ANDOVER-HARVARD THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY

OCT 22 1914

HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL

HA2,815

LONDON: PRINTED BY JAMES NICHOLS,

46, HOXTON-SQUARE,

THIS large volume contains three distinct productions, all of them necessary to the completion of FULLER'S "Church History;" who, after recording in chronological order the founders, benefactors, and celebrated men of the various Colleges in Oxford, repeatedly directs his readers to "the History of the University of Cambridge," (the first of these three works,) for the corresponding information respecting the foundations, benefactions, and eminent persons of the latter University, of which he was a distinguished member; and to his venerable Alma Mater, as the reader will perceive, he has proved himself to be a dutiful son, rendering her all due honour and respect in this promised History, which has been received as the accredited guide of every subsequent academical historian.

The second is a brief "History of Waltham Abbey in Essex," of which Fuller was the curate in the latter years of the Inter-regnum, through the kindness of his right honourable friend and patron, the earl of Carlisle; to whom he dedicates the small book, and of whose ancestors he has given a delightful description in the dedication prefixed to the fourth book of his "Church History." This was one of the methods by which Divine Providence at that time preserved several of the eminent episcopal clergy from the common ruin and dispersion of their order, and from the rancorous molestation of their determined enemies. In the first sentence of "the History," he gratefully acknowledges the loving-kindness of his Heavenly Father in "having planted" him in such a calm retreat; and expresses a hope, that his endeavours to describe it "may prove exemplary to others, who dwell in the sight of remarkable monasteries, to do the like, and rescue the observables of their habitations from the teeth of time and oblivion,”—an exhortation which, certainly, has not been without effect, as may be seen in the multitude of good local Histories which soon afterwards made their appearance.

The third and most important work is "the Appeal of injured Innocence," which occupies more than one half of the present large volume; and is, in fact, a run

ning commentary on each of the eleven books of the "Church History,"-the "History of Cambridge" being generally reckoned as the twelfth. On another occasion I have declared, what I now repeat, concerning it :"Published in the year prior to the Restoration, it displays to better advantage, perhaps, than any or all of his former productions, the multifarious acquirements and wonderful intellectual resources of Fuller. Highly as I am reputed to venerate his antagonist, Peter Heylin, that staunch and sturdy royalist, I feel no hesitation in pronouncing Fuller the victor in this contest; not only from the general justness of his cause, but also for that which exalts him as a man and a Christian,-his playful wit, ingenuous candour, almost unfailing good-humour, and remarkable moderation." It embraces almost every topic within the range of human disquisition, from the most sublime mysteries of the Christian religion and the great antiquity of the Hebrew and Welsh languages, down to "the tale of a tub" and criticisms on Shakspeare's perversion of the character of sir John Falstaff. But the value of " the Appeal" cannot be too highly estimated when it is known to contain the discordant views of two eminent churchmen, the one classing himself with the high party, the other with the low,-on most momentous events in which they had themselves been actors, or of which they had been thoughtful spectators, and on principles and motives the temperate discussion of which will always be interesting to the sincere lover of truth, but which must be considered as of paramount importance to us in these days, when many of the same arguments are reproduced and brought into fresh collision. Yet it is gratifying to contemplate the state of amicable concord into which these two great masters of attack and defence were ultimately brought, respecting all the great principles which had been the subjects of their debate, after each of them had tendered his own opinion or explanation. On the matters of fact which concerned Fuller as an author,-who was then put on his literary trial before the public, to be declared worthy or unworthy of obtaining general credence, the results are favourable in the extreme; and such as tend fully to establish his reputation with posterity for a veritable historian, who wrote and published his great work, and this large defence of it, in troublous

times, when the recent political and religious agitations had scarcely been suffered to subside.

After perusing the instances of personal vanity which I have given in a note, (p. 396,) the reader will be prepared to divine the true cause of Heylin's infelicitous attack on Fuller in his Examen Historicum. He possessed great irritability of disposition; yet, like most men of warm temperament, he seems to have been scarcely conscious of this infirmity, and undoubtedly wrote the following sentence in great sincerity of heart:-" The party whom I am to deal with is so much a stranger to me, that he is neither beneficio nec injuriá notus; and therefore no particular respects have moved me to the making of these Animadversions." Fuller's reply to this is highly characteristic:-"I am glad to hear this passage from the Animadvertor, that I never did him any injury; the rather because some of my friends have charged me for provoking his pen against me. And though I pleaded, that neither in thought, word, nor deed, I ever did him any wrong, I hardly prevailed with them for belief: and now the Animadvertor hath cleared me, that I never did any injury unto him." In this sentence will be discerned. much of that sly waggery which "peeps out, ever and anon," in Fuller's pages. He was himself evidently well aware of the existence of some cause of offence on his part; and, notwithstanding his honest declaration to the contrary, Heylin has shown, (p. 449,) how much he was annoyed by a passage in "the History of Cambridge,' (p. 117,) in which Fuller mentions the reply of king Henry VI. to bishop Wainefleet; "a speech," says Fuller, "avouched by NO HISTORIAN," though in the same paragraph he asserts it to have been "first printed by Brian Twyne, Oxford Antiquary, and afterwards related by Dr. Heylin, a member of that University." In another passage, (Ch. Hist. vol. ii. p. 148,) he had described "St. Equitius, the pretended founder of our first English monks," in this style :-" But be he who he himself or any other pleaseth, (brother, if they will, to St. George on horseback,) he was never father of any monks in England." This roused the choler of Heylin, who prided himself on being the author of the very amusing "History of that most famous Saint and Soldier of Christ Jesus, St. George of Cappadocia;" and he

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has given expression to his kindled indignation in no measured terms. ("Appeal," p. 476.) This excitement, from similar slight and unintentional offences, induced him to employ low and abusive language, a specimen of which I give below in a note,* in which the manly and witty answer of Fuller, must confirm the good opinion which all well-natured men will have formed of his vast superiority in the delightful essentials of temper and genius.

In the "Appeal" it was the author's intention, as he announces it, (p. 291,) "to deal more fairly with the Animadvertor" than the latter had dealt with him; "and not here and there to pick out parcels, and cut off shreds," he says, "where they make most for my advantage; but I have presented the whole cloth of his book," &c. He proceeded in this honest course, of fully quoting his adversary's words and immediately subjoining his own reply, till he received an intimation from Heylin's stationer, (as the respectable publisher of those days was commonly designated,) that the faithful reprint of the entire work would operate to his pecuniary injury. Fuller therefore renders this, with other reasons, (" Appeal," p. 508,) why he should omit all further redundancies,

* DR. HEYLIN.-How wise the rest were, I am not able to say. But certainly our author showed himself "no wiser than Waltham's calf, who ran nine miles to suck a bull and came home athirst," as the proverb saith. His running unto Oxford, which cost him as much in seventeen weeks, as he had spent in Cambridge in seventeen years, was but a second sally to the first knight-errantry.

FULLER.-I can patiently comport with the Animadvertor's jeers; which I behold as so many frogs, that it is pretty and pleasing to see them hop and skip about, having not much harm in them. But I cannot abide his railings; which are like to toads, swelling with venom within them. Any one may rail who is bred but in Billingsgate-College: and I am sorry to hear such language from the Animadvertor, a Doctor in Divinity; seeing railing is as much beneath a Doctor, as against Divinity.

When Dr. Turner, a physician sufficiently known, gave the lie (at the earl of Pembroke's table) to the earl of Carnarvon: “I will take the lie from you;" replied the earl, "but I will never take physic from you." If such railing be consistent with the Doctor's Divinity, this once I will take the calf, but never learn Divinity from him.

Two things comfort me under his reviling. First. That no worse man than David himself complained, that he became "a PROVERB to his enemies," Psalm 1xix. 2. Secondly. Though a calf be a contemptible creature, passing for the emblem, not (with the dove) of simplicity, but of plain silliness; yet is it a clean one, and accepted of God for sacrifice, Heb. ix. 19. Whereas the snarling dog (though a creature of far more cunning and sagacity) was so odious and unclean, that by a peculiar law it was provided, that the price of a dog should not be brought into the house of God. Deut. xxiii. 18.—" Appeal of injured Innocence,” p. 519.