"Sweetly and gently": reading Bishop Hall in Whitsun week

From the 1652 Whitsun sermon by Bishop Hall, moderate Calvinist and Dort delegate, an expression of Episcopalian piety - irenic, quiet, peaceable - with roots in Hooker and flowering in the Laudian Taylor and the Latitudinarian Tillotson:

God's Spirit leads us Sweetly and Gently ... not in a blustering and hurrying violence, but by a leisurely and gracious inclination. So, in Elijah's vision, there was fire, wind, earthquake; but God was in none of them: these were fit preparatives for his appearance; but it was the still soft voice, wherein God would be revealed. Those, that are carried with a heady and furious impetuousness and vehemence of passion in all their proceedings, which are all rigour and extremity, are not led by that Good Spirit; which would be styled the Spirit of Meekness: who was pleased to descend, not in the form of an eagle, or any other fowl of prey; but in the form of a meek and innocent dove.

We could easily imagine the words coming from Hooker or Taylor. Indeed, Taylor's counsel to his clergy comes to mind:

Let the business of your Sermons be to preach holy Life, Obedience, Peace, Love among neighbours, hearty love, to live as the old Christians did, and the new should; to do hurt to no man, to do good to every man: For in these things the honour of God consists, and the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus.

Comparisons between Hall the Calvinist and Taylor the Arminian have been made often over the centuries, and this Whitsun sermon exemplifies the deep and attractive Episcopalian irenicism they both articulated. It was an irenicism which would profoundly shape Anglican thought and piety, a sweet and gentle irenicism flowing from Whitsunday, the gift of the Comforter.

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laudable Practice

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