'_February 10, 1656._ I heard Dr. Wilkins preach before the Lord Mayor in S. Paul's, shewing how obedience was preferable to sacrifice. He was a most obliging person, who had married the Protector's sister, and tooke greate paines to preserve the Universities from the ignorant sacrilegious commanders and souldiers, who would faine have demolished all places and persons that pretended to learning.' [_GERM OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY._] Dr. Wilkins appears, like too many of that time, to have regarded the Church as utterly overthrown, and probably believed honestly in his peculiar interpretation of the text upon which he preached. Much credit is however due to him for the idea of the Oxford meetings, and for the hospitality which he showed. These meetings were the germ of the Royal Society, and to them Dr. Thomas Sprat (afterwards Bishop of Rochester), a great friend of Christopher Wren's, bears testimony:-- 'Wadham College,'[62] he says, 'was then the place of resort for virtuous and learned men. Their first purpose was no more than only the satisfaction of breathing a freer air, and of conversing in quiet, one with another, without being engaged in the passions and madness of that dismal age. And from the institution of that assembly it had been enough if no other advantage had come but this; that by these means there was a race of young men provided against the next age, whose minds receiving from them their first impressions of sober and generous knowledge, were invincibly armed against all the enchantments of enthusiasm.... It was in good measure by the influence which these gentlemen had over the rest, that the university itself, or at least any part of its discipline and order, was saved from ruin.... Nor indeed could it be otherwise, for such spiritual frenzies, which did then bear rule, can never stand long before a clear and deep skill in nature. It is almost impossible, that they who converse much with the subtilty of things, should be deluded by such thick deceits. There is but one better charm in the world than real philosophy, to allay the impulses of the false spirit, and that is the blessed Presence and assistance of the True.' In 1656, on the 29th of May, Dean Wren died. Sorrow and anxiety, the desolation of the Church, the apparent ruin of the monarchy, had worn out his gentle spirit; and probably little thinking how great a change was approaching to free the country, he passed away, aged 69, at the house of his son-in-law, Mr. Holder, and was buried in the chancel of Bletchingdon Church.[63] When we look back to the years of the Rebellion, their darkness is lightened for us by the knowledge that the Restoration came at last, and it is difficult to realise fully how the times appeared to those who actually lived in them, to whom the years brought only fresh losses and sorrows, and the sickness of hope deferred.