they had not been. But the piety of the christian church hath made some little provision towards an artificial immortality for brave and worthy persons; and the friendships which our dead contracted while they were alive, require us to continue a fair memory as long as we can; but they expire in monthly minds, or at most in a faint and declining anniversary; ἐπεὶ φίλος, ὅστις ἑταίρου Μέμνηται κταμένοιο καὶ ἄχνυται οὐκ ἔτ ̓ ἐοντος. And we have great reason so to do in this present sad accident of the death of our late most reverend primate, whose death the church of Ireland hath very great reason to deplore; and we have great obligation to remember his very many worthy deeds, done for this poor afflicted and despised church. St. Paul made an excellent funeral oration, as it were instituting a feast of all saints, who all died "having obtained a good report:" and that excellent preacher, in the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews, made a sermon of their commemoration. For since good men, while they are alive, have their conversation in heaven; when they are in heaven, it is also fit that they should, in their good names, live upon earth. And as their great examples are an excellent sermon to the living, and the praising them, when envy and flattery can have no interest to interpose, as it is the best and most vigorous sermon and incentive to great things; so to conceal what good God hath wrought by them, is great unthankfulness to God and to good men. When Dorcas died, the apostle came to see the dead corpse, and the friends of the deceased expressed their grief and their love, by showing the coats that she, whilst she lived, wrought with her own hands; she was a good needle-woman and a good housewife, and did good to mankind in her little way, and that itself ought not to be forgotten; and the apostle himself was not displeased with their little sermons, and that ευφημισμος which the women made upon that sad interview. But if we may have the same liberty to record the worthy things of this our most venerable father and brother, and if there remains no more of that envy which usually obscures the splendour of living heroes; if you can with your charitable though weeping eyes behold the great gifts of God with which he adorned this great prelate, and not object the failings of humanity to the participation of the graces of the Spirit, or think that God's gifts are the less because they are born in earthen vessels, Távtes yàọ kλúta δῶρα κερασσάμενοι φορέουσιν, for all men bear mortality about them, and the cabinet is not so beauteous as the diamond that shines within its bosom; then we may, without interruption, pay this duty to piety, and friendship, and thankfulness; and deplore our sad loss by telling a true and sad story of this great man, whom God hath lately taken from our eyes. He was bred in Cambridge, in Sidney College, under Mr. Hulet, a grave and a worthy man; and he showed himself not only a fruitful plant by his great progress in his studies, but made him another return of gratitude, taking care to provide a good employment for him in Ireland, where he then began to be greatly interested. It was spoken as an honour to Augustus Cæsar, that he gave his tutor an honourable funeral; and Marcus Antoninus erected a statue unto his; and Gratian the emperor made his master Ausonius to be consul; and our worthy primate, knowing the obligation which they pass upon us, who do "obstetricare gravidæ animæ," "help the parturient soul" to bring forth fruits according to its seminal powers, was careful not only to reward the industry of such persons, so useful to the church in the cultivating "infantes palmarum," "young plants," whose joints are to be stretched and made straight; but to demonstrate that his scholar knew how to value learning, when he knew so well how to reward the teacher. Having passed the course of his studies in the university, and done his exercise with that applause which is usually the reward of pregnant wit and hard study, he was removed into Yorkshire, where first, in the city of York, he was an assiduous preacher; but, by the disposition of the Divine Providence, he happened to be engaged at Northallerton in disputation with three pragmatical Romish priests of the Jesuits' order, whom he so much worsted in the conference, and so shamefully disadvantaged by the evidence of truth, represented wisely and learnedly, that the famous primate of York, Archbishop Matthews, a learned and an excellent prelate, and a most worthy preacher, hearing of that triumph, sent for him, and made him his chaplain; in whose service he continued till the death of the primate, but, in that time, had given so much testimony of his dexterity in the conduct of ecclesiastical and civil affairs, that he grew dear to his master. In that employment he was made prebendary of York, and then of Rippon, the dean of which church having made him his sub-dean, he managed the affairs of that church so well, that he soon acquired a greater fame, and entered into the possession of many hearts, and admiration to those many more that knew him. There and at his parsonage he continued long to do the duty of a learned and good preacher, and by his wisdom, eloquence, and deportment, so gained the affections of the nobility, gentry, and commons of that country, that at his return thither upon the blessed restoration of his most sacred majesty, he knew himself obliged enough, and was so kind as to give them a visit; so they, by their coming in great numbers to meet him, their joyful reception of him, their great caressing of him when he was there, their forward hopes to enjoy him as their bishop, their trouble at his departure, their unwillingness to let him go away, gave signal testimonies that they were wise and kind enough to understand and value his great worth. But while he lived there, he was like a diamond in the dust, or Lucius Quinctius at the plough; his low fortune covered a most valuable person, till he became observed by Sir Thomas Wentworth, lord president of York, whom we all knew for his great excellencies, and his great but glorious misfortunes. This rare person espied the great abilities of Doctor | gave him one of Arcadian home-spun, that it Bramhall, and made him his chaplain, and brought was warmer for him in winter and cooler in sumhim into Ireland, as one who, he believed, would mer. And for ever since, the church, by God's prove the most fit instrument to serve in that design, blessing and the favour of religious kings and which, for two years before his arrival here, he had princes, and pious nobility, hath been endowed with greatly meditated and resolved, the reformation of fair revenues, "inimicus homo," "the enemy" hath religion, and the reparation of the broken fortunes not been wanting, by pretences of religion, to take of the church. The complaints were many, the away God's portion from the church, as if his word abuses great, the causes of the church vastly nu- were intended as an instrument to rob his houses. merous; but as fast as they were brought in, so But when the Israelites were governed by a Stokρafast they were by the lord deputy referred back to ría, and "God was their king," and Moses his Dr. Bramhall, who, by his indefatigable pains, great lieutenant, and things were of his management,— sagacity, perpetual watchfulness, daily and hourly he was pleased, by making great provisions for them consultations, reduced, things to a more tolerable that ministered in the service of the tabernacle, to condition, than they had been left in by the schis- consign this truth for ever ;-that men, as they love matical principles of some, and the unjust prepos- God, at the same rate are to make provisions for his sessions of others, for many years before: for at the priests. For when himself did it, he not only gave reformation, the popish bishops and priests seemed the forty-eight cities, with a mile of glebe round to conform, and did so, that keeping their bishoprics about their city every way, and yet the whole counthey might enrich their kindred and dilapidate the try was but a hundred and forty miles long, or revenues of the church, which by pretended offices, thereabouts, from Dan to Beersheba; but besides this false informations, fee-farms at contemptible rents, they had the tithe of all increase, the first-fruits, ofand ungodly alienations, were made low as poverty ferings, vows, redemptions, and in short, they had itself, and unfit to minister to the needs of them that twenty-four sorts of dues, as Buxtorf relates; and served the altar, or the noblest purposes of religion: all this either brought to the barn home to them for hospitality decayed, and the bishops were easy to without trouble, or else, as the nature of the thing be oppressed by those that would; and they com- required, brought to the temple; the first to make it plained, but for a long time had no helper, till God more profitable, and the second to declare that they raised up that glorious instrument the Earl of Straf- received it not from the people, but from God, not ford, who brought over with him as great affections the people's kindness but the Lord's inheritance: to the church and to all public interests, and as ad- insomuch that this small tribe of Levi, which was mirable abilities, as ever before his time did invest not the fortieth part of the people, as the Scripture and adorn any of the king's vicegerents; and God computes them, had a revenue almost treble to any fitted his hand with an instrument good as his skill of the largest of the tribes." I will not insist on was great for the first specimen of his abilities and what Villalpandus observes," it may easily be read diligence in recovery of some lost tithes, being re- in the forty-fifth of Ezekiel, concerning that portion presented to his late majesty, of blessed and glorious which God reserves for himself and his service; but memory, it pleased his majesty, upon the death of whatsoever it be, this I shall say, that it is confessedly Bishop Downham, to advance the Doctor to the a prophecy of the gospel; but this I add, that they bishopric of Derry, which he not only adorned with had as little to do, and much less than a christian an excellent spirit and a wise government, but did priest; and yet in all the twenty-four courses the more than double the revenue, not by taking any poorest priest among them might be esteemed a rich thing from them to whom it was due, but by resumman. I speak not this to upbraid any man, or any ing something of the churches' patrimony, which by thing but sacrilege and murmur, nor to any other undue means was detained in unfitting hands. end but to represent upon what great and religious grounds the then bishop of Derry did, with so much care and assiduous labour, endeavour to restore the church of Ireland to that splendour and fulness; which as it is much conducing to the honour of God and of religion, God himself being the judge, so it is much more necessary for you than it is for us; and so this wise prelate rarely well understood it; and having the same advantage and blessing as now we have, a gracious king, and a lieutenant patron of religion and the church, he improved the "deposita pietatis," as Origen1 calls them, "the gages of piety," which the religion of the ancient princes and nobles of this kingdom had bountifully given to such a comfortable competency, that though there be place left for present and future piety to enlarge itself, yet no man hath reason to be discouraged in his duty; insomuch that as I have heard from a most • See Philo. περὶ, τοῦ τινὰ γέρα ἱερέων. P Tract. 25. in St. Matthew. But his care was beyond his diocess, and his zeal broke out to warm all his brethren; and, though by reason of the favour and piety of king James, the escheated counties were well provided for their tithes, yet the bishoprics were not so well, till the primate, then bishop of Derry by the favour of the lord lieutenant and his own incessant and assiduous labour and wise conduct, brought in divers impropriations, cancelled many unjust alienations, and did restore them to a condition much more tolerable; I say much more tolerable; for though he raised them above contempt, yet they were not near to envy; but he knew there could not in all times be wanting too many, that envied to the church every degree of prosperity so Judas did to Christ the expense of ointment; and so Dionysius told the priest, when himself stole the golden cloak from Apollo, and m Numb. i. 46. iii. 39. worthy hand, that at his going into England he gave account to the archbishop of Canterbury of 30,000l. a year, in the recovery of which he was greatly and principally instrumental. But the goods of this world are called "waters" by Solomon: stolen waters are sweet, and they are too unstable to be stopped some of these waters did run back from their proper channel, and return to another course than God and the laws intended; yet his labours and pious counsels were not the less acceptable to God and good men, and therefore by a thankful and honourable recognition, the convocation of the church of Ireland has transmitted in record to posterity their deep resentment of his singular services and great abilities in this whole affair. And this honour will for ever remain to that bishop of Derry; he had a Zerubbabel who repaired the temple and restored its beauty; but he was the Joshua, the high priest, who under him ministered this blessing to the congregations of the Lord. But his care was not determined in the exterior part only, and accessaries of religion; he was careful, and he was prosperous in it, to reduce that di- | vine and excellent service of our church to public and constant exercise, to unity and devotion; and to cause the articles of the church of England to be accepted as the rule of public confessions and persuasions here, that they and we might be "populus unius labii," "of one heart and one lip," building up our hopes of heaven on a most holy faith; and taking away that Shibboleth which made this church lisp too indecently, or rather, in some little degree, to speak the speech of Ashdod, and not the language of Canaan; and the excellent and wise pains he took in this particular, no man can dehonestate or reproach, but he that is not willing to confess, that the church of England is the best reformed church in the world. But when the brave Roman infantry, under the conduct of Manlius, ascended up to the capitol to defend religion and the altars from the fury of the Gauls, they all prayed to God, "Ut quemadmodum ipsi ad defendendum templum ejus concurrissent, ita ille virtutem eorum numine suo tueretur:" "That as they came to defend his temple by their arms, so he would defend their persons and that cause with his power and divinity. "And this excellent man in the cause of religion found the like blessing which they prayed for; God, by the prosperity of his labours and a blessed effect, gave testimony not only of the piety and wisdom of his purposes, but that he loves to bless a wise instrument, when it is vigorously employed in a wise and religious labour. He overcame the difficulty in defiance of all such pretences, as were made even from religion itself, to obstruct the better procedure of real and material religion. These were great things and matter of great envy, and, like the fiery eruptions of Vesuvius, might, with the very ashes of consumption, have buried another man. At first indeed, as his blessed Master, the most holy Jesus, had, so he also had his "annum acceptabilem." At first the product was nothing but great admiration at his stupendous parts, and wonder at his mighty diligence and obser vation of his unusual zeal in so good and great things; but this quickly passed into the natural daughters of envy, suspicion, and detraction, the spirit of obloquy and slander. His zeal for recovery of the church-revenues was called oppression and rapine, covetousness and injustice; his care of reducing religion to wise and justifiable principles was called popery and Arminianism, and I know not what names, which signify what the authors are pleased to mean, and the people to construe and to hate. The intermedial prosperity of his person and fortune, which he had as an earnest of a greater reward to so well-meant labours, was supposed to be the production of illiberal arts and ways of getting; and the necessary refreshment of his wearied spirits, which did not always supply all his needs, and were sometimes less than the permissions even of prudent charity, they called intemperance: "Dederunt enim malum Metelli Nævio poetæ ;" their own surmises were the bills of accusation; and the splendour of his great ȧyaloɛpyía, or doing of good works," was the great probation of all their calumnies. But if envy be the accuser, what can be the defences of innocence? 66 Saucior invidiæ morsu, quærenda medela est ; Dic quibus in terris sentiet æger opem? Our blessed Saviour, knowing the unsatisfiable angers of men if their money or estates were meddled with, refused to divide an inheritance amongst brethren: it was not to be imagined that this great person (invested, as all his brethren were, with the infirmities of mortality, and yet employed in dividing, and recovering, and apportioning of lands) should be able to bear all that reproach, which jealousy, and suspicion, and malicious envy could invent against him. But ἀπ' ἐχθρῶν πολλὰ μανθάvovσiv oi σopoì, said Sophocles: and so did he; the affrightments brought to his great fame and reputation made him to walk more warily, and do justly, and act prudently, and conduct his affairs by the measures of laws, as far as he understood, and indeed that was a very great way: but there was aperta justitia, clausa manus," "justice was open, but his hand was shut ;" and, though every slanderer could tell a story, yet none could prove that ever he received" a bribe to blind his eyes, to the value of a pair of gloves:" it was his own expression, when he gave glory to God who had preserved him innocent. But, because every man's cause is right in his own eyes, it was hard for him so to acquit himself, that in the intrigues of law and difficult cases, some of his enemies should not seem (when they were heard alone) to speak reason against him. But see the greatness of truth and prudence, and how greatly God stood with him. When the numerous armies of vexed people, 66 Turba gravis paci, placidæque inimica quieti. MART. heaped up catalogues of accusations, when the parliament of Ireland, imitating the violent procedures of the then disordered English, when his glorious patron was taken from his head, and he was disrobed of his great defences; when petitions were invited and accusations furnished, and calumny was re- Nascitur Ætolicus, pravum ingeniosus ad omne; false records and public monuments of injurious shame, were cancelled, and he was restored, “in integrum," to that fame where his great labours and just procedures had first estated him; which though it was but justice, yet it was also such honour, that it is greater than the virulence of tongues, which his worthiness and their envy had armed against him. But yet the great scene of his troubles was but newly opened. I shall not refuse to speak yet more of his troubles, as remembering that St. Paul, when he discourses of the glories of the saints departed, he tells more of their sufferings than of their prosperities, as being that laboratory and crucible, in which God makes his servants vessels of honour to his glory. The storm quickly grew high; "et transitum est à linguis ad gladios;" and that was indeed ȧdıкía exovσa önλa, " Iniquity had put on arms;" when it is "armata nequitia," then a man is hard put to it. The rebellion breaking out, the bishop went to his charge at Derry; and because he was within the defence of walls, the execrable traitor, Sir Phelim O'Neale, laid a snare to bring him to a dishonourable death; for he wrote a letter to the bishop, pretending intelligence between them, desired that according to their former agreement such a gate might be delivered to him. The messenger was not advised to be cautious, nor at all instructed in the art of secrecy; for it was intended that he should be searched, intercepted, and hanged for aught they cared: but the arrow was shot against the bishop, that he might be accused for base conspiracy, and die with shame and sad dishonour. But here God manifested his mighty care of his servants; he was pleased to send into the heart of the messenger such an affrightment, that he directly ran away with the letter, and never durst come near the town to deliver it. This story was published by Sir Phelim himself, who added, that if he could have thus insnared the bishop, he had good assurance the town should have been his own: "Sed bonitas Dei prævalitura est super omnem malitiam hominis ;""The goodness of God is greater than all the malice of men;" and nothing could so prove how dear that sacred life was to God, as his rescue from the dangers. "Stantia non poterant tecta probare Deos:" "To have kept him in a warm house had been nothing, unless the roof had fallen upon his head; that rescue was a remark of Divine favour and providence." But it seems Sir Phelim's treason against the life of this worthy man had a correspondent in the town; and it broke out speedily; for what they could not effect by malicious stratagem, they did in part by open force; they turned the bishop out of the town, and upon trifling and unjust pretences searched his carriages, and took what they pleased, till they were ashamed to take more : they did worse than divorce him from his church; for in all the Roman divorces they said, “Tuas tibi res habeto," "Take your goods and be gone ;" but plunder was religion then. However, though the usage was sad, yet it was recompensed to him by his taking sanctuary in Oxford, where he was 9 Mart. graciously received by that most incomparable and divine prince; but having served the king in Yorkshire, by his pen, and by his counsels, and by his interests, he returned back to Ireland, where, under | the excellent conduct of his Grace the now lord lieutenant, he ran the risk and fortune of oppressed virtue. But God having still resolved to afflict us, the good man was forced into the fortune of the patriarchs, to leave his country and his charges, and seek for safety and bread in a strange land; for so the prophets were used to do, wandering up and down in sheep's clothing; but poor as they were, the world was not worthy of them: and this worthy man, despising the shame, took up his cross and followed his Master. Exilium causa ipsa jubet sibi dulce videri, He was not ashamed to suffer, where the cause that nothing could be a greater argument of the bishop's learning, great parts, deep judgment, quickness of apprehension, and sincerity in the catholic and apostolic faith; or of the follies and prevarications of the church of Rome. He wrote no apologies for himself, though it were much to be wished that, as Junius wrote his own life, or Moses his own story, so we might have understood from himself how great things God had done for him and by him: but all that he permitted to God, and was silent in his own defences; "Gloriosius enim est injuriam tacendo fugere, quàm respondendo superare:" but when the honour and conscience of his king, and the interest of a true religion was at stake, the fire burned within him, and at last he spake with his tongue; he cried out like the son of Crosus, "Ανθρωπε, μὴ κτείνε Κροῖσον, Take heed and meddle not with the king: his person is too sacred, and religion too dear to him, to be assaulted by vulgar hands. In short, he acquitted himself in this affair with so much truth and piety, learning and judgment, that in those papers his memory will last until very late succeeding generations. But this most reverend prelate found a nobler adversary, and a braver scene for his contention: he found that the Roman priests, being wearied and baffled by the wise discourses and pungent arguments of the English divines, had studiously declined any more to dispute the particular questions against us, but fell at last upon a general charge, imputing to the church of England the great crime of schism; and by this they thought they might with most pro And here this great man was indeed triumphant; this was one of the last and best scenes of his life: ἡμέραι γὰρ ἐπίλογοι μάρτυρες σοφώτατοι, “ The last days are the best witnesses of a man." But so it was, that he stood up in public and brave defence for the doctrine and discipline of the church of England; first, by his sufferings and great example; for," Verbis tantùm philosophari, non est doctoris,bability deceive unwary and unskilful readers; for sed histrionis;" "To talk well and not to do bravely, is for a comedian, not a divine:" but this great man did both; he suffered his own calamity with great courage, and by his wise discourses strengthened the hearts of others. For there wanted not diligent tempters in the church of Rome, who taking advantage of the afflictions of his sacred majesty, in which state men commonly suspect every thing, and like men in sickness are willing to change from side to side, hoping for ease and finding none, flew at royal game, and hoped to draw away the king from that religion which his most royal father, the best man and the wisest prince in the world, had sealed with the best blood in christendom, and which himself sucked in with his education, and had confirmed by choice and reason, and confessed publicly and bravely, and hath since restored prosperously. Millitiere was the man, witty and bold enough to attempt a zealous and a foolish undertaking, who addressed himself with ignoble, indeed, but witty arts, to persuade the king to leave what was dearer to him than his eyes. It is true, it was a wave dashed against a rock, and an arrow shot against the sun, it could not reach him; but the bishop of Derry turned it also, and made it fall upon the shooter's head; for he made so ingenious, so learned, and so acute reply to that book; he so discovered the errors of the Roman church, retorted the arguments, stated the questions, demonstrated the truth, and shamed their procedures, they saw the schism, and they saw we had left Consecrat hic præsul calamum calamique labores, "the bishop now dedicates his labours to the service |