[125] Andrès, Blount. Simon, however, says he is full of an erudition not to the purpose, which, as his Commentaries on the Scriptures run to twelve volumes, is not wonderful. [126] Eichhorn, vi. pt. i., p. 264. Mosheim. |English Commentators.| 68. England gradually took a prominent share in this branch of sacred literature. Among the divines of this period, comprehending the reigns of James and Charles, we may mention Usher, Gataker, Mede, Lightfoot, Jackson, Field, and Leigh.[127] Gataker stood, perhaps, next to Usher in general erudition. The fame of Mede has rested, for the most part, on his interpretations of the Apocalypse. This book had been little commented upon by the reformers; but in the beginning of the seventeenth century, several wild schemes of its application to present or expected events had been broached in Germany. England had also taken an active part, if it be true what Grotius tells us, that eighty books on the prophecies had been published here before 1640.[128] Those of Mede have been received with favour by later interpreters. Lightfoot, with extensive knowledge of the rabbinical writers, poured his copious stores on Jewish antiquities, preceded in this by a more obscure labourer in that region, Ainsworth. Jackson had a considerable name, but is little read, I suppose, in the present age. Field on the Church has been much praised by Coleridge; it is, as it seemed to me, a more temperate work in ecclesiastical theory than some have represented it to be, and written almost wholly against Rome. Leigh’s Critica Sacra can hardly be reckoned, nor does it claim to be, more than a compilation from earlier theologians: it is an alphabetical series of words from the Hebrew and Greek Testaments, the author candidly admitting that he was not very conversant with the latter language. [127] “All confess,” says Selden, in the Table-talk, “there never was a more learned clergy--no man taxes them with ignorance.” In another place, indeed, he is represented to say, “The jesuits and the lawyers of France, and the Low Country-men have engrossed all learning; the rest of the world make nothing but homilies.” As far as these sentences are not owing to difference of humour in the time of speaking, he seems to have taken learning in a larger sense the second time than the first. Of learning, not theological the English clergy had no extraordinary portion. [128] Si qua in re libera esse debet sententia, certè in vaticiniis præsertim cum jam Protestantium libri prodierint fermè centum (in his octoginta in Anglia sola, ut mihi Anglici legati dixere,) super illis rebus, inter se plurimum discordes. Grot. Epist. 895. |Style of preaching.| |English sermons.|