208 ~~ VL—GREAT KINGS AND BISHOPS (A.D. 1593—1718).
and was unable to leave before August. During his illness
he vowed to continue his efforts to the end of his life, and
he did so; but with no immediate result. His subsequent
subservience to Cromwell, his acceptance first of Pres-
byterianism and then of Independency, and other weak-
nesses of character led to his being called many hard names.
But he was a brave and persevering man, whose memory
's worthy of grateful record by posterity.
Almost his last attempt at conciliation was in the form of
a commentary on the Apocalypse.
Durie died at Cassel in 1680 (where the Princess Hedvig
Sophia gave him a comfortable retirement), almost despair-
ing of the cause to which he had devoted his life, but not
the least doubtful of its righteousness. And as the broader
work of conciliation with Rome which Cassander and
Wicelius had championed, and to which Grotius in his
later years inclined, and which Calixtus had (at least in
theory) professed to desire, was carried on in Germany by
Molanus and Leibnitz, so the narrower and more obvious
project of uniting Lutherans and Calvinists was kept in
view in the kingdom of Prussia, and promoted also by
Leibnitz. Here the house of Brandenburg had accepted
the reformed faith, while its subjects were mainly
Lutherans, and such a union was eminently reasonable.
The union, which was promoted and to a great degree
effected by Frederick William III. of Prussia in 1817, was
the outcome of the previous efforts in which Durie had
his share 48
8 Cp. S. Cheetham: H. of the Ch. since the Ref., pp. 423
foll.,, Lond., 1907. I am glad to think that my friend, Arch-
deacon Cheetham, was able before his death to complete the
rood work which Hardwick had begun of a short summary of
the whole of Church history. Cheetham’s first volume on the
Early Church, followed by Hardwick’s two on the Middle Age
and the Reformation, and Cheetham’s final volume, H. of the
Church since the Reformation, make up a compact series.
This last volume is a particularly useful one.