INTRODUCTION "I dare neither think, nor assure the reader, that I have committed no mistakes in this relation .; but I am sure there is none that are either wilful or very material. I confess it was worthy of the employment of some person of more learning and greater abilities than I can pretend to; and I have not a little wondered that none have yet been so grateful to him and to posterity, as to undertake it." IZAAK WALTON. THE period covered by the life of Cosin (15951672) was one the importance of which cannot be exaggerated. His was the age and the generation which completed the Reformation of the English Church-the period which saw the rise, the fall, and the subsequent triumph of what, for the want of a better name, we must call Anglicanism. The facts and the features of the period are too familiar to allow of any detailed discussion here; but, in order that the life of Cosin may be related to the history of his time, it is necessary to pass rapidly over the well-worn ground. When Cosin was born, Puritanism and Calvinism seemed likely to gain the ascendancy in the Church of England. Archbishop Grindal had manifestly sympathised with the Puritans; his successor, Whitgift, was strong-too strong, perhaps as a disciplinarian, but weak as theologian, with a decided leaning to Calvinism; while the policy of Bancroft, who succeeded to the Primacy in 1604, set in motion the wave of unpopularity which later, for a time, overwhelmed the Church. Perhaps, after all,' Clarendon was right in believing that "if he had been succeeded by Bishop Andrewes, Bishop Overall, or any man who understood and loved the Church, that infection would easily have been kept out which could not afterwards be so easily expelled." Andrewes almost certainly would not have committed the Anglican party to the union between Episcopacy and the theory of the Divine Right of the Crown, which was initiated by Bancroft, and which led to the temporary ruin of both Episcopacy and the Crown. As it was, the appointment of Abbott, who resembled Bancroft neither in his policy nor in his views, gave a fresh stimulus to Puritanism, which now found itself represented on the archiepiscopal throne. It was Laud and his supporters who began the really successful attack on Calvinism and the Puritan party, and it is no exaggeration to say that, controversially, they were winning along the whole line of attack, not only as against the Puritans, but also as against the Papal party; for it must not be forgotten that the champions of Anglicanism had to face a twofold opposition. It was their aim "to stand in the gapp against Puritanism and Popery, the 1 In spite of Dr. Gardiner's view; see Hist. of England, 11. 120. Scilla and Charybdis of antient piety "—so Richard Mountague wrote to Cosin in the year 1624. Unfortunately, the ecclesiastical struggle became intermingled with the political struggle. And Puritanism, which ecclesiastically seemed destined to fail, retrieved its position by reason of its political wisdom; while Anglicanism fell with a theory of monarchy which had no real connection with its spiritual aims. But the Puritan triumph was shortlived; and, with the inevitable reaction, the Anglican party rose to an assured ascendancy. The victory was complete, and the victors, to some extent perhaps, yielded to the temptation to exercise their regained power arbitrarily. But in passing judgment on the Churchmen of the Restoration period it is only fair to bear in mind the bitter provocation which they had experienced, the hopeless obstinacy of the Nonconformists, the contemporary feeling on both sides about toleration, and the apparently urgent need for uniformity.' With this Anglican party, from the very beginning of his career, Cosin ranged himself, sharing its faults and its virtues; with this party he basked for a time in the sunshine of royal favour; with this party he suffered persecution and ruin at home, and exile and poverty abroad and with this party he rose again to power and leading influence. 1 Cf. Smith, Vita Johannis Cosini, p. 32. "Non aliter aut regni tranquillitas, aut Ecclesiæ salus salva & integra servari poterat." |