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CONCLUSION It Will by Now Be Clear That a Claim Is Being Made On CONCLUSION It will by now be clear that a claim is being made on behalf of Ken, Byrom and Law which is not commensurate with their adducibleliterary merit. To the positivist literary critic this claim may sound like a piece of special pleading, but it can be argued that positivist criticism has its pitfalls and that one of its limitations is its failure to do justice to the relativism of aesthetics, to inter-disciplinary connections, and to the developmental approach which demands an appraisal of the potential as well as the actual in a given cultural product. A positivist approach to Ken will perhaps come up with the de­ scriptive judgment of "a green spot" (Keble) or "a green oasis" (Fairchild). Some might consider even these conclusions over-generous. When we come to the most generous appraisal of Byrom that is available, we are bound to question whether it does not owe more to ideological prejudice than to aesthetic judgment. Thus John Wesley wrote: In my journey from Liverpool I read Dr Byrom's poems. He has all the wit and humour of Dr Swift, together with much more learning, and deep and strong understanding, and, above all, a serious vein of piety. .. A few things in the second volume are taken from Jacob Behmen; to whom I object ... But, setting these things aside, we have some of the finest senti­ ments that ever appeared in the English tongue; some of the noblest truths, expressed with the utmost energy of language, and the strongest colours of poetry. 1 Wesley probably read Byrom on horseback and his praise must seem absurdly erratic on strictly aesthetic grounds. As a document of cultural history, as evidence of a certain kind of Augustan taste, less iconoclastic than one would perhaps expect, Wesley's judgment is illuminating. 1 Journal (12 July 1773), John Wesley, Works (14 vols.; Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1958-9), III, 502-3. Quoted in Overton, p. 362 and in Baker, p. 61. CONCLUSION 149 The modern critic will perhaps be happier with Wesley's parallel encomium on Law. It declares that there are "few writers in the present age who stand in any competition with Mr Law, as to beauty and strength of language; readiness, liveliness, and copiousness of thought; and (in many points) accuracy of sentiment." Wesley adds that several of Law's treatises "must remain, as long as England stands, almost unequalled standards of the strength and purity of our language, as well as of sound practical divinity."2 The strength and purity of Law's language has undoubtedly been neglected, but it could probably be agreed that Law has his place between Swift and Gibbon in the golden age of English prose. And yet Law as literature is like the Bible as literature; his real stature is thereby diminished. What we have chosen to insist on is that quality in Law's prose which is inseparable from his philosophy or vision of life, and which has led Henri Talon, if no one else, to the conclusion that Law was a "potential poet."3 At times this poetic quality comes to the surface in a striking manner. What after all is one to make of the brief sentence Talon extracts from one of Law's pages - "In every man ... there is a dark guest ... lulled asleep by worldly light." - ?4 Talon at least does some justice to Law in claiming that his "thought is not merely conceptual but sensory, as it may well 2 Quoted in Christopher Walton, Notes and Materials for an adequate Biography of the Celebrated Divine and Theosopher William Law (London: privately printed, 1854), P.564. Quoted on Walton's authority by Overton, p. 384 and Baker, p. 47. This encomium of Law's literary qualities comes from Wesley's preface to his devastating attack on Law's ideas in the famous letter of January 1756. Strangely enough this preface is not printed in either Wesley's Works or in Telford's edition of Wesley's letters. 3 Talon, William Law, p. 89. 4 Ibid., p. 88. Talon, to make his point, has abbreviated Law drastically. Law actually wrote: "Who has not at one time or other felt a sourness, wrath, selfishness, envy, and pride, which he could not tell what to do with, or how to bear, rising up in him without his consent, casting a blackness over all his thoughts, and then as suddenly going off again, either by the cheerfulness of the sun, or air, or some agreable accident, and again at times as suddenly returning upon him? Sufficient indications are these to every man that there is a dark guest within him, concealed under the cover of flesh and blood, often lulled asleep by worldly light and amusements, yet such as will, in spite of everything, show itself, which if it has not its proper relief in this life, must be his torment in eternity. And it was for the sake of this hidden hell within us, that our Blessed Lord said when on earth, and says now to every soul, 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest'." The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration (1739), Law, V, 141. Here it is clear that the poetic quintessence extracted by Talon is part and parcel of a coherent structure of thought and moral vision which is itself potentially poetic. On the purely technical structure of Law's prose, cf. F. D. Maurice's judgment (1844) that "Law is the most continuous writer in our language, each of his sentences and para­ graphs leading on naturally, and as it were necessarily, to that which follows." Quoted in Baker, p. vii. Maurice concludes that to quote Law is virtually impossible. 150 CONCLUSION be in a man who believed that the spirit reveals itself through its body."5 What we have tried to show is that such distillation of poetic beauty is the outward and visible sign of a coherent whole. This is the kind of perspective in which Law's work, and Byrom's reflection of it, together with Ken's before them, make for profitable reading. For it is at this level that they reveal not only their own limi­ tations but also the lineaments of Augustan culture as it waxed and waned against certain radical alternatives. fi Talon, William Law, p. 88. APPENDIX I KEN'S HEROIC DIVINESl Henry Hammond (1605-60), divine and Biblical critic, was chaplain to the Royal Commissioners at the abortive Uxbridge Conference (1645) where he disputed fruitlessly with the Parliamentary Presbyterians. Ken presumably refers to Hammond's Mysterium Religionis, an Expedient for the composing Differences of Religion (1649). Hammond would have become Bishop of Worcester had he lived. John Gauden (1605-62), Bishop of Worcester, displayed Parliamentary sympathies from 1640. Believing that episcopacy needed reform but not abolition, he wrote against the execution of Charles I but retained his preferments during the Interregnum. Ken refers to his attempts in 1656 t0l"promote agreement between Presbyterians and Episcopalians on the basis of Archbishop Ussher's model, and perhaps also to his Hieraspistes: A Defence by way of Apology for the Ministry and Ministers of the Church of England (1653) and his Petitionary Remonstrance (1659) on behalf of the deprived clergy. Jeremy Taylor (1613-67), Bishop of Down and Connor, had the unenvi­ ous task of winning over the Presbyterian ministers of Ulster to the episcopal cause. He failed conspicuously and, "intending the reverse, did more than any:man:to:establish the loyal Presbyterians of Ulster as a separate ecclesi­ asticallbody. " William Nicholson (1591-1672), Bishop of Gloucester, defended Anglican orthodoxy in pamphlets dated 1655 and 1659, and after the Restoration was conciliatory in his treatment of Dissenters, conniving at the preaching of those he respected. Robert Sanderson (1587-1663), Bishop of Lincoln and Professor of Divinity at Oxford, was compelled to revise the forms of Common Prayer to appease the Parliamentarians in his neighbourhood. He came to the defence of Anglicanism with his De Juramento (1655) and De Obligatione Conscientiae (1660), and acted as Moderator at the 1661 conference of Presbyterian divines. James Ussher (1581-1656), Archbishop of Armagh, was the author of a modified scheme of episcopacy. This was presented to a parliamentary sub-committee in 1641 and published in 1656 as The Reduction of Episcopacy 1 See p. 52. 152 APPENDICES unto the form of Synodical Government received in the Ancient Church. It was widely accepted by Puritan leaders and used by Charles II as the basis of his 1660 Declaration. In 1655 Ussher approached Cromwell with a request that episcopal clergy be allowed to minister in private. Joseph Hall (1574-1656), Bishop of Norwich, whose youthful satires (1597) were ordered to be burnt by Archbishop Whitgift, sat on the 1641 parliamentary committee along with Ussher as a moderate. DNB APPENDIX II LIST OF WILLIAM LAW'S WORKS I. Three Letters to the Bishop if Bangor (17 17-I 9) 2. Remarks upon the Fable of the Bees (1724) 3. The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage Entertainment fully demonstrated (1726) 4. A Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection (1726) 5. A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1728) 6. The Case of Reason, or Natural Religion fairly and fully Stated in Answer to Christianity as Old as the Creation (173 I) 7. A Demonstration if the Gross and Fundamental Errors if [Hoadly's] ... 'Plain Account of the Lord's Supper' (1737) 8. The Grounds and Reasons if the Christian Regeneration (1739) 9. An Earnest and Serious Answer to Dr Trapp's Discourse of the Folly, Sin, and Danger if being Righteous Overmuch (1740) 10.
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