Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/239

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ENGLISH PROSE.
219

colour or rhythm which shines in Jeremy Taylor's. Yet an analysis of one of his quaintly titled sermons, as The White Devil or The Hypocrite Uncased, will yield perhaps more practical suggestion and trenchant exposure of vice than a similar treatment of a discourse preached at Golden Grove.

The Broad Churchmen of the day are most adequately represented by Chillingworth and Hales. In Broad Church—
Chillingworth
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them the growing spirit of moderation and toleration speaks in plain and straight-forward language. Their common endeavour is to find a basis of agreement for Christians in such points as are "few and clear." William Chillingworth[1] (1602-1644) was converted to Romanism, and reconverted by his own studies and the arguments of Laud. He summed up his position in The Religion of the Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation (1637). In a plain, weighty, nervous style, rising at times to rugged eloquence, he defends the Bible as the sole source of religious knowledge, and the Apostles' Creed as containing all that is necessary to salvation.

If Chillingworth was driven into moderation by Romanism, John Hales[2] (1584-1656) was sent in the same direction by Calvinism. He attended the famous Synod of Dort to report the proceedings to the English ambassador. The result of what he saw there of theological intolerance was that he "bid John Calvin good-night,"

  1. Works, 3 vols., 1838. Tulloch, op. cit.
  2. Golden Remains, ed. (with Life) by Bishop Pearson, 1657; reprinted and enlarged, 1673 and 1688. Tulloch, op. cit.