‘Nunc Dimittis and De Profundis are two papistical songs.’ ‘Lent is made a religious fast,’ and so forth. Two points only required an answer: (1) seven sacraments are mentioned, but Cosin clearly showed that he distinguished markedly between the two sacraments of the Gospel and the five commonly but not so truly called sacraments; (2) prayers for the departed, but Cosin pointed out ‘the tytle at the top of the page was, “Praiers at the point of death,”’ not after it, and that the printer omitted to place in the margin, as he was directed to do, ‘repeating the sentences untill the soule were departed.’ Cosin, however, contends that ‘the substance of these two prayers be nothynge els but what we all used to say, even after we heare a man is dead, God's peace be with him, and God send him a joyfull resurrection, which kind of praiers for the dead the Archbishopp of Armagh doth highly approve and acknowledge to be the old and perpetuall practice of the church of Christ.’ Of course, after the Restoration the tide turned, and ‘Cosin's Devotions’ became one of the favourite devotional works with churchmen of the period.
Cosin was a most uncompromising enemy to popery. In France he wrote his ‘Historia Transubstantialis Papalis’ at the request of Gilbert Talbot, who had undertaken to argue the matter out with ‘a German prince’ (the Duke of Newbourg), in the presence of Charles II at Cologne, and apparently did not feel quite equal to the task. Cosin readily consented, and showed in his treatise that the church of England held the doctrine of a real presence without in any way countenancing the doctrine of transubstantiation. It was not published until nineteen years after it was written (in 1675), and three years after the death of the author; but the title says it was ‘allowed by him to be published a little before his death, at the earnest request of his friends.’ It was then given to the world, with an interesting preface by Dr. Durel, in the original Latin. In the following year (1676) an English translation was published by Luke de Beaulieu. Cosin also wrote, in 1652, ‘Regiæ Angliæ Religio Catholica,’ at the request of Edward Hyde, afterwards earl of Clarendon, in order to give foreigners a right notion of the doctrine and discipline of the church of England as constituted by authority. This, too, was written in Latin, and was first published in Dr. Thomas Smith's ‘Vitæ,’ as a sort of appendix to the ‘Vita Joannis Cosini,’ in 1707. The most elaborate and important work which Cosin wrote during his exile, and the only one of them which he himself gave to the world, was ‘A Scholastical History of the Canon of Holy Scripture; or the certain indubitable Books thereof as they are received in the Church of England.’ Cosin tells us that Dr. Peter Gunning (afterwards bishop of Ely) ‘first requested him to make it a part of his employment,’ and the same Peter Gunning saw the work through the press when it was published in London in 1657. Cosin took so much pains over this learned work that he injured his eyesight. It was dedicated to Bishop Matthew Wren, then a prisoner in the Tower. It gives a history of all the books that were held canonical before the Council of Trent formed a new canon, and shows that the universal testimony of the church was for the books we have without the Apocrypha. Cosin also wrote many minor pieces, almost all of them bearing upon the same subject, viz. the position of the Anglican as opposed to the Romish church; but these scarcely require a separate notice. There is, however, one work of importance, which was not published until 1710, when Dr. Nicholls inserted it at the end of his ‘Comment on the Book of Common Prayer.’ It is entitled ‘Notes on the Book of Common Prayer,’ and contains (1) the first series of notes in the interleaved Book of Common Prayer, A.D. 1619; (2) the second series of notes in the interleaved Book of Common Prayer, A.D. 1638; (3) the third series in the manuscript book, and three appendices. The importance of this work to all who are interested in our Book of Common Prayer cannot be exaggerated.
Only twenty-two of Cosin's sermons are now extant, and these all belong to the period before he was bishop. They are in the style of the earlier part of the seventeenth century, before the quaint roughness of Andrewes was exchanged for the rather vapid smoothness of Tillotson. But in one respect they differ from the fashion of the day, in that they are but sparingly embellished with quotations from the learned languages, and then only from the Latin. Cosin's ‘Correspondence,’ in two volumes (1868 and 1870), edited by the Surtees Society, with an admirable introduction to each volume by Canon Ornsby, the editor, gives an interesting picture of the life and character of the man, and also of his friends and times. A full collection of Cosin's works was not published until the excellent edition, in five octavo volumes, of the ‘Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology’ was issued (1843–55). Dr. T. Smith, in 1692, began to prepare an edition, but did not carry it out. He inserts a short ‘Vita Joannis Cosini’ in his ‘Vitæ quorundam eruditissimorum, &c. Virorum,’ &c. (1707); but though he had the
