As a theologian, Falkland appears to have been a Chillingworth on a very
small scale. It does not seem to us that Principal Tulloch, in his
interesting chapter on him, succeeds in putting him higher. But he
shared, with Chillingworth and Hales, the spirit of liberality and
toleration, for which both were nobly conspicuous, though Hales did not
show himself a very uncompromising champion of his principles when he
accepted preferment from the hands of their arch-enemy, Laud. The
learned men and religious philosophers whom Falkland gathered round him
at Tew, were among the best and foremost thinkers of their age: the
beauty of the group is marred, perhaps, only by the sinister intrusion
of Sheldon.
Mr. Matthew Arnold, in the very graceful sketch of Falkland's life
published by him in aid of the Falkland Memorial, has endowed his
favourite character with gifts far rarer and more memorable than those
of which we have spoken; with an extraordinary largeness and lucidity of
mind, with almost divine superiority to party narrowness and bias, with
conceptions anticipative of the most advanced philosophy of modern
times. He quotes the Dean of Westminster as affirming that "Falkland is
the founder, or nearly the founder, of the best and most enlightening
tendencies of the Church of England"--a statement which breeds
reflection as to the character of the Church of England during the
previous century, in the course of which its creed and liturgy were
formed. The evidence of these transactions lies wide; much of it is
still in the British Museum; and it may be possible to produce something
sufficient to sustain Falkland on the pinnacle on which Mr. Arnold and
the Dean of Westminster have placed him. But we cannot help surmising
that he has in some measure undergone the process which, in an age
prolific in historic fancies as well as pre-eminent in historic
research, has been undergone by almost every character in history--that
of being transmuted by a loving biographer, and converted into a sort of
ventriloquial apparatus through which the biographer preaches to the
present from the pulpit of the past. The philosophy ascribed to Falkland
is, we suspect, partly that of a teacher who was then in the womb of
time. We should not be extreme to mark this, if the praise of Falkland
had not been turned to the dispraise and even to the vilification of men
who are at least as much entitled to reverent treatment at the hands of
Englishmen as he is, and at the same time of a large body of English
citizens at the present day, who are the objects, we venture to think,
of a somewhat fanciful and somewhat unmeasured antipathy. Those who
subscribe to the Falkland Testimonial are collectively set down by Mr.
Arnold as the "amiable"--those who do not subscribe as the "unamiable."
Few, we trust, would be so careful of their money and so careless of
their reputation for moral beauty as to refuse to pay a guinea for a
certificate of amiability countersigned by Mr.
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