THE

CHRISTIAN

REMEMBRANCER.

JANUARY, 1832.

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

ART. I.-The Life of Thomas Ken, D.D., deprived Bishop of Bath and Wells; viewed in Connexion with Public Events and the Spirit of the Times, political and religious, in which he lived. Including some Account of the Fortunes of Morley, Bishop of Winchester, his first Patron, and the Friend of Izaak Walton, Brother-in-law of Bishop Ken. By the Rev. W. L. BoWLES, M. A. M. R. S. L. In two volumes. Vol. I. pp. xlii. 268. London: John Murray. 1830. THE rancorous hostility,-more rancorous, indeed, and more universal, than during the period of fanatical Puritanism from 1640 to the death of Cromwell, -which is now directed not only against our venerable Church, but against every foundation and institution connected with her prosperity, if not her very existence, has, we are happy to say, called forth the energies of some of her best and most powerful champions, and incited them to do battle in the good cause of sound doctrine and pure religion against all enemies, whether Popish or Puritan, whether surrounded by the trappings of Romish superstition and idolatry, or urged on by the ascetic spirit of the Geneva school.

The name of Mr. Bowles has frequently been before the public, and always met with most honourable mention. Who, for instance, can have forgotten the fervid enthusiasm and poetic chivalry with which he entered the lists against the practised champions of the material school of poesy, Byron and Campbell, wherein he so powerfully vindicated the just and exalted pretensions of that spiritual class, whom it was the aim of his antagonists to debase? We mention this, because the same spirit, in a more holy cause, breathes throughout the volumes before us; and although we could have wished that his honest zeal had been tempered by a little more Christian forbearance, we at once pronounce the Life of Bishop Ken to be one of the most interesting and instructive pieces of biography we have ever been called upon to notice.

It is an unfortunate fact for the advancement of true religion, that historians have generally confined their views to mere political events, scarcely ever mentioning ecclesiastical affairs, unless directly implicated with the history of individual statesmen; and then glossing them over as of minor importance, and not calculated to interest the general reader. To this alone is attributable that utter ignorance of the position and actual condition of the divided and subdivided religious sects at the period in which Ken lived. In contemporary writers we too frequently trace their own peculiar bias, whilst succeeding commentators have, as it were, caught the spirit of their favourite chronicler, and endeavoured to discover, not the real truth, but such facts only as may coincide with their own views. Perhaps Mr. Bowles himself is not entirely free from this charge; but still the evidences of his patient examination are so strong, and the arguments thence deduced so precise and masterly, that the cause of true religion has clearly gained no inconsiderable accession of strength by his labours. In the Life of a Protestant Bishop a vindication of Protestant Episcopacy, and the Constitution of our Church, was to be expected; and the Biographer, in this point, has amply done his duty. Not only have the malevolent attacks of the Cheynells of old, and the Lord Kings of the present day, been rebutted, but the very weapons with which these worthies commenced the engagement have been turned against themselves, and wielded to their discomfiture, shame, and confusion. "When the intolerant tone of some of the revilers in the seventeenth century is revived, it becomes us to meet the proudest adversary firmly, particularly when the Clergy are represented as hostile to every feeling of enlightened humanity, and when the University of Oxford has been made the peculiar object of sneering acrimony."

We are by no means inclined to pass a panegyric upon Fell, for his servile obedience to the mandate of the royal visitor, in expelling Locke; but why should Pope's sarcasm be for ever ringing in our ears? Why should Lord King, the pious, courteous, and moral gentleman, take every occasion of insulting the bench of Bishops in his place in Parliament, or printing the disgusting and obnoxious calumny, "that reason and truth can find no favour in the eyes of the rulers of the Church?" What identity of talent, feeling, or patriotism, we would ask, is there between John Locke and his "relative," as Lord King ostentatiously boasts himself? The cry of "Intolerance, intolerance!" which his lordship raises (like the "Carthago delenda" of Cato the elder) against the Church of England, ought to recoil on his own degenerate head. What has he produced in evidence of the charge? A solitary prayer; a prayer written by Sancroft, when it was universally believed there had been a conspiracy against the life of Charles II.;

and when the conduct of the Papists, and the king-selling Puritans, was not only viewed with suspicion, but remembered with horror and detestation ;-a prayer composed at a time when the House of Commons declared "that there has been, and is, a damnable and hellish plot carried on by Popish recusants for assassinating the king!"

Mr. Bowles's very able, though somewhat harsh introduction, has induced us to digress thus far; we now come to the subject of his high and just encomium. Bishop Ken was the youngest son of Thomas Ken, an attorney of Furnival's Inn, by his first wife; and was born at Little Berkhamstead, in Hertfordshire, in July, 1637. He had two sisters; the elder, Anne, was married to that singular and interesting character, Izaak Walton, the celebrated "Piscator;" Martha, the younger, to a Mr. James Beacham, who had one son, a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and another, fellow of New College ; the latter probably educated at Winchester, from his uncle Ken's recommendation. The future Bishop of Bath and Wells, it thus appears, entered into life at that eventful period when the murmurs of the storm began to increase, which soon afterwards shook to their foundations the battlements of the Church of England. Where he received the first rudiments of his education is unknown, as also by what interest he became a scholar on William of Wykeham's munificent foundation. “ It must not, however, be forgotten," observes Mr. Bowles, "that Ken had a musical voice, which had no small recommendation for admission to all ancient ecclesiastical establishments from their foundation; for, in after life, it is known that no day passed without his singing his evening and morning hymn to his lute, the origin of those beautiful morning and evening hymns sung at this day by the children of every parish." This accomplishment, probably, was not very valuable in the eyes of Harris, the warden, who had taken the covenant; but it might have induced his parents to exert themselves to place him upon a "foundation where music, by the statutes, was essentially associated with education, and was held in such estimation, that the chief chanter, or precentor, ranked next in dignity to the Dean."

It is impossible for us to follow our delightful author through all the details of the life and character he is describing. In the account of Ken's sojourn at Winchester, the benevolence of his historian breathes in every line of the narrative; and we can almost picture to ourselves the scene he so vividly and feelingly describes, and participate in the flood of feeling which busy memory must have called from the fountain of the heart, when the mind's eye beheld the little actors in the scene of early days, and a silent unconscious tear told him how they had been scattered, and lost, (to his view at least,) in the wilderness of life.