The Renaissance had been at work in art and poetry, and had gradually supplanted the old romantic school. Gothic churches disappeared in the fire of London; those built on their ruins were classical reproductions. A new St. Paul’s arose on Ludgate Hill, in contrast with old St. Peter’s on Thorney Island. Multiplicity of parts, angularity of form, picturesqueness of detail, brilliancy of hue, gave place to regularity of outline, a mathematical exactness of proportion, smoothness of ornament, and absence of colour. No more pointed arches, no more niches, no more finials and crockets, no more richly-stained windows;--all became round, uniform, pale, cold. [Sidenote: LITERARY STYLE.] A similar change came over poetry. It were an indignity to the great bard of the seventeenth century to compare him with any other than the great bard of the sixteenth. Milton’s name is linked with Shakespeare’s, but in the way of contrast, just as St. Paul’s Cathedral is associated with Westminster Abbey. The poet of the Renaissance succeeds the poet of romance. The architectural character of the two buildings symbolize the characteristic differences of the two masters of English song. And this same Renaissance spirit worked its way into theological literature. Taylor and Bunyan, indeed, all the great religious writers of the Commonwealth and the Restoration, appear more or less romancists in the style of their thoughts, regarded from a literary point of view. Divisions, pointedness, quaint expression, warmth of sentiment, such as arrests us in mediæval buildings, are reproduced in the books of that picturesque age. The two authors just mentioned belong to the class of romancist prose poets. But all is changed when we turn to the theological literature of King William’s days--Tillotson, Burnet, Bentley, Locke. We miss Anglican and Puritan sweep of thought, minuteness of detail, intensity of utterance, and glow of passion. There is no depth of colour, all is pale; no flash of fire, all is cold. We meet with regularity, order, smoothness. It is the age of Renaissance in Divinity. CHAPTER XVI.