DR. BENJAMIN ALLEN, OF BRAINTREE.
11
Elsewhere, we meet (pp. 349-350) with a long report of "My
Conversation with Mr. John Ray, the author of the 'Generalis
Historia Plantarum.'" The diction is so confused in parts as
to be almost unintelligible, but it may be of interest to insert a
statement of the theological views of so great a man as Ray,
even though we have it at second-hand only. Allen says:—
This gentleman had travell'd and been with all the great men in
Europe, to inquire [after] truth and knowledge in Divinity and Learning.
He was in both Orders, and had never took the Solemn League. [He was]
of most recluse and pious life, and told me he prafer'd that, with just a
sufficiency, than to expend time wastefully and enter into temptations
wch. he could not see to avoid in making address for preferment or public
business. This was his deliberate choice.
" He often would repeat that most extraordinary thought in so early
a time, as a most just one of God—' The Heaven of Heavens cannot
contain Thee'—that God must fill all, be at the head of all, and that
there must be infinity of space; as, if a man go as far as he can in the vast
Systems, what hinders him from going farther or putting out his elbow, if
anything then matter is beyond; so that God and Eternity, or Infinity
of Space, we must allow we can have no apprehension of, and yet it is
necessary.
" The Discovery of Letters, he took for Divine Revelation.
" He sayd the Jews were a standing miracle in memory of our Saviour,
not to be blended and mixt; no natural caus could solve; yet never to
be admitted to settle—a token of God's anger.
" [He said also] that a spoyle or smile of grass18 shew'd a Deity as 
much as anything; nothing in it to raise, keep, or support it, but a Divine
power by which it stands and grows; indeed sense and design, when it
is not in the creature, shows him most, as the Climers do."19
" For the Church of England, he sayd no man could well answer for
Dissention from the precept of our Saviour, Love and Peace ; but how the
Clergy dare to impose, he wondered. He sayd they had never prov'd the
Church had any power to alter what was appointed in Baptism, to appoint
god-fathers to help out God Almighty, to put it in form of Law, to sprinkle
for dipping (This he sayd when he stood Deputy God Father for Tommy20.)
The assuming to the Church a separat secular power was not from our
Saviour. The taking upon the Church the liberty of making the power
of altering, [of] admitting into Cannon, [of] annulling God's special spirit
(which no Tongue yet equalled. . . ), [of] denying the Ld's. Prayer
(other than as from the Church of the Jews) before the Saviour, [of] mixing
the Apocrypha, . . . [and so on—all these were, he said, totally
unauthorized].
" He told me the auther of the 'Whole Duty of Man' was Mr. John
Chappel, who had a living in Lincolnshire and had been a Fellow of [blank]
18 Clearly these words were intended to indicate a small blade or sprout of grass, but I
cannot find that either was ever current. [Since this was put into type, I have heard the
latter word used, in the sense indicated, by a very intelligent Essex labourer, seventy-two
years of age, now in my employ.]
19 The climbing plants, he means, no doubt.
20 On 12th August 1697, "Tommy" being Allen's eldest son (see ante, xvi., p. 150).