Sir Christopher Wren and His Times (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1852 edition. Excerpt: ... A D. 1655] BISHOP BOSSUET. 79 painful to children; both of them composed hymns and psalms proportioned to the capacity of common congregations; both, nearly at the same time, set the glorious example of publicly recommending and supporting general toleration, and the liberty both of the pulpit and the press.*" To these antitheses and coincidences others may be added. The prelate, in his younger days, approached Roman Catholicity in religion with as much sincerity and ability as Bossuet, in the same age, approached Protestantism in his "Exposition of the Roman Catholic Faith," both with the view of reconciling differences, and restoring the purity of the Christian Church. Milton, on the contrary, who wore "his heart upon "his sleeve," could so little disguise his hatred of Popery, during his travels through Italy, that it hindered him from receiving the full share of honours that his congenial soul inspired in that land of fine art and poetry. Nay, when his politic friend, Sir Henry Wotton, who, to use his own words, was "a man sent "abroad to lie for the good of his country," could not dissuade him from avowing his principles of reform among a people with whom Atheism was more pardonable than Protestant heresy. Taylor, however, detested Popery as cordially as Milton, who has been charged with being a Papist in disguise, a Pyrrhonist, a Calvinist, a Socinian, a Deist, an Atheist; but Milton knew that calling names did but a temporary injury; for, according to their notions, he says, in his recently-recovered treatise On ChrisTian Doctrine, "to have branded any one at random with this opprobrious mark" (heresy, which, in another work he calls "a Greek apparition," and railing in an unknown tongue), "is to have reflated him, without any...