SECRETAN'S LIFE OF ROBERT NELSON.

Memoirs of the Life and Times of the Pious Robert Nelson, author of the "Companion to the Festivals and Fasts of the Church." By the Rev. C. F. SECRETAN, M.A., Incumbent of Holy Trinity, Westminster. With portrait. London: John Murray.

It has been remarked more than once, that among the evidences which present themselves to a thoughtful mind of God's watchful care over the English Church, may be reckoned His wonderful preservation of her during the tyranny of the Commonwealth. To all appearance, she was destroyed from off the face of the earth. Her great Archbishop had been murdered, her prelates imprisoned, her services proscribed by law, her faithful clergy hunted down, turned out of house and home, shipped to the colonies, and sold as slaves. It seemed as if she never could rear her head again. The continuance of the Apostolic succession depended on the lives of a few aged men, of whose laying hands upon them that were to come after them there seemed the very faintest prospect. That she should have survived all this, and not only have been reinstated in her pride of place, but have taken a deeper hold than ever on the affections of the nation, can be attributed only to His loving-kindness Who dealeth not with men or Churches after their deserts, and is not "extreme to mark what is done amiss."

And the true principles of the Church which had been thought to have been buried with Laud, have been in like manner reserved for a later development. It is remarkable how soon the Church of the Restoration gave evidence that the seed he had sown, so far from having been trampled out by his death, was shooting up into a healthy and vigorous plant. The more Catholic tone which pervades our present Prayer Book compared with that which Andrewes and Laud had used, proves this. And though the Revolution again brought Church principles into disrepute, and latitudinarian theology obtained the ascendancy, yet in the next reign there was a reaction against it, and the Church seemed in a fair way of recovering her position, when the Hanoverian blight fell upon all that was excellent and of good report, and Church principles slept a long sleep till our own time.

Among the faithful few who in the dreariness of the Dutch Usurper's reign maintained alive the light of true religion and holy living, and who did his part in carrying out all good works under the comparatively favourable rule of Queen Anne, stands Robert Nelson. Sprung from a Church family remaining faithful even under the Cromwellian depression, and educated in his early years by Dr., afterwards Bishop Bull, he was early trained in the principles of that Church of which he became so staunch a defender.

Amid much to try his attachment to the English Communion, (for his wife embraced the Roman faith during the short ascendancy of that Church under James II.,) he never wavered in his allegiance to it. The secession of his wife seems to have been the moving cause of his taking pen in hand and entering the literary lists, and he plunged at once into the Eucharistic controversy, which then raged as furious as now. We cannot agree with Mr. Secretan in thinking this first production of his pen worth preserving or transcribing at any length. He was meddling with matters which were too high for him, and committed himself to statements apparently inconsistent with any recognition of the mystery of the Real Presence. We say apparently, for in later life his statements are more careful, and if even in his "Christian Sacrifice" he seems to hesitate in enunciating the full Catholic Doctrine, we must remember that what he did say was infinitely beyond the prevalent theology either of his day or

our own.

"His doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice he expresses in the following terms:

"That when our SAVIOUR celebrated the Jewish Sacrifice of the Passover with His disciples, a little before His sufferings, He substituted the Sacrament of His Body and His Blood as the true Christian Sacrifice in room of the Passover; and ordained it as a rite to invocate His FATHER by, instead of the manifold and bloody sacrifices of the law, and to be a means of supplication and address to GOD in the New Testament, as they were in the Old :-that in this Sacrifice the bread and the wine are offered to GOD to acknowledge Him LORD of the creatures; and accordingly in the ancient Church they were laid on the holy table by the priest (as they are still ordered to be done by the rubric in the Church of England), and tendered to GOD by this short prayer, Lord, we offer Thy own out of what Thou hast bountifully given us :'-that they by consecration being made symbols of the Body and Blood of CHRIST, we thereby represent to GOD the FATHER the passion of His SON, to the end that He may, for His sake, according to the tenor of His covenant in Him, be favourable and propitious to us, miserable sinners :-that as CHRIST intercedes continually for us in heaven, by presenting His death and satisfaction to His FATHER; so the Church on earth in like manner may approach the throne of Grace, by representing CHRIST unto His FATHER in these holy mysteries of His death and passion:-that what every Christian does mentally and vocally, when he recommends his prayers to GOD the FATHER, through JESUS CHRIST, making mention of His death and satisfaction; that, in the public service of the Church is done by this rite, which our SAVIOUR commanded in commemoration of Him.'

"Or, as he more shortly expresses it in his Preface :

:

"This Christian Sacrifice was ordained, not only to put us in mind of those great blessings which our SAVIOUR purchased for us by His death (for what man that reflects upon Christianity can easily forget them?) but it was also established as a sacred rite to supplicate GOD the FATHER, by the merits of our SAVIOUR'S Passion, representing to Him the symbols of His Body and Blood, that thereby He may become

favourable and propitious to us. This sense of it is agreeable to the Holy Scriptures, as they were understood by those who lived nighest to the times of the Apostles, and has been evidently proved so by the learned, judicious, and pious Mr. Mede.' "-Pp. 176, 7.

And we can have no hesitation in recommending the following extract to many of the clergy of the present day, who even under favourable circumstances strangely and unaccountably shrink from the revival of weekly celebrations, and yet talk about being Catholic and Apostolic:

"They that are acquainted,' he writes, 'with ecclesiastical history, know very well, that the Eucharist, in the purest ages of the Church, made a part of their daily public service; and when the devotion of Christians began to decline, they yet always upon the LORD's Day celebrated the Christian Sacrifice. Our second service at the altar seems defective without a conformable practice to antiquity in this point; and the holy exercises of the LORD's Day appear to want their due perfection without these Eucharistical devotions. To this purpose our Church has encouraged a constant weekly communion, by permitting it to be celebrated where three or four persons are ready and willing to communicate; as being assured by our SAVIOUR, that where two or three are gathered together in His Name, there He is Himself in the midst of them. And if the parochial minister should begin with such a small number, it is likely they would quickly increase, at least it will demonstrate his own zeal to show forth the LORD's death, and may bring a blessing upon his parish, as well as upon the other labours of his holy function.

"In order to quicken the establishing of this primitive devotion, I cannot forbear suggesting an observation made by several of the reverend clergy who have been zealous in this matter, viz., That where communions have been frequent, the number of the communicants hath sensibly increased, which, I think, ought to be no small encouragement to have the holy mysteries celebrated in all parish churches on every LORD's Day; because this shows a great disposition in the laity to be brought to a sense of their duty, and consequently, must animate the zeal of their pastors to give them such frequent opportunities of commemorating the death and passion of our blessed SAVIOUR.

"To this holy end and purpose, I have endeavoured, by proper arguments to press the duty of frequent communion upon the consciences of men; for all those motives that persuade us to communicate at all, ought to prevail upon us to do it often; and it appears to me very plain that no sincere Christian, not otherwise lawfully hindered, can justify going out of the church when the Christian Sacrifice is celebrated; nor is there any pretence or excuse sufficiently valid for a man that is in earnest with religion, to turn his back upon the Holy Table, when the heavenly banquet is there prepared.'”—Pp. 173, 4.

Respecting the work by which Nelson is best known, "A Companion for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England,” Mr. Secretan thus speaks:

"This treatise forms, in short, a complete popular manual of Anglican theology. In addition to the topics which would be more obviously suggested by the title of the work, we find our author here explaining the necessity and nature of revelation, the external evidence of Christianity from the prophecies of the Old Testament and from the miracles of our LORD (which last are vindicated from infidel objections,) and the internal evidence as displayed in the consistency of its doctrines and the excellence of its precepts; the use of reason in religion, as discovering the principles of natural religion, and trying the evidence of that which is revealed; the inspiration of Holy Scripture and the authority of the Church in its interpretation; the mystery of the Trinity in Unity, the union of two natures in CHRIST, the divinity and the sanctifying operations of the HOLY SPIRIT; the vicarious sacrifice of our Redeemer; the grace of holy baptism, the eucharistic sacrifice, the authority and benefit of confirmation, and the threefold ministry of the Church as transmitted from the times of the Apostles. He teaches the intermediate state of the soul between the hour of death and of resurrection; he replies at length to various objections against the resurrection of the body; he states the argument for the immortality of the soul, glancing at his friend Dodwell's heterodox opinion of its natural mortality, and at Whiston's erroneous explanation of the 'sleep' of death, a phrase in Scripture, which refers, Nelson says, to the body and not to the soul; he insists on the spiritual benefits of union with CHRIST through His Church, and the consequent guilt of schism, or causeless separation from its communion. Among more practical subjects, he treats of the efficacy of prayer, the indispensable duty of family devotion, and the obligation of attending (if possible) the daily service of the Church; the nature of repentance; the duty of reading Holy Scripture, which he vindicates against the restrictions of the Romish Church; the practice of self-examination and religious meditation; the reverence due to holy places; the duties of sickness, and the danger of a deathbed repentance; the obligation of rebuking sin, and the virtues of humility and self-denial.

"The arguments by which he supports each point of doctrine are generally obvious and solid, and his practical reflections are just and useful. The most prominent defect in this (as in Nelson's other writings) is an entire absence of imagination, so that his 'Companion' forms a very prosaic 'Christian Year;' and the devotions at the close of each chapter (except when they are borrowed from his friends Ken, Kettlewell, or Hickes) must be acknowledged to be very tame and cold, and to want entirely that sharpness of ejaculation which is the characteristic of earnest prayer. But his rounded style and careful periods, unfitted as they are for the language of devotion, yet always cover solid sense, and are not ill-suited for a manual of formal instruction, such as he designed in his 'Companion for the Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England.'"-Pp. 167, 8.

We think this is a fair and just estimate of a book once very popular, but now little known, save where it has been handed down. as a legacy from the past, in old fashioned Church families. Excellent as the matter is, and well executed as are his digests of

ancient writers, there is certainly, as Mr. Secretan says, a terrible lack of imagination about the book. The devotions too partake of the formality of his day, and if they never offend the taste seldom reach the heart. But the man who in such an age could throw himself so heartily into the order of the Christian year, who could advocate the importance of weekly celebration of Holy Communion, and set forth the sacrificial aspect of the Blessed Sacrament, deserves to be had in remembrance by us at the present time, as one who in an evil day boldly maintained forgotten and unpopular truths. His heart at least was in the right place.

We refer the reader to Mr. Secretan's book for the details of Nelson's life. They are not many, nor very interesting. There is a sameness about the attendance at religious societies, which becomes after a time tedious. More interesting are the glimpses Mr. Secretan furnishes of Nelson in private life, as the good son, the tender husband, the affectionate relative, the staunch friend, and what has especially struck us in reading these pages, the thorough gentleman. We wish we had space to transcribe the long letter to his cousin, G. Hanger, on his departure for Smyrna. It is rather prolix, but full of sound and affectionate advice; a manual of sober piety and common sense. Interest in his friends, and great power of attracting them to him, seem to have been qualities possessed by Nelson in a high degree. He is said never to have lost a friend he once made, and the friendships he formed lasted in spite of differences on many important points. Staunch adherent as he was of the deprived Bishops, nevertheless Tillotson died in his arms.

It was to be expected that Nelson would take an active lead in all good works for the well-being of the Church. The copious extracts Mr. Secretan has given from the journals of the S.P.C.K., if as we said above, a little tedious, show this, and evidence the great amount of personal service Nelson rendered, in addition to the sums of money he expended in good works. How in advance of his age he was, the table of Desideranda drawn up by him (Vide pp. 147-150) shows. There is scarcely a want which we are endeavouring to supply, which was not felt by Nelson. Hospitals for the incurable, penitentiaries, religious houses, ragged schools, Suffragan Bishops, Diocesan Colleges for training candidates for Holy Orders, all points towards which the awakening of our own days is tending, were sketched out for us a hundred years ago. We are not the first who have seen the terrible shortcomings of our Church, nor the first who have tried to amend them.

We rise from the perusal of this biography encouraged by the example of a man who in a barren and dry land sought for and found communion with his SAVIOUR, when all around him seemed dead and cold, or at the best decently respectable. It may do us

1 Among other advantages of theological colleges, Nelson enumerates the Clergy being particularly directed how to receive clinical confessions."