Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries Part 33

[33] _Aphorism_ 457.

[34] _Aphorism_ 444.

[35] _Aphorism_ 87.

[36] _Aphorism_ 248.

[37] _Aphorism_ 220.

[38] _Several Discourses_ (1707), iv. p. 259.

[39] _Aphorism_ 709.

[40] _Several Discourses_, iv. p. 192.

[41] _Select Sermons_, pp. 55 and 62

[42] _Select Sermons_, p. 7.

[43] _Discourses_, iv. p. 191.

[44] _Ibid._ p. 171.

[45] _Ibid._ p. 259.

[46] _Select Sermons_, p. in

[47] _Aphorism_ 302.

[48] Quoted almost literally from _Select Sermons_, p. 72.

[49] _Ibid._ pp. 32-33.

[50] _Select Sermons_, p. 6. He also says in Aphorism No. 109, "G.o.d hath set up two Lights to enlighten us in our Way: the Light of Reason, which is the Light of His Creation; and the Light of Scripture which is After-Revelation from Him."

[51] _Aphorism_ 587.

[52] See _Several Discourses_, iv. p. 173.

[53] _Ibid._ ii. p. 275.

[54] _Aphorisms_ 1127, 853, and 1028.

[55] _Select Sermons_, p. 79; and _Aphorism_ 285.

[56] _Select Sermons_, p. 350.

[57] _Aphorism_ 367.

[58] _Select Sermons_, p. 71.

[59] _Aphorisms_ 243 and 625.

[60] _Aphorism_ 290.

[61] _Aphorisms_ 525, 612.

[62] _Aphorism_ 464.

[63] _Select Sermons_, p. 86. This will be recognized as in perfect parallelism with Jacob Boehme's teaching, and the parallel is even more striking in the pa.s.sage where Whichcote says that "Religion must inform the Judgment with Truth and reform the Heart and Life by the _Tincture_ of it." (_Select Sermons_, p. 157).

[64] _Aphorism_ 51.

[65] _Select Sermons_, p. 42.

[66] _Aphorism_ 248.

[67] _Select Sermons_, p. 153.

[68] _Ibid._ p. 21.

[69] _Several Discourses_, ii. p. 329.

[70] John Tulloch's _Rational Theology in the Seventeenth Century_, ii.

p. 115.

{305}

CHAPTER XVI

JOHN SMITH, PLATONIST--"AN INTERPRETER OF THE SPIRIT"[1]

Princ.i.p.al Tulloch, in his admirable study of the Cambridge Platonists, declares that John Smith was "the richest and most beautiful mind and certainly by far the best writer of them all."[2]

There can be no doubt, in the thought of any one who has come into close contact with him, of the richness and beauty of his spirit. He leaves the impression, even after the lapse of more than two hundred and fifty years, of having been a saint of a rare type. Those who were nearest to him in fellows.h.i.+p called him "a good man," "a G.o.dlike man,"

"a servant and friend of G.o.d," "a serious practicer of the Sermon on the Mount"; and we who know him only afar off and at second hand feel sure nevertheless that these lofty words were rightly given to him.

His scholars.h.i.+p was wide--he had "a vastness of learning," as Patrick says; but his main contribution was not to philosophy nor to theology, it consisted rather of an exhibition of religion wrought out in the attractive form of a beautiful spiritual life: "He was an Exemplar of true Christian Vertue of so poized and even a life that by his Wisdom and Conscience one might live almost at a venture, walking blindfold through the world."[3]

The details of his life are very meagre. We are in the {306} main dependent on the literary portraits of him drawn by two of his affectionate friends--John Worthington who edited his Discourses, and Simon Patrick who delivered the remarkable sermon on the occasion of his funeral.[4] From these sources we learn that John Smith was born at Achurch near Oundle about the year 1618, "of parents who had long been childless and were grown aged." It appears incidentally that his parents were poor, and that Benjamin Whichcote, who was Smith's college Tutor, made "provision for his support and maintenance" in his early student days.[5] He entered Emmanuel College in 1636, and here he came under the profound religious and intellectual influence of Whichcote, for whom "he did ever express a great and singular regard." He became a Master of Arts in 1644, and that same year was elected Fellow of Queens' College. It was about this time that Whichcote returned to Cambridge, "spreading and propagating a n.o.bler, freer and more generous sett of opinions," which "the young Masters of Arts soon cordially embraced." Among those who formed this group of awakened and kindled students Smith was an enthusiastic member, and he himself soon became a powerful exponent in the Chapel of Queens' College of a similar message, which, a contemporary writer says, "contributed to raise new thoughts and a sublime style in the members of the University." He was smitten, while still young, with a painful lingering illness, which he bore "without murmuring or complaining," "resting quietly satisfied in the Infinite, Unbounded Goodness and Tenderness of his Father," hoping only that he might "learn that for which G.o.d sent the suffering,"[6]

and he died August 7, 1652, "after G.o.d had lent him to the world for about five and thirty years."[7] "I was desirous," his friend Patrick says at the opening of his funeral sermon, "that I might have stai'd the wheels of that Triumphant Chariot wherein he seemed to be carried; that we might have {307} kept him a little longer in this world, till by his holy breathing into our souls, and the Grace of G.o.d, we had been made meet to have some share in that inheritance of the saints in light"; but now, he adds, "we are orphans, left without a father."[8]

Patrick adapts to his own departed teacher the beautiful words which Gregory Thaumaturgus used of his great instructor, Origen: "He hath entangled and bound up my soul in such fetters of love, he hath so tyed and knit me to him, that if I would be disengaged, I cannot quit myself. No, though I depart out of the world, our love cannot die, for I love him even as my own soul, and so my affection must remain forever."[9] The whole sermon throbs with intense love, and while it is somewhat overweighted with quotations and learned allusions, it yet expresses in an impressive way the sincere affection of a disciple for a n.o.ble master who has "begot another shape in his scholar and has made another man of him."[10] "Such men," he says, "G.o.d hath alwaies in the world, men of greater height and stature than others, whom He sets up as torches on an hill to give light to all the regions round about."[11] Such men "are the guard and defense of the towns where they reside, yea of the country whereof they are members; they are the keepers and life-guards of the world; the walls and bulwarks of the Nation,"[12] and when they leave the world everybody soon feels that a glory has departed--"when Elijah goes away you shall have fifty men go three days to seek him!"[13]

This disciple, who declared that whatever "heavenly life" there was in himself had been "hatched" by the fostering care, the nurturing love and the brave conduct of his teacher, has left a few very clear traits for the creation of a true portrait of this saintly interpreter of the Spirit: He was a Fountain running over, Worthington says, "an ever bountifull and bubbling Fountain."[14] Love was bubbling and springing up in his soul and flowing out to all. He would have emptied his soul into others. He {308} was dipped into Justice as it were over head and ears; he had not a slight tincture but was dyed and coloured quite through with it. He cared only for those substantial and solid things of a Divine and Immortal Nature, which he might carry out of the world with him. He was a living library, a walking study, a whole college in himself, that carried his learning about with him; a man of great industry, indefatigable pains, and herculean labours. His learning was so concocted that it lay not in notions in his head, but was wrought out and formed in his very soul so that a man came away always better after converse with him. His faith did not busy itself about fine notions, subtilties, and curiosities, but it was firmly set and fixed in an experience of the mercy and goodness of G.o.d, seen in Jesus Christ. He lived in a continuous enjoyment of G.o.d and perpetually drew nearer to the Centre of his soul's rest and always stayed G.o.d's time of advancement. His spirit was absorbed in the business and employment of becoming perfect in his art and profession--which was the art _of being a good man_.[15] The devoted scholar's highest wish, as he closes his glowing account of his beloved master, who "enshrined so much Divinity that everything about him had a kind of sacredness," was that those who had enjoyed his presence and inspiration and had formed their lives under his instruction might "so express his life" in theirs, that men would say as they saw these disciples of his, "There walks at least a shadow of Mr. Smith!"[16]

It would be difficult to find any one, in the long list of those who have interpreted Christianity, who has been more insistent than was John Smith that religion is the normal function of the soul and the surest evidence of its health and sanity. But religion of this normal and spiritual type must be sharply differentiated both from superst.i.tion and from legalistic religion. The mark of superst.i.tion in his mind is the apprehension of G.o.d as capricious, a hard Master, and of such a character that his {309} favour can be gained only by servile flattery or bribery or by spells of magic. Superst.i.tion is "a brat of darkness" born in a heart of fear and consternation. It produces invariably "a forced and jejune devotion"; it makes "forms of wors.h.i.+p which are grievous and burdensome" to the life; it chills or destroys all free and joyous converse with G.o.d; it kills out love and inward peace, and instead of inspiring, heightening, and purifying man's soul, it bends all its energies in the vain attempt to alter the capricious att.i.tude of the superior Being who scares and terrifies men. It is, however, a very subtle spirit and one hard to eradicate. It invades our religion even when we are least aware of it: "it enters into our chambers, creeps into our clothes, twines about our secret devotions, and actuates our forms of belief and orthodox opinions."[17]