Let us be thankful that some ages in the history of the church furnish us examples that cheer and instruct. Look back at that most interesting period, the period of the Reformation, and contemplate the profound agreement upon essentials and the genial disagreement upon non-essentials, that prevailed among the leaders then. Martin Luther and John Calvin were two theologians who differed as greatly in mental structure, and in their spontaneous mode of contemplating and constructing doctrines, as is possible for two minds upon the same side of the great controversy between orthodoxy and heresy. No man will say that the differences between Lutheranism and Calvinism are minor or unimportant. Probably any one would say that, if those two men were able to feel the common Christian fellowship; to enjoy the communion of saints; and to realize with tenderness their common relationship to the Head of the church; there is no reason why all men who are properly within the pale of orthodoxy should not do the same.

Turn now to the letters of both of these men; written in the midst of that controversy which was going on between the two portions of the Reformed, and which resulted, not, however, through the desire or the influence of these two great men, but through the bitterness of their adherents, in their division into two distinct churches; and witness the common genial feeling that prevailed. Hear Luther in his letter to Bucer sending his cordial greeting to Calvin whose books he has read with singular pleasure: cum singulari voluptate. Hear Calvin declaring his willing and glad readiness to subscribe to the Augsburg Confession, interpreting it upon the sacramental question as the Lutherans themselves authorized him to do.1 Above all, turn to that burst, from Calvin, of affectionate feeling towards Melanchthon, which gives itself vent in the midst of one of his stern controversial tracts, like the music of flutes silencing for a moment the

1 Henry's Life of Calvin, II. pp. 96, 99. It is interesting and instructive to witness the liberal feeling of the scientific and rigorously orthodox Athanasius towards the Semiarians themselves, whose statement of the doctrine of the Trinity he regarded to be inadequate. See the quotation from Athanasius de Synodis, § 41, in Gieseler, Chap. II. § 83, and the reference to Hilarius de Synodis, § 76. Says Augustine: "they who do not pertinaciously defend their opinion, false and perverse thongh it be, especially when it does not spring from the audacity of their own presumption, while they seek the truth with cautious solicitude, and are prepared to correct themselves when they have found it, are by no means to be ranked among heretics.- Epistle 43. Newman's Library Version.

clang of war-cymbals and the blare of the trumpet: "O Philip Melanchthon, to thee I address myself, to thee who art now living in the presence of God with Jesus Christ, and there awaitest us, till death shall unite us in the enjoyment of Divine peace. A hundred times hast thou said to me, when weary with so much labor and oppressed with so many burdens, thou laidst thy head upon my breast,' God grant, God grant, that I may now die!'"1

The theology of Richard Baxter differs from the theology of John Owen by some important modifications, and each of these two types of Calvinism will probably perpetuate itself in the church to the end of time; but the confidence which both of these great men cherished towards each other, should go along down with these systems through the ages and generations of time.

But what surer method can be employed to produce and perpetuate this catholic and liberal feeling among the various types and schools of orthodox theology, than to impart to all of them the broad views of history? And what surer method than this can be taken to diminish the number and bring about more unity of opinion in the department of systematic theology? For it is one great effect of history to coalesce and harmonize. It introduces mutual modifications, by showing opponents that their predecessors were nearer together than they themselves are, by tracing the now widely separated opinions back to that point of departure where they were once very near together; and, above all, by causing all parties to remember, what all are so liable to forget in the heat of controversy, that all forms of orthodoxy took their first origin in the Scriptures, and that, therefore, all theological controversy should be carried on with a constant reference to this one infallible standard, which can teach but one infallible system.

I have thus considered the nature of the historic spirit and its influence both upon the secular and theological mind, in order to indicate my own deep sense of the importance of the department in which I have been called to give instruction by the guardians of this Institution. The first instinctive feelings would have shrunk from the weight of the great burden imposed, and the extent of the very great field opened; though in an institution where the pleasant years of professional study were all

1 Henry's Life of Calvin, I. 239.

spent; though in an ancient institution, made illustrious and influential, through the land and the world, by the labors of the venerated dead and the honored living. But it does not become the individual to yield to his individuality. The stream of Divine Providence, so signally conspicuous in the life of the church, and of its members, is the stream upon which the diffident as well as the confident must alike cast themselves. And he who enters upon a new course of labor for the church of God, with just views of the greatness and glory of the kingdom, and of the comparative unimportance of any individual member, will be most likely to perform a work that will best harmonize with the development and progress of the great whole.

ARTICLE VII.

CHAUCER AND HIS TIMES.

By M. P. Case, M. A., Newburyport, Mass,

MR. ADDISON has somewhere said, that "a reader seldom peruses a book till he knows whether the author of it be a black or a fair man; of a mild or choleric disposition; married or bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author." Whether we accept the assertion and adopt the implied conclusion or not, it is a fact that, in seeking for a life of many of the imperial geniuses of the world, we are obliged to reverse this process and read their biography chiefly in their works. Of Homer we know neither how nor where he lived nor when he died. Very little of outward biography has come to us of most of the great poets of antiquity; and, even in respect to Shakspeare, the most of his external life seems to have got equally beyond the research of the antiquary and the industry of the historian. How intense, indeed, would be our interest in the details of his early life, and that succession of years which intervened between his marriage and his flight to London, where his

genius first became known to the world. A life of Shakspeare, as full and reliable as Mr. Lockhart has given us of Scotland's great novelist, would be the book for its time, in the English lan. guage. But while the works of the great bard are everywhere known, read and admired, in every language which has a literature in Christendom, the bard himself stands before us a dim and shadowy form, as much almost a mythical character as a historical reality.

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Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English verse, is no exception to this unfortunate rule. While of his writings no inconsiderable amount has come down to our day, all that we are sure of respect. ing his external life and relations, may be brought within the compass of a few pages. The man Chaucer, as he lived and moved among men, - the courtier, the citizen, the poet, would fain behold with more distinctness than veritable history will at present allow. His contemporaries are provokingly silent respecting him. Even Sir John Froissart, himself a poet who must have known him well, hardly mentions his name, though inclined to gossip of every body whom he knew. Was the aristocratic old canon jealous of his brother poet? Or, what is more probable, did he purposely pretend ignorance of the man who did not scruple to satirize the corrupt ecclesiastics of his time?

As he has told us himself, he was a native of London; and, as the inscription on his tomb in Westminster Abbey tells us, he was born in 1328, one year after the accession of Edward III., whose long and eventful reign is distinguished in English history. His father has been supposed to have been a merchant, which is certainly very possible, when we see everywhere in his writings proofs of a minute knowledge of the world in its every-day aspects. Having finished such preparatory studies as were at that day required, he entered the University of Cambridge, where, according to Mr. Godwin, there were gathered six thousand students.

Whatever his birth, or social position in life, he could not have lived many years in London, as it then was, without decided results. He had ample opportunity of knowing and remarking upon the growth of that rising rank of men, the burgesses, who were even then beginning, as they afterwards completed, an entire change in the political constitution of the country. Of his youth and early manhood we further learn that he pursued the study of law, and became early known as a poet; and this

is nearly all, if we except one other act of that youthful age, which has some significance, one might suppose, his flogging a Franciscan friar in the streets of London, for which, according to an old record, he was fined two shillings. We cannot learn the cause of this castigation; but if there was even a tolerable provocation, the poet must have felt that the speculation did not on the whole prove a very bad one.

Mr. Hume has remarked that there is not a reign in English history which deserves more to be studied than that of Edward III. It has its interest for the politician as marking the era when the foundations of political and social liberty were laid. Although more than a century had elapsed since at Runnymede the Magna Charta had been wrested from the hands of despotic power, that power, never quite satisfied with its loss, omitted no opportunity to regain its original strength; but the spirit of liberty had struggled again and again to maintain its ground, and had now gained at least one great victory. It had become a recognized fact, that all orders of men had rights and privileges which no king might take away. Contemporaneous with these struggles of freedom, and as their cause, doubtless, in no small measure, there had been going on that singular process, so puzzling to the historian, of a thoroughly subdued and despised race gradually rising from beneath the feet of their oppressors, and, at length, effectually taking the place of the dominant power. Two centuries and a half before, the battle of Hastings and the victory of William the Norman had given the whole nation into ' the hands of the conqueror. Seldom does history show us a more complete subjugation of one race by another. And the victor took, to human view, the most effective methods to secure and perpetuate his power. The native owners of the soil were made slaves, degraded or kept from every post of honor; their very language was excluded from all the higher spheres of life; and, to such a degree was this degrading process carried, that, as Mr. Macaulay tells us, it became an ordinary form of indignant denial with a Norman gentleman: "Do you take me for an Englishman." And yet a single century had hardly passed before the descendants of that same gentleman were proud to claim kindred with the English race.

This singular elevation of an enslaved race had become com plete in the age of Chaucer. The nation was now properly English. The French language had been banished from legal