especially Chillingworth and Leslie. I apprehend our Dissenters are not sufficiently acquainted with these antique gentlemen. Perhaps, we are mortified at their striking superiority over all the Noncons. of that or the subsequent age."

However it may be accounted for, there is little reason to question Mr. Foster's accuracy in this opinion; only it might perhaps be added with fairness that these "mighties" are not much better known within the pale of the National Church. Only the few, have any considerable acquaintance with them. Especially is this true concerning the first-named and "mightiest" of them all. The judgment of the learned and unprejudiced of his own age has been endorsed by every succeeding generation, and yet Richard Hooker and his great work are not much heard of beyond study-walls or college lecture-rooms. The nature and the range of his great argument may perhaps account to some extent for this scant though most honourable fame. A controversial work upon the ritual and government of the Church, which left the beaten track of ecclesiastical polemics and soared into the heights of philosophy, was not likely to become popular even in a disputatious age. But, nevertheless, it is somewhat singular that the man whose intellect has furnished the most powerful defence of the Church of England ever written, and who did more than all her sons of that time to keep her frame intact, should be now scarcely more than a name, and even indebted for this, in part, to King James's epithet-" the judicious Hooker."

If, however, it may be some compensation to an unappreciated genius to find a good biographer, Hooker has unquestionably enjoyed

the benefit in full. In a happy hour for all "lives of good men and for "letters," Izaak Walton was persuaded by a friend to write Hooker's life. Although "past the seventy of his age," the work was undertaken and accomplished as a "labour of love." With garrulous simplicity, and fond reverence for his friend's friend, the "old man eloquent" lingers over his task, filling in the few and plain lines of the picture, with a patience and fulness of interest in his work such as became a veteran angler. All accessible sources of information were laboriously searched, and the smallest fragments of authentic testimony gathered up with unsparing industry and zeal. Among biogra phies, Walton's "Lives" have taken rank with the master-pieces; miniatures, indeed, but of rich and rare excellence.

Richard Hooker was born at Heavitree, near Exeter, and consequently is to be numbered amongst those illustrious Devonshire men of the sixteenth century who made their native county proud of her sons. Walton ascertained the year of his birth apparently with some difficulty, but it was "about the year of our redemption, 1553," the year of Queen Mary's accession to the throne. His parents and his schoolmaster early perceived the promise of greatness in the boy, but the straightness of his father's means forbad the indulgence of their hopes. The good schoolmaster, however, prevailed with the parents to give up the design of apprenticing him, and to keep him at school for some time longer, until a way might be found for sending him to the University. Providence favoured the good man's efforts for his beloved pupil, and under the generous patronage of another noted Devonshire worthy of that age, Bishop Jewel,

Hooker was entered at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in his fifteenth year. His progress at the university fully justified the fond hopes of his friends. He was elected a scholar of his college in 1573, and four years afterwards, fellow; having meanwhile taken the usual degrees, and distinguished himself so highly that he was reputed "not only to know more of causes and effects; but what he knew, he knew better than other men." The death of Bishop Jewel, in 1571, was a great grief and loss to the poor student, for the place he then held in the college was not equal to his maintenance. But he was soon relieved from the necessity of depending upon a patron. A few months after Bishop Jewel's death, he was invited to become tutor to Edwin Sandys, afterwards Sir Edwin, the son of Archbishop Sandys. The closest friendship sprang up between the wealthy student and his juvenile tutor, and thenceforward Hooker's Oxford life was undisturbed by fears of pecuniary troubles. Other pupils sought his instructions, one of whom, George Cranmer, a grand-nephew of the famous Archbishop, became his life-long friend and of Sandys also. The emoluments of his teachings, increased afterwards by those of his fellowship, enabled him to enrich himself with varied stores of learning, gathered from all sources, and from regions "remote from the track of common studies" during several years. His reputation as a scholar obtained for him in 1579 the appointment of deputy-professor of Hebrew, and in the course of the two following years he was ordained deacon and priest, being then about twenty-eight years old.

It is generally understood that the "learned leisures" of a college fellowship are incompatible with

"the holy estate of matrimony." The tenure of a fellowship is terminable by the marriage of the fellow as irrevocably as by his death; and it is reckoned, therefore, the part of a wise man to postpone marriage until he can vacate his fellowship for a snug rectory in the gift of his College. It does not appear that Hooker behaved with commendable prudence in this particular; he seems to have been wanting in proper regard for so wholesome a doctrine. doctrine. Most certainly his choice. of a wife is one of the numerous lamentable illustrations of the unwisdom of wise men. But how he came to marry at all, is first to be told. Not long after his entrance into holy orders he was appointed to preach at St. Paul's Cross. What procured him this distinction, whether it was his spreading reputation as a theologian, or the friendship of Sandys, is unknown. That old pulpit was then the centre of attraction to all Londoners, high and low alike; for nobles and commoners, and even royalty itself, acknowledged the spiritual eminence of Paul's Cross. It was natural that the most suitable provision should be made for the comfort of the preachers who came up from the country to fulfil their appointments; and a house, called the Shunamite's house (perhaps so named at first by some humourous divine), was provided for them with fitting entertainment for two days before, and one day after the sermon. How arduous and exhausting the service was deemed, these arrangements show. But it must be remembered that an Oxford Fellow of that time had no means of getting to Paul's Cross except on horseback or afoot; and if the weather proved stormy or wet, a day or two of rest before preaching would be absolutely necessary. Hooker unhappily had

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to make his way to London in bad weather, and upon the back of a horse whose "going was so unpleasant to his rider, that the good man's temper was ruffled beyond measure towards the friend who had dissuaded him from walking the journey. In this sad plight, mentally, as well as bodily indisposed, he arrived at his lodgings, and received the kind and assiduous attentions of the lady of the house, Mrs. Churchman. Much to his own astonishment, he was enabled through her care of him, to discharge his duty at the set time, and such was the impression which her kindness made, and so grateful was he for it, that, according to the rich description of Walton, he thought himself bound in conscience to believe all she said, so that the good man came to be persuaded by her "that he was a man of tender constitution, and that it was best for him to have a wife to be a nurse to him, such an one as might both prolong his life and make it more comfortable; and such an one she could and would provide for him, if he thought fit to marry." And he, not considering that the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light; but, like a true Nathanael, fearing no guile, because he meant none, did give her power to choose for him, promising upon a fair summons to return to London and accept of her choice; and he did so, in that, or about the year following. Now, the wife she provided for him was her daughter Joan, who brought him neither beauty nor portion, and for her conditions, they were too like that wife's which is by Solomon compared to a dripping house; so that the good man had no reason to rejoice in the wife of his youth; but too just cause to say with the holy prophet, "Woe is me, that I

am constrained to have my habitation in the tents of Kedar."

Hooker's presentation to a living did not take place until some time after his marriage, and Drayton Beauchamp, near Aylesbury, was then scarcely worthy to be called a 'living." His friends, Sandys and Cranmer, visited him here not long after his coming, and were surprised to find their quondam tutor in the field-Horace, indeed, in his hand-tending his few sheep, while his servant was gone to the house to assist Mrs. Hooker in some household business. But his visitors were not only grieved to see his poverty-the unhappiness of his domestic life was evident also. The cheerful flow of friendly converse was rudely interrupted by his wife's calling him away "to rock the cradle ;" and their reception was in general so uncomfortable that they departed as quickly as possible, sad at heart for the evil days upon which their beloved tutor had fallen.

In 1585 the Mastership of the Temple became vacant, and through his friend, Sandys, Hooker was appointed to the office, not, however, without some reluctance on his part to exchange the quietness of the country for the excitement of London life. There were also other reasons which caused the mild and the thoughtful man to shrink from the burdensome honours his friends wished him to wear. The Church of England was at that time in one of the great crises of her history. The Anglican section and the Puritan section were at open feud with each other, and there was no third party of any importance to moderate between them. The Queen was, of course, zealously in favour of the Anglicans; her zeal being assiduously fanned by the favourite ecclesiasti

cal councillor, Archbishop Whitgift. But several of the great statesmen who surrounded her were as friendly as they dared to be with the Puritans, and owing to this strong position at court, the contest between the hostile parties was warm and obstinate. In London, the Puritans were very numerous and influential; even the Temple pulpit itself was partially in their hands, Mr. Walter Travers, one of the chiefs of the party, being afternoon Lecturer. It was inevitable that the new Master of the Temple would be forced into the controversy with them upon matters of church government and discipline, particularly as it was understood that Hooker's preferment to the mastership was a disappointment to Travers. Occasion was soon found for opening a dispute, and Travers had no difficulty in widening it to embrace all the points of difference between the two great parties in the Church. Being one of the most popular preachers of the day, and a great favourite with the Temple congregation, crowds came to the afternoon Lecture, while the morning sermon drew comparatively few hearers. Witty Thomas Fuller's sketches of the rival preachers bring the scene. vividly before us. "Mr. Hooker his voice was low, stature little, gesture none at all; standing stonestill in the pulpit, as if the posture of his body were the emblem of his mind, immoveable in his opinions. Where his eye was left fixed at the beginning, it was found fixed at the end of the sermon; in a word, the doctrine he delivered had nothing but itself to garnish it. His style was long and pithy, driving on a whole flock of clauses before he came to the close of a sentence; so that, when the copiousness of his style met not with proportionable capacity in his audi

tors, it was unjustly censured for being perplexed, tedious, and obscure.-Mr. Travers his utterance was graceful-gesture plausible,

matter profitable-method plain, and his style carried in it indolem pietatis, a genius of grace flowing from his sanctified heart." The Temple congregation must have been composed of choicer elements than the London churches generally could boast of, but who can wonder that it ebbed and flowed as it did?

But, while Hooker and Travers were disputing warmly, although not bitterly, over the whole field of controversy, the authorities in Church and State looked on, with growing uneasiness. It was evident that some mischief would be brewed eventually if the Temple pulpit continued to speak, as Fuller puts it, "pure Canterbury in the morning, and Geneva in the afternoon." Archbishop Whitgift, therefore, summarily ended the strife by prohibiting Travers from preaching. The Puritan leader, however, did not succumb without a struggle. He stirred the friends of his party by appealing to the Privy Council for a reversal of the Primate's prohibition. Although unsuccessful in this effort, which elicited an answer from Hooker intended for the same dignified body, such a storm was raised against Hooker that, weary of the noise and contentions" of the Temple, he begged the Archbishop to remove him to some country parsonage, where, as he said, "I may study and pray for God's blessing upon my endeavours, and keep myself in peace and privacy, and behold God's blessing spring out of my mother-earth, and eat my own bread without opposition; for, indeed, God and nature did not intend me for contentions, but for study and quietness." Such plead

ing as this for a lower place could scarcely be denied, and the Archbishop was the more disposed to listen to it, because he was informed of the projected treatise upon "our Ecclesiastical Polity." Hooker's desire was speedily gratified, he being presented to the living of Boscombe, near Salisbury, in 1591. Here, in a house still occupied by the rectors of Boscombe, he found seclusion and leisure to think out maturely the plan of the treatise which his controversy with Travers had sug gested to him, and which, during the troublous times of his London life, he had partially prepared. The first four books of the eight he proposed to write upon the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity were published in 1594. In the following year his powerful friends secured his ap pointment by the Queen to the richer living of Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury, where he lived out the few years of life that remained to him in the honour, reverence, and love, of many. While performing his ministerial duties here, with exemplary diligence and fidelity, he brought out the fifth book of his great work, and prepared the res maining three; but his death, has tened, as some believed by the labours he imposed upon himself, prevented the full accomplishment of his purpose. A long and severe sickness seized him about the year 1600, and he gradually sunk under it, finishing his earthly course in his forty-seventh year with this testimony upon his lips :-" God hath heard my daily petitions, for I am at peace with all men, and He is at peace with me; and from which blessed assurance I feel that inward joy, which this world can neither give nor take from me; my conscience beareth me this witness, and this witness makes the thought of death joyful. I could wish to

live to do the Church more service; but cannot hope it, for my days are past as a shadow that returns not."

To form a just conception of the part Hooker took in the great ecclesiastical conflict to which our present religious condition as a nation is largely due, we must observe the position of the hostile parties at the time. The controversy had passed from a dispute about vestments, "those relics of the Amorites," as Bishop Jewel called them, to one of greater moment by far. The Puritans had never looked with favour upon the halfway reformation which Queen Elizabeth and her leading councillors had authoritatively completed. When then, it appeared that no concessions were to be made respecting ceremonies and vestments; that "finality"

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was the doctrine of the powers that be;" and, moreover, that non-observance of the prescribed forms of worship was a penal offence, the whole Puritan body in the Church united to demand a thorough reformation. There had been ardent, eager spirits advocating this course before, but they were few and comparatively unsupported. "Bit by bit reform" had been hitherto counted good policy by most of the party. This hope being extinguished, the men of extreme views became the recognized leaders, and the principle was maintained with the whole strength of the party that "those things only are to be placed in the Church which the Lord Himself in His Word commanded." Their opposition was now directed against the entire fabric of the Anglican Churchpolity, as being at variance with Scripture.

It was during this stage of the struggle that Hooker entered the field with his first four books, published soon after the preachings at