of the Icelandic Becket Saga is hardly adequate. Considerable interest attaches to its connexion with the lost biography by Robert of Cricklade, prior of St. Frideswide's, Oxford, which seems to have been the earliest Life of the saint to reach Iceland, and which was there combined with the History of the Passion and Miracles by Benedict of Canterbury.1

Criticisms may here and there be offered on details of the work, but the general result, from the standpoint of the historian, is distinctly praiseworthy. This is the first time that the importance of what may be called the career of Becket after death has been thoroughly investigated. The result is to place before English readers an exceedingly curious collection of medieval miracles. The nature of these varies almost infinitely according to the date at which they were written down and the persons who recorded them. It may suffice to quote Dr. Abbott's opinion of Benedict, the first authority:

'Benedict, who was the first appointed to report the miracles, seems to have been well adapted for the task; a man of (comparatively) simple and unaffected style, peculiarly accurate (for those times) in matters of chronology, free from exaggeration, and disposed to suspect exaggeration and imposture in others. Hence great weight must be attached to his accounts of the early miracles. The diseases healed by them were for the most part (as might have been anticipated) nervous disorders, such as might be cured by a strong emotional shock. In some cases Benedict frankly tells us that the cure was not at first perfect; in others that it was followed by relapse. In one case he informs us that the reputed water of St. Thomas was not St. Thomas's at all. It was a fraudulent imitation; yet it performed the desired cure.'

We do not desire to pass judgment on the credibility of the various miracles. This would involve an examination as detailed as Dr. Abbott's. Still less do we intend to discuss the whole subject of medieval miracles, without which an isolated treatment of the Becket cycle would be of very slight value. With much of the detailed examination of Dr. Abbott there is no need to demur. It establishes, what every student of the literature must have long decided for himself, that while there was, as time went on, much imposture and much confusion, and much record without evidence, and much healing that is easily explained on purely natural grounds, there still remain cases which may be conveniently treated as due to 'faith' in some inexplicable way, but which to the Chris1 See Dictionary of National Biography, article 'Robert of Cricklade.'

tian seem to involve an obvious relation to the Divine Power acting in a manner which is beyond ordinary human experience. Within the limits of our present knowledge it is impossible to do more than to admit that there were signs due to 'the power of God.'

Dr. Abbott asks: 'Did the miracles result from the man or from the circumstances?' Was it the nature of his death that brought the miracles? If he had died in his bed, he as mere Archbishop Thomas Becket, it is said, 'would have rested, an unhelpful corpse, with other commonplace corpses of ordinary archbishops in an unvisited grave.'

It

'This is so far true,' says Dr. Abbott, 'that we must admit at once that Becket, dying an ordinary death, would probably not have cured a single spasm of rheumatism. But it by no means follows, either that other Saints would have made up for his deficiency, or that he is so far to be separated from his death that it is to be called an accident instead of an act. If Becket had died in his bed, pilgrims might still have gone to St. Edmund, St. James, the two Apostles in Rome, or the Tomb in Jerusalem; but it would have been in the old slack and (comparatively) lifeless and formal way. There is no more reason to doubt that Becket caused a religious revival, than that Wesley and Whitfield did. The two chroniclers of miracles agree in asserting that the miracles brought with them an uprising of moral and religious fervour, and indirectly prove it by multitudinous details recorded without controversial purpose. was brief indeed, but it was powerful, while it lasted. The churches built by the Archbishop's former enemies as well as by his countless worshippers, are outward monuments of a strong inward protest against the violent and oppressive character often assumed by the secular forces of the time or at all events of concessions from the strong to the strength of such a protest from the weak. It was not the Saxon against the Norman, it was the poor and weak oppressed against the rich and strong oppressor, that everywhere-alike in England and France and through the Latin-speaking world-rose up in the might of St. Thomas the Martyr, and decreed that he must be a Saint, even before the Papal edict had made him one. Most of those healed in the days of the earliest miracles have English names. But their passionate reverence and their wonder-working faith did not arise in their hearts from patriotic motives, because they were "English born." It was because they were wronged or liable to be wronged, that they took up the cause for which the New Martyr of the English had shed his blood. The Church, though sometimes defective and corrupt, was nevertheless felt by the poor to be often their only protection against outrage, and the martyr typified her championing spirit' (ii. 301).

Much of this is undoubtedly true. And we may add more. The popular admiration which had followed the saint in his life, because he withstood to their faces, again and

again, king and Pope and barons and bishops, clung to him after death because of the abiding national sense that he had been an heroic champion in a great national struggle. And here we may note the great merit of Miss Norgate's narrative in the Dictionary of National Biography. Here and there her research has revealed a new fact, or supplied a new inference, for the history of Becket. But most of all the value of her work lies in the fact that, though hampered by the stern editorial restriction as to style,' and confined to the jejune allotment of space which the garrulousness of some of the earlier contributors has rendered necessary for the later volumes, she has with masterly precision and lucidity made the tale speak for itself and show the martyr for the hero that he was. It was not the attraction of a peculiarly Roman type of sanctity, or the character of a devoted son of the Papacy, as Father John Morris, in his otherwise admirable biography, seemed to suggest, that made Becket famous. It was the thoroughly English determination of his life, the stedfast appeal for justice against despotism. It was the struggle of a statesman who saw the danger of all power being absorbed by the centralized state. It was the struggle of the priest who knew that while the statesman's work was noble, there was a higher claim in the Church and the souls of men. Becket never ceased to be a statesman; but in his later years he became inspired, before all things, with the passion of the priest. A spiritual society, a body which asserts for itself the care of man's spiritual nature, must have spiritual rules-laws for its own members. If these conflict with other rules, then the members of the spiritual society must be ready to suffer for the faith they believe and the rules they obey. For the Church, like every other society, though nowadays we seem in danger of forgetting it, has rights-rights which those who believe in Jesus Christ and His Commission must be prepared to defend and, if need be, to die for. St. Thomas said again and again that he would do such or such an act 'saving his order.' It is a proviso that must be always necessary. Priests can only act in the ordinary affairs of life with the understanding that they must be loyal before all things to the law to which they are bound. Lay folk similarly must do their work in the world in the light of the revelation that they are citizens also of a Heavenly City, whose rules above all things they must obey.

This is the supreme lesson of the life of the great English

This was recently described by the Master of the Temple at a gathering of the contributors as 'no flowers, by request.'

saint. This it is which is unfolded in page after page of that remarkable series of letters which was copied and handed about all through the middle ages, a collection than which there is none other so full and so intimate in medieval history save, perhaps, that of St. Bernard. This it is which made natural the promptness with which Henry VIII., when he had embarked on a campaign against individual liberty, recognized the bygone saint as a deadly foe. In August 1538, fourteen years after Erasmus had seen the wonders of the shrine, Thomas Cromwell directed its destruction. The bones, which had rested in an iron chest since the translation by Stephen Langton in 1220, were 'then and there brent.' ' It was a fit expression of the triumph of the Tudor despotism. It was as a gallant fight for liberty that Englishmen cherished the memory of Becket's career. And beyond all the causes of his fame that we can coldly estimate is the unquestionable heroism and picturesqueness of his life. It is a tale of passion, determination, courage to the death, that stirs the blood as we read it now; and there are few scenes in English history so rich in tragic fascination as that of the twilight hour in Canterbury Cathedral when the tall strong priest gave himself to death for what he believed to be the call of duty and the voice of God.

ART. X. A SERIOUS CALL.'

A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, Adapted to the State and Condition of all Orders of Christians. By WILLIAM LAW, A.M. A new edition with Preface and Notes by J. H. OVERTON, D.D., Canon of Lincoln and Rector of Gumley. (London and New York: Macmillan & Co. 1898.)

WE write this article with a definite purpose in view. It shall be our endeavour to give such an account of Law's Serious Call, and of this the best edition of it that has ever been published, as shall lead everyone who has not read it

1 The fate of the bones has been the subject of a keen controversy which can hardly be said yet to be ended. We believe that an opinion is still held at Canterbury that the bones found in 1888 were those of St. Thomas. But to our mind the evidence of Stowe (Annals, Sept. 1538) and of the Consistorial Acts (cf. Annales Eccles. cont. Baronii, tom. xiii. 494) is sufficient; cf. Letters &c. Henry VIII. vol. xiii. pt. 2, p. 49. And Miss Norgate takes this view.

to set about the task as soon as possible. This may be done most luxuriously for eight and sixpence in Canon Overton's edition, but the piety, wisdom, and wit of William Law's most famous work is, we believe, within the reach of all who can afford and are willing to spend ninepence on good literature. It may be convenient at the outset to say what course we propose to pursue. We shall first of all show in what good company we find ourselves when we profess to have a very hearty admiration for Law's logical powers, a sensation of pleasure by reason of his wit, and a deep respect for his consistent piety. The testimony to this is so weighty, and his own book so convincing on these points, that we shall not shrink from the quotation of all the adverse criticism of which we have cognizance. We shall then put before our readers a precise account of the contents of the Serious Call, and quote passages from it as samples of the whole. This will show why the book has been included in the series of reprints to which this edition belongs; and finally we shall examine the special marks of the work done by Canon Overton as the editor and annotator of the volume. He is too good a scholar, and too sincere an admirer of William Law, to find fault with us for putting the author first and the editor second. But we may add that in all the steps of our design we shall owe much to the labour which Canon Overton has bestowed upon the work.

The Serious Call was published in 1728, and as it has always been Law's lot to influence many who held neither his later views on Mysticism, nor his life-long position with regard to sacramental principles, we are not surprised to hear Canon Overton's unhesitating declaration that there is little doubt that the great Evangelical revival . . . owed its first impetus to this book more than to any other,' and that among the leaders of that revival there was scarcely one who was not more or less affected by it (Pref. pp. ix, xiv). For three years John Wesley, whose religious impressions had been revived at Oxford by the Serious Call and two other books, preached after the model of Mr. Law's practical treatises, and though he afterwards came under other influences and discarded Mr. Law as a guide, he never lost his admiration of the Serious Call, as 'a treatise which will hardly be excelled, if it be equalled, either for beauty of expression or for depth of thought.' This was only eighteen months before his death, and he made the work a text-book for the highest class in his school at Kingswood. The book produced an alteration in

1 In the Ancient and Modern Library of Theological Literature.