church in Aldermanbury. On one occasion the preacher, who ought to have been there, not appearing, the congregation became urgent for Mr Calamy to take possession of the pulpit. After some entreaty, and to prevent a disappointment, he yielded, and preached from 1 Sam. iv. 13, "Lo, Eli sat upon a seat by the way-side watching, for his heart trembled for the ark of God," &c. The consequence of his temerity was a warrant from the lord-mayor for his apprehension, upon which he was committed to Newgate. This act of severity called around him such a concourse of persons of all ranks, and excited so much dissatisfaction and resentment among the people, that in a few days he was discharged by an express order from the king. He lived to witness the desolations of the city of London, both by plague and by fire. Being driven in a coach through the ruins, he is said by Mr Baxter to have taken it so much to heart, that when he returned home, he shut himself up in his chamber, and died within a month. He left in print several sermons preached before both houses of parliament, and funeral sermons for Dr S. Bolton, the earl of Warwick, and Mr Simeon Ash. The sermon which caused his imprisonment, with his farewell sermon, may be seen in the London collection. He published also, The Godly Man's Ark,' and a vindication of himself against Mr Burton. He took part, as before stated, in the publications by Smectymnuus, and in the Vindication of the Presbyterian Government and Ministry,' 1650, as well as in the 'Jus. Div. Minist. Evang. et Anglicani,' 1654. A Treatise of Meditation,' taken by a hearer of his sermons, was printed clandestinely after his death, which occurred on the 26th of October, 1666. Mr Calamy had several children. The eldest, who was named Edmund, was minister of Moreton, in Essex. A second son was Dr Benjamin Calamy, a zealous conformist. The third son, named James, became a conformist, and possessed the living of Cheriton-bishops, Devonshire. Jeremy Taylor. BORN A. D. 1613.-DIED A. D. 1667. THE seventeenth century was the heroic age of English theology. The divines of that period, those at least whom we must regard as the fit exponents of the moral and intellectual character of the class of men to which they belonged,-were a Titanic race; they had a giant energy of conception and strength of purpose about them; they exhibited a higher order of feeling,—a sublimer range, and withal a more settled dignity of thought, than is witnessed in the ordinary sons of men; their enterprises were the conceptions of mighty minds, fully conscious of inward power, and dauntless in every purpose. Prominent amongst these master-spirits stands the subject of our present memoir. Jeremy Taylor was born at Cambridge in the month of August, 1613. His father pursued in that place the then respectable calling of a barber. Amongst his paternal ancestors was the celebrated Christian martyr, Dr Rowland Taylor of Hadleigh, whose life and death are so beautifully pourtrayed by Fox, the martyrologist. At three years 1 |