The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume II — John Shaqi
The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume IICrashaw, Richard
General
The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume II
Crashaw, Richard
English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700
The next prominent name is that of Benjamin Lany--sometimes Laney, as in
Masson's Milton (i. 97)--afterwards successively Bishop of Peterborough
and Lincoln and Ely. We have already noted his marked Protestantism in
the verse-eulogy of the elder Crashaw, so that probably it was as his
father's son, Lany, then Master of Pembroke, received our Worthy there.
Lany was of the 'ejected' in 1644. The present Bishop of Ely, with all
willingness to help us, found no MSS. or biographic materials in his
custody. When may we hope each bishopric will find a qualified
historian-biographer? A portrait of Lany is in the Master's Lodge at the
Charterhouse ('Chronicles,' 1847, p. 140).
Crashaw's tutor at Pembroke was 'Master Tournay,' to whose praise and
friendship he dedicates a Latin poem (vol. ii. pp. 371 et sqq.). Dr.
Ward, Master of Sidney College, writes to Archbishop Usher thus of him:
'We have had some doings here of late about one of Pembroke Hall, who,
preaching in St. Mary's, about the beginning of Lent, upon that text,
James ii. 22, seemed to avouch the insufficiency of faith to
justification, and to impugn the doctrine of our 11th Article, of
Justification by faith only; for which he was convented by the
Vice-Chancellor, who was willing to accept of an easy acknowledgment;
but the same party preaching his Latin sermon, _pro Gradu_, the last
week, upon Rom. iii. 28, he said he came not _palinodiam canere, sed
eandem cantilenam canere_; which moved our Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Love, to
call for his sermon, which he refused to deliver. Whereupon, upon
Wednesday last, being Barnaby Day, the day appointed for the admission
of the Bachelors of Divinity, which must answer _Die Comitiorum_, he was
stayed by the major part of the suffrages of the Doctors of the
faculty.... The truth is, there are some Heads among us that are great
abettors of M. Tournay, the party above mentioned, who, no doubt, are
backed by others' (June 14, 1643. Life of Parr, p. 470: Willmott, 1st
series, pp. 302-3). In relation to Tournay's heresy on 'Justification,'
it is profoundly interesting, biographically, to remember Crashaw's most
striking Latin poems--so carelessly overlooked, if not impudently
suppressed, by Turnbull--first published by Crashaw in the volume of
1648, viz. 'Fides, quæ sola justificat, non est sine spe et dilectione,'
and 'Baptismus non tollit futura peccata.' The student will do well to
turn to these two poems in their places (vol. ii. pp. 209, 216).[23]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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