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 English church was more in accord with the latter than the former. He also took quite a different line from most churchmen on the Sabbath question. He laid great stress on the Fourth Commandment, which he termed ‘the very pith of all the Decalogue, by due observance whereof we come both to learn and put in practice all the rest of God's commandments the better, and without which, in a short time, they would all come to nothing.’ Three out of his twenty-two extant sermons are on this commandment, and he wrote a letter, which almost amounts to a treatise, on the subject. Of course, he fully distinguished between the Jewish Sabbath and the christian Lord's day. He classes the latter among other holy days, and he would have had all of them observed as strictly, though not as austerely, as the puritans would have had their Sabbath. His teaching on this point is strangely different from that which led to and defended the ‘Book of Sports.’ His attitude towards Romanism was always one of uncompromising hostility; and by far the greatest proportion of his literary work is expressly directed against that system. He was also strongly in favour of divorce in the case of adultery, and of permission to the innocent party in such cases to remarry. In the famous case of Lord Ross eighteen bishops voted against the divorce, and only two in favour of it, and Cosin was one of the two. Again, though he was always emphatically the priest, though he maintained to the end the traditions of his early intimacy with men like Laud, Mountague, Erle, Morley, and especially Overall, yet he was also, in the good sense of the term, a man of the world. He was full of bonhomie, interested in the minutest points of secular business, on terms of great intimacy with the laity, and a great smoker. He was singularly frank and outspoken, and showed a quaint originality of character and expression, which must have been very attractive.

Cosin's writings acquire an adventitious importance from the writer's own forcible and interesting character. It is not the writings that have preserved the man, but the man who has preserved the writings from oblivion. Still, the writings themselves possess a great intrinsic value. With two exceptions, none of them were published during the bishop's lifetime. Probably the first written, though not the first published, of Cosin's works is that entitled ‘The Sum and Substance of the Conferences lately held at York House concerning Mr. Mountague's Books, which it pleased the Duke of Buckingham to appoint, and with divers other honourable persons to hear, at the special and earnest request of the Earl of Warwick and the Lord Say.’ These conferences were held in February 1625–6. The books were ‘The Gagg’ and the ‘Appello Cæsarem;’ and it appears from Mountague's letters to Cosin that the latter had seen and approved, if he had not actually had a considerable share in the production of, the offending volumes. ‘The Sum and Substance’ is simply a narrative of all that took place at the conferences. In February 1626–7 Cosin published his famous ‘Collection of Private Devotions, in the practice of the Ancient Church, called the Hours of Prayer; as they were after this manner published by authority of Queen Elizabeth, 1560.’ John Evelyn gives the following account of its publication: ‘Oct. 12, 1651.—I asked Mr. Deane (Cosin) the occasion of its being publish'd, which was this: the Queene coming over into England with a great traine of French ladys, they were often upbraiding our English ladys of the court that, having so much leisure, trifled away their time in the antechambers among the young gallants, without having something to divert themselves of more devotion; whereas the Ro. Catholick ladys had their Hours and the Breviarys, which entertained them in religious exercise. Our Protestant ladys scandalized at this reproach, it was complained of to the king.’ The king consulted Bishop White, and ‘the bishop presently named Dr. Cosin (whom the king exceedingly approv'd of) to prepare [a book], as speedily as he cou'd, and as like to their pockett offices as he cou'd, with regard to the antient forms before Popery.’ Cosin prepared his book in three months; and the Bishop of London (Mountain) ‘so well lik'd and approv'd, that (contrary to the usual custome of referring it to his chaplain) he wou'd needs give the imprimatur under his own hand.’ The book sold very rapidly; and if it had been published at any other time no outcry would have been raised against it. But it appeared when Laud and Mountague had lately roused the antipathy of the puritans, and Cosin was a known friend of both. It was therefore found to contain popery in disguise. Henry Burton wrote against it his ‘Examination of Private Devotions; or the Hours of Prayer, &c.,’ W. Prynne his ‘Brief Survey and Censure of Mr. Cozen's Cozening [or ‘cousining’ or ‘cozenizing’] Devotions.’ In fact Cosin, as he told Laud, was ‘the subject of every man's censure.’ Most of the objections were of the most ridiculous nature. ‘In the frontispiece the name of I.H.S. is engraven, which is the Jesuit's marke.’ ‘The title, “The Houres,” is both a popish and a Jewish name.’ ‘Matins and Evensong are popish words.’