, to whom during the Great Rebellion the episcopal property had been assigned, had caused to be demolished, the founding of Scholarships at S. Peter's College, Cambridge, and the restoration of the Chapel of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Of the portion of the money that was left by will his daughters, Lady Gerard and Lady Burton, were made the administrators, his only son having been disinherited, and left eventually only a moderate annuity on account of his perversion to Roman Catholicism. Two other daughters he had, one of whom married Dr. Granville, brother of the Earl of Bath. This Dr. Granville was afterwards Dean of Durham. For the last few years of his life, the Bishop had been in a bad state of health, and from the effects of a combined calcareous and dropsical affection, he after the endurance of much pain, expired on January 15th, 1672, at his house in Pallmall, London. Carlton, Bishop of Bristol, and Archdeacon Basire were amongst those who officiated at his funeral. His body was for some time deposited in a vault in London, but in April, 1672, it was conveyed to Bishop Auckland in Durham, where, on the twenty-ninth of that month it was buried in the chapel belonging to the Castle under a tomb of black marble, with the annexed inscription, which in his lifetime the Bishop had himself composed. In non morituram memoriam anno Dom. M.DCLXV. in Festo S. Petri. Obiit XV die mensis Januarii, et hic sepultus est, expectans felicem corporis sui resurrectionem ac vitam in cœlis æternam. Requiescat in pace. Beati mortui qui moriuntur in Domino, requiescunt enim a laboribus suis. The works of Cosin amount to nineteen in number. As some of these however are of a controversial character, and treat of either minute points of ritual or abstruse questions of doctrine, they are never likely to become generally popular, and the greater number of them have sunk into entire obscurity. They all display, however, considerable learning and ability, and while we may regret that Cosin squandered his mental powers and his labours too often upon ephemeral and unedifying discussions, we cannot withhold our tribute from the logical acumen, the reverential spirit, and the straight-forward honesty with which all his writings are replete. Two lessons may be clearly learned from a perusal of Cosin's life. These lessons are charity of action, and charity of judgment. Cosin had "an eye for piety, and a hand open as the day to melting charity." Here is charity of action. We may learn a lesson of charity in judgment from a consideration of the important fact that while Cosin was a high Anglican, nay, we may say an advanced Ritualist in his views and ceremonial observances, he was yet thoroughly loyal to the Church of which he was a member, and thoroughly opposed to the pretensions of the Church of Rome. The whole tenour of his life proves this, and the concluding words of his will distinctly declare it. In these words he speaks, "I do profess with holy asseveration and from my very heart, that I am now, and ever have been from my youth altogether free and averse from the corruptions and impertinent, newfangled, or papistical superstitions and doctrines long since introduced contrary to the Holy Scriptures, and the rules and customs of the ancient fathers. But in what part of the world soever any churches are extant, bearing the name of CHRIST and professing the true Catholic faith and religion, worshipping and calling upon GOD the FATHER, the SON, and the HOLY GHOST, with one heart and voice, if I be now hindered actually to join with them, either by distance of countries or variance amongst men, or by any hindrance whatsoever, yet always in |