Two devotional writings of the age, besides Baxter's, obtained sufficient currency to merit a place in the history of literature. _The Whole Duty of Man_, first published in 1658, is an excellent representative of the sobriety and sound sense characteristic of the Church of England. At the same time it must be confessed that it has more reason than unction, and seeks rather to menace and upbraid than to allure men into the religious life. At the present day it would be pronounced grievously deficient in fervour, servile in its political teachings, and too exclusive in its appeals to prudential and self-interested motives; but its adaptation to a positive and prosaic age was sufficiently evinced by a circulation enormous for the period. The authorship is involved in mystery: it is usually attributed to Archbishop Sterne or Lady Pakington; but Sterne can hardly have had time to write the seven other treatises ascribed, apparently with good ground, to the same author; and it is clearly not the composition of a woman. Evelyn attributes it on the authority of Archbishop Tenison to a Dr. Chaplin, of University College, Oxford, who cannot be traced. Lately Mr. Dobie, in the _Academy_, has ascribed it and its companions on strong grounds to Richard Allestree, Provost of Eton, an intimate friend of Bishop Fell. The Bishop appears to have copied some of them in his own hand, and certainly was acquainted with the authorship. The most important of the other works ascribed to the writer of _The Whole Duty of Man_ are _The Causes of the Decay of Christian Piety_, _The Gentleman and Ladies' Calling_, and _The Government of the Tongue_.
Another work of edification, which almost rivalled the popularity of _The Whole Duty of Man_, was the _Practical Discourse concerning Death_ (1689), by William Sherlock (1641-1707), Master of the Temple and Dean of St. Paul's, the divine whose tergiversations respecting the oath of allegiance to William and Mary are so amusingly detailed by Macaulay. It is a model of clear and forcible writing, but on the lowest plane of unspiritual selfishness. 'How unreasonable is it for us to trouble ourselves about this world longer than we are like to continue in it!' exclaims Sherlock, with the air of one apologizing for enunciating a truism.