BOOKS.

DIARIES AND LETTERS OF PHILIP HENRY.* As to the value and interest of this rude but graphic self- portraiture of a man learned and able above the average, of exemplary life and devotion to principle, who lived through the Puritan Revolution, and, a Cavalier by birth and associations, lived and died a strict Presbyterian, there cannot be two opinions. It is singularly difficult for us, in whose days "no altar standeth whole," to pat ourselves in his place, to see ecclesiastical matters and the relative importance of the greater and minor doctrines of the Christian creed as he saw them ; but we can at least do honour to his consistency. In the mainten- ance of his principles he took joyfully the spoiling of his goods, he suffered gladly bonds and imprisonment, he sacrificed not only the hope of promotion—that he valued little—bat also, what he valued very much, the official charge of the souls of those among whom he lived, and the privilege of attending to their spiritual needs. He was a favourite pupil of Busby, the foster-father of so many Cavaliers and High Churchmen, and, on his visiting his former master, after refusing to comply with the Act of Uniformity, the Doctor asked him, " Prythee, child,

what made thee a Nonconformist P" "Truly, Sir," was the answer, "you made me one; for you taught me those things that hindered me from conforming." His account of his con- version is so characteristic, and the glimpse it gives of the great pedagogue so novel, that it deserves to be quoted verbatim :— "April 14 (or yer-abouts), 1647. The Lord was graciously pleased to bring me home effectually to himself by ye meanes of my Scheele- master, Mr. Richard Busby, at the time of ye solemne preparation for ye Communion then observ'd. The Lord recompense it a thousandfold into his bosome. I hope I ahal never forget. There had been Treatyes before between my soul and Jesus, with some weak overtures towards him, but then, then I think it was that the match was made."

In 1648, he became a student of Christ Church, but the Parlia- mentary Visitation speedily removed Hammond, Sanderson, Morley, and others, who would doubtless have greatly influenced the lad's theological development. In a vacation visit to London, he stayed with his father, who had an official post and lodgings in Whitehall, and was present at the execution of the King, "at the instant whereof there was such a grone by the thousands then present as I never heard before, and desire I may never

hear again." His views of the Regicide may be gathered, among other passages, from the entry in his Diary on the

anniversary of that event, in 1680 :—

"My opinion is, with all due reverence to the law-makers, that there is no warrant or precedent for such an observation in the Word of God ; there is of Thanksgiving days for mercies received, as those of Purim, but not of Humiliation days for sin committed, especially not after the judgment caused by that sin is at an end.— Zech. viii, 19; Heb. x., 2,3. I saw the blow given, but abhor the fact upon every remembrance, yet like not the annual commemoration of it, though perhaps many good men do."

Philip Henry, it will be seen, shared to the full the over-

• Diaries and Letters of Philip Henry, M.A., of Broad Oak, Fliatehire, A.D. 1631-106. Bdited by Matthew Henry Lee, M.A., Vicar of Reamer, tendon: LIVIAPenl, Trench, said Co. 1282. scrupulosity of the Puritans as a body. He might almost be described as a "Bible-intoxicated" man. He seems to need a Scripture ground to show that it is lawful to sing psalms in families. In the spirit of Bishop Bailey's Practice of Piety, he. hints that the Great Fire was a judgment for the desecration

of Sunday, too prevalent in the capital. He was once greatly- distressed to find that his church had been, according to. the precept of George Herbert, decorated with flowers. He.

observes his birthday as a day of mourning, because "the' Scripture mentions but two that observed their birthday with feasting, and they were both wicked men ;" but he does

not wholly condemn festivities at a christening, because he recollects that "Abraham feasted when he weaned the child."

One Sunday, he notes, "Bells rung for pleasure,—a sin." He mourns for the repair of the cross in a village churchyard. He cannot make up his mind as to the use of the font. He con- eiders the rites of the Church of England at the burial of the dead to be but superstitions vanities, though he lends a too willing ear to strange superstitions himself. His attitude towards the arts is far different from that of the enlightened Puritan, John Hutchinson. In 1674, he notes, at all events without dis- approval :—" Mr. Richard Hampden, of Hampden, finding a.. picture of the Trinity among his grandmother's goods, which fell to him and his sister at her death, for which he was bid £500, rather threw it into the fire and burnt it." It is, however,. pleasing to find that, in some particulars, Westminster influence prevailed over the extreme rigour of his Puritanism. At,

Whitchurch, he once saw Heautontimorumenos acted by the children; "It may be some may blame me," he adds, "for being present, but I judged it both lawful and expedient to encourage, being desired." Towards the close of his life, he sends to London for the new edition of the Greek Epigrams, and he certainly kept up his Latin and, his love of literature to

the end.

As was the case with so many of his party, Philip Henry strikes us as distinctly deficient in a sense of humour. There are- but few playful passages throughout the volume, and we cannot help thinking that the editor has robbed him of one of these. In 1685 he is represented as writing to his son Matthew, after- wards the famous commentator, who was then at Gray's Inn :— " I understand not where you dined ; if with Dr. Humph., it. was not well, for fasting, and especially going so into assem- blies, may be very prejudicial to your health, ere you are aware."

The passage, as it stands, is pointless, but Philip Henry no. doubt alluded to "dining with Duke Humphry," a well-known proverbial phrase for going dinnerless. There are one or two other blemishes in the editing. At p. 243, through wrong punctuation and misplacement of a note, the diarist is repre- sented as laying the scene of the battle of Edge Hill in Ireland'.. In 1665 he writes, under April 5, "Day of Humiliation for success of Navy against the Dutch ;" upon which the editor remarks, "The Dutch had nineteen ships sunk and taken ; the victors lost one." It need hardly be pointed out that

signal victories are not, as a rule, the occasions of a day of national humiliation, and that this particular fast-day was in- tended to implore a victory, not to return thanks for it. The remark that " Thistleworth [i.e., Isleworth] has not yet been.

identified" shows a want of adequate research. Many of the edi- tor's allusions to modern politics and the present posture of eccle- siastical affairs are better suited to a polemical pamphlet than to an edition of an historical document. In some cases, the minute details of the neighbourhood in which Philip Henry's life was spent might have been with advantage reserved for the local. history which the editor has in preparation. But after all allowance is made for these flaws, Mr. Lee deserves our thanks for his labour of love in collecting and piecing together these fragments of a good man's autobiography, and for the loving and reverential hand with which he has set before us the picture of his half-forgotten ancestor.

Philip Henry's position often reminds us of that of the more moderate among the Non-jurors. That he had a conscientious desire to conform, and that he entered upon the conferences with Lloyd and Dodwell here described with a mind genuinely open to conviction, is clear from several passages ; and by his partial conformity to the Church of England, he offended the extreme members of his own body. He sums up his position thus:—

" I do not conform to the Liturgy, &c., as a minister to read it, that I may bear my testimony against Prelacy. I do conform to the Liturgy as a private person, to hear it in public assembly, that I may bear my testimony against Independency, looking upon both of them as by-paths, the one on the left hand, the other on the right,

and the truth between them. Three things I do not like in the Inde- pendent way :—(1), That they nnchurch the nation; (2), that they pluck up the hedge of parish order ; (3), that they throw the Ministry oommon, and allow persons to preach who are nnordained."

Few of our readers will rise from a study of this book without feeling that it was well for the spiritual and temporal interests of England that the Presbyterians did not pre- vail. In that iron ecclesiastical system there was scant room for toleration, and many a passage in the diaries before us might be quoted in justification of Milton's complaint that "new presbyter is but old priest writ large." In 1670, Henry writes how one Richard Tapping, after leaving the Church of England, had become a Quaker, "by whose persuasion or by what temptation I know not, but I imagine it might be through want and by the instigation of Butters." Himself a seceder from the Church of his fathers, he cannot imagine a change in a different direction from that which he had himself taken to be the result of honest conviction. Afterwards, he records Tup- ping's death, "without repentance that I know of for his great apostacy from the truth, denying Baptism and Lord's Supper to be Gospel ordinances, expecting justification by a righteous- ness within him." Far different from this was the large spirit of toleration which, in their better hours, animated Cromwell and the Independents, and which, though baffled for a while by the combination of Presbyterians and Cavaliers that brought about the Restoration, was finally triumphant in a measure at the Revolution, and has since become a part of the fibre of the English nation.

Many of the chief historical personages of the time pass across the stage. An attempt has recently been made to white- wash Scroggs ; and Jeffreys (who, by the way, appears as two distinct persons in the index) is here presented to us in a more favourable light than usual. He seems, at the assizes for Flint- shire, to have expressed disapproval of the rigorous execution of the statutes against the Nonconformists, and to have had a particular kindness for Philip Henry. "He spoke with some respect," we are told, "of Mr. Henry, saying he knew him and his character well, and that he was a great friend of his mother's (Mrs. Jeffreys, of Acton, near Wrexham, a very pious, good woman); and that sometimes, at his mother's request, Mr. Henry had examined him in his learning when he was a schoolboy, and had commended his proficiency." A story is told of Monk— surely one of the smallest men whom the irony of fate ever chose to be the arbiter of a nation's destinies—that he died with cards in his hand, and that his last words were, "Who must have the stock ?"

It must suffice to say that whoever masters this book will gain more insight into the course of the ecclesiastical and political history of the time than could be earned by the study of many formal treatises. But it is pleasant to turn from the dust and din of theological controversies, where the bandying of texts goes for so much and Christian charity for so little, and from the mire of political intrigue and corruption, to the idyllic picture of a good man's private life, in the sweet English country which our fathers knew, presented to us in Henry's diaries. It is a simple record of a family in which there is no waste and no want, where much joy is chequered with much sorrow, but where domestic purity and the fear of God sanctify alike the sorrow and the joy. It is a country and a life which have passed away for ever; but it is fortunate for England that she possessed, in an age when vice and corruption were rampant in high places, centres of light and virtue such as Philip Henry's household. A more attractive domestic interior it would be difficult to find in any age ; and though the sense of beauty and humour, and the cultivation of an Evelyn, throw no glamour upon the page, yet the book that contains the record of Philip Henry's life at Broad Oak will have a singular charm for those who love the past, its pictures and its lessons.