The Later Evangelical Fathers by M Seeley and published by Classics Publications.
The author writes: βIn these simple sketches no attempt has been made to give an impartial estimate of men whose noble lives are briefly β to weigh and balance their merits and defects. This has been done again and again by abler pens than mine, and to me the task would be as impossible as it would be distasteful.
Their names have been give to me, from my earliest years, the names of the Father in the Church.
They did not all hold spiritual office, nor did they all attain to venerable age, but their lives were fruitful and the all left spiritual successors and sons to whom the examples of Thornton and Wilberforce, the consecrated gifts of Cowper, the Heroism of Martyn, no less that the wisdom of Cecil and the labours of Simeon, are a valued inheritance.β
