What now remains, but your Majesty's perfecting and preserving that (in this Church) which you have with much prudence and tenderness so happily begun and prosecuted, with more zeal than the establishment of your own Throne? The still crazy Church of England,* together with this Book (its great and impregnable shield), do further need, and humbly implore, your Majesty's royal protection under God: nor can your Majesty, by any generous instance and perseverance (most worthy of a Christian King), more express that pious and grateful sense, which God and all good men expect from your Majesty, as some retribution for his many miraculous mercies to yourself, than in a wise, speedy, and happy settling of our Religious peace, with the least grievance, and most satisfaction to all your good Subjects; sacred Order and Uniformity being the centre and circumference of our Civil tranquillity: sedition naturally rising out of schism, and rebellion out of faction; the only cure and antidote against both, are good Laws and Canons,-first wisely made, with all Christian moderation and seasonable charity, next, duly executed with justice and impartiality, which sober severity is indeed the greatest charity to the public;-whose verity, unity, sanctity, and solemnity in religious concernments, being once duly established, must not be shaken, or sacrificed to any private varieties and extravagancies. Where the internals of doctrine, morality, mysteries, and the First was. This is certain, that (besides the Traitors of our epidemical and immoral sins, which were within us, and which are capable to betray the most assured peace of Church or State) the strength of the Church of England was much decayed and undermined, before it was openly battered; partly, by some superfluous, illegal and unauthorized innovations in point of Ceremony, which some men affected to use in public, and impose upon others, which provoked people to jealousy and fury, even against things lawful; every man judging truly, that the measure of all public obedience ought to be public Laws; partly by a supine neglect, in others, of the main matters in which the kingdom of God, the peace of conscience, and of the Church's happiness, do chiefly consist, while they were immoderately intent upon mere Formalities, and more zealous for an outward Conformity to those shadows, [See Vol. II. p. 107, Note f], than for that inward or outward conformity with Christ in holy hearts and unblamable lives which most adorn true Religion."-GAUDEN's Life of Hooker, p. 4. This is a striking testimony, especially when compared with the above paragraph and with the Note in the following page. And see Vol. III. p. 181, Note t.] * [The "crazy" foundation of the Established Church is a source of perpetual alarm to its members. The cry of "Danger" began early and continues to the present moment, with no apparent prospect of abatement: witness, "The Church in Danger from HERSELF: or the Causes of her present declining state explained. Dedicated to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. By the Rev. JOHN ACASTER, Vicar of St. Helen's, York. 1829. 8vo. pp. 171. "Should nothing be effectually done to render her efficient for the purpose intended, the day cannot be far distant, when the affections of the People being entirely estranged from her, she must fall; nor can all the power of the State preserve her from destruction." Ded. "The National Church groans and bleeds, from the crown of its head to the soles of its feet,' through the daily intrusion of unworthy men into its Ministry. Patrons, Parents, Tutors, Colleges, are annually pouring a torrent of incompetent youths into the Church, and loading the nation with Spiritual guilt: hence souls are neglected and ruined, bigotry and ignorance prevail, Church pride triumphs over Church Godliness, and the Establishment is despised, deserted, and wounded."Memoir of the Rev. Legh Richmond, A. M. by the Rev. T. S. GRIMSHAWE, A. M. 1828. 8vo. p. 475.] xlviii GAUDEN'S DEDICATION TO CHARLES II. evangelical duties, being (as they are in the Church of England) sound and sacred, the externals of decent forms, circumstances, rites, and ceremonies, being subordinate and servient to the main, cannot be either evil or unsafe; neither offensive to God nor good Christians. For the attaining of which blessed ends of piety and peace, that the sacred sun and shield of the Divine grace and power directing and protecting, may ever shine upon your Majesty's person and family, counsels and power, is the humble prayer of Your sacred Majesty's Jan. 1, 1661. Most loyal Subject, And devoted Servant, JOH. EXON.* [It is inauspicious that this encomiastic Epistle was written by a Bishop who has been denounced "the villainous," and "that base impostor." (Quarterly Rev. Sep. 1826. p. 347.) That singularly popular, but as Swift characterizes it (Note in p. 86, Vol. I. of Burnet's Hist. of his own Time, 8vo. Oxford, 1823.) " poor treatise," the "Eikov Baσiλikh, or The Portraicture of his Sacred Majestie, 1648," is, after strong suspicion at that time, and the lapse of more than a century and a half, contended to have been fabricated by Dr. Gauden, and, by a pious fraud, or in HOOKER's phraseology, "virtuous delusion" (Vol. II. p. 406.), published as the composition of the unfortunate CHARLES I. It has been said, that if a mitre could be fairly employed as a premium for ingenious fraud, Gauden might have deserved it. "If ever a literary imposture were excusable, it was undoubtedly Gauden's; and had it appeared a week sooner, it might have preserved the King." LAING'S Hist. Scot. 1804, 8vo. Vol. III. p. 544. The subject was revived in TODD's Life of Bishop Walton, 1821. Vol. I. pp. 139-147, and has given rise to a controversy which is not yet terminated. Gauden had not always been a highchurchman: "It must be owned," writes Dr. Zouch, (Walton's Lives, 1796, 4to. p. 7.) "that he was" for a short time, "one of the Assembly of Divines in 1643, and that he took the Covenant"! As an instance of apparent ingratitude in the King to whom Gauden had inscribed the above Dedication, it may be recorded here, that when Archbishop Sheldon acquainted the King of Bishop Gauden's death, his Majesty replied, that "he made no doubt but it would be easy to find a more worthy person to fill his place."-Life of John Barwick, D. D. 1724. p. 360.] LIFE OF RICHARD HOOKER. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND FATHER IN GOD, GEORGE* LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, DEAN OF HIS MAJESTY'S CHAPEL ROYAL, AND PRELATE OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER. MY LORD, I HERE present you with a relation of the Life of that humble man, to whom, at the mention of his name, Princes, and the most learned of this nation, have paid a reverence. It was written by me under your roof;† for which, and more weighty reasons, you might, if it were worthy, justly claim a title to it: but, indeed, my Lord, though this be a well-meant sacrifice to the memory of that venerable man; yet I have so little confidence in my performance, that I beg your pardon for superscribing your name to it; and desire all that know your Lordship to receive it, not as a Dedication, by which you receive any access of honour, but rather as a more humble and a more public acknowledgment of your long continued, and your daily favours to [The original Dedication is here given instead of that of the edition of 1675, because this is less ambiguous respecting Walton's patron, and because it relates to none of Walton's other Lives:-The original Address "To the Reader" is also given for the same reasons.] TO THE READER. I THINK it necessary to inform my reader, that Dr. Gauden (the late Bishop of Worcester) hath also lately wrote and published the Life of Master Hooker. And though this* be not writ by design to oppose what he hath truly written, yet I am put upon a necessity to say, that in it there be many material mistakes, and more omissions. I conceive some of his mistakes did proceed from a belief in Master Thomas Fuller, who had too hastily published what he hath since most ingenuously retracted. And for the Bishop's omissions, I suppose his more weighty business, and want of time, made him pass over many things without that due examination, which my better leisure, my diligence, and my accidental advantages, have made known unto me. And now for myself, I can say, I hope, or rather know, there are no material mistakes in what I here present to you that shall become my reader. Little things that I have received by Tradition (to which there may be too much and too little faith given), I will not at this distance of time undertake to justify; for though I have used great diligence, and compared relations and circumstances, and probable results and expressions, yet I shall not impose my belief upon my reader; I shall rather leave him at liberty: but if there shall appear any material omission, I desire every lover of truth and the memory of Master Hooker, that it may be made known unto me. And, to incline him to it, I here promise to acknowledge and rectify any such mistake in a second impression, which the printer says he hopes for; and by this means my weak (but faithful) endeavours may become a better monument, and in some degree more worthy the memory of this venerable man. I confess, that when I consider the great learning and virtue of Master Hooker, and what satisfaction and advantages many eminent scholars and admirers of him have had by his labours, I do not a little wonder that, in sixty years, no man did undertake to tell posterity of the excellences of his life and learning, and the accidents of both; and sometimes wonder more at myself, that I have been persuaded to it; and, indeed, I do not easily pronounce my own pardon, nor expect that my reader shall, unless my Introduction shall prove my apology, to which I refer him. * [Walton's Life of Hooker was originally published in 1665, 8vo. pp. 208, and prefixed to Hooker's Works, folio, in 1666. But the ensuing Life is printed from Walton's latest revised edition of 1675.] A LETTER TO MR. I. WALTON. BY DR. H. KING, LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER. HONEST IZAAK, THOUGH a familiarity of forty years continuance, and the constant experience of your love, even in the worst of the late sad times, be sufficient to endear our friendship; yet I must confess my affection much improved, not only by evidences of private respect to those very many that know and love you, but by your new demonstration of a public spirit, testified in a diligent, true, and useful collection of so many material passages as you have now afforded me in the Life of venerable Mr. Hooker; of which, since desired by such a friend as yourself, I shall not deny to give the testimony of what I know concerning him and his learned Books; but shall first here take a fair occasion to tell you, that you have been happy in choosing to write the Lives of three* such persons as posterity hath just cause to honour; which they will do the more for the true relation of them by your happy pen; of all which I shall give you my unfeigned censure. I shall begin with my most dear and incomparable friend, Dr. Donne, late dean of St. Paul's church, who not only trusted me as his executor, but three days before his death delivered into my hands those excellent sermons of his which are now made public; professing before Dr. Winniff, Dr. Montford, and I think yourself, then present at his bed-side, that it was by my restless importunity that he had prepared them for the press; together with which, as his best legacy, he gave me all his sermon-notes, and his other papers, containing an extract of near fifteen hundred authors. How these were got out of my hands, you, who were the messenger for them, and how lost both to me and yourself, is not now seasonable to complain; but, since they did miscarry, I am glad that the general demonstration of his worth was so fairly preserved, and represented to the world by your pen in the history of his life; indeed so well, that, beside others, the best critic of our later time, Mr. John Hales, of Eton-college, affirmed to me," he had not seen a Life written with more advantage to the subject, or more reputation to the writer than that of Dr. Donne." [Dr. Donne, Sir H. Wotton, and Hooker. Charles Cotton, in Lines to Walton on his Life of Donne, says, "The meek and learned HooKER too, almost |