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drawing fast towards an evening, and the world's tragedy and time near at an end.

3. Death.

FOR the rest, if we seek a reason of the succession and continuance of this boundless ambition in mortal men, we may add to that which hath been already said, that the kings and princes of the world have always laid before them the actions, but not the ends, of those great ones which preceded them. They are always transported with the glory of the one, but they never mind the misery of the other, till they find the experience in themselves. They neglect the advice of God, while they enjoy life, or hope it; but they follow the counsel of Death upon his first approach. It is he that puts into man all the wisdom of the world, without speaking a word, which God, with all the words of his law, promises, or threats, doth not infuse. Death, which hateth and destroyeth man, is believed; God, which hath made him and loves him, is always deferred: I have considered, saith Solomon, all the works that are under the sun, and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit; but who believes it, till Death tells it us? It was Death, which opening the conscience of Charles the Fifth, made him enjoin his son Philip to restore Navarre; and king Francis the First of France, to command that justice should be done upon the murderers of the protestants in Merindol and Cabrieres, which till then he neglected. It is therefore Death alone that can suddenly make man to know himself. He tells the proud and insolent, that they are but abjects, and humbles them at the instant, makes them cry, complain, and repent, yea, even to hate their forepast happiness. He takes the account of the rich, and proves him a beggar, a naked beggar, which hath interest in nothing but in the gravel that fills his mouth. He holds a glass

before the eyes of the most beautiful, and makes them see therein their deformity and rottenness, and they acknowledge it.

O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet !

III.

RICHARD HOOKER.

CIRCA 1553-1600.

RICHARD HOOKER was born at Heavitree, near Exeter, about 1553. The promise of his boyhood induced an uncle to send him to a University. Under the protection of Jewel, he was sent to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and was admitted in 1567. In 1577, he became Fellow of the College. We hear of an intimacy with Edwin Sandys, George Cranmer, and Henry Savile, all men of mark and influence in their day. In 1581 he first preached in London at St. Paul's. Soon after he married, and took the living of Drayton Beauchamp, in Bucks. The marriage was probably a hasty one; at any rate, it brought little felicity. From his appointment as Master of the Temple, 1584, Hooker's reputation as a divine may be said to date. He now commenced his long controversy with the Calvinist theologians, and after some years of keen strife he exchanged the Temple for Boscombe, in Wiltshire. In 1595, he was presented by the Crown to Bishopsborne, in Kent, where, in 1600, he died.

Hooker undertook the defence of the ritual and polity of the Church of England against the attacks of the Puritans, and dedicated to this object his great work on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. His style is grave, close, and full, and in general possesses little ornament or finish, consulting the practical purposes of a controversialist and the efficient statement of argument and fact, rather than the ear or delicate taste of the reader. Particular passages, however, are highly elaborated, and wrought up not only to great majesty and grandeur of diction, but even to a

musical sweetness and rhythm. Solidity and compactness, however, are always preserved, and his most exalted eloquence is still grave and severe, weighted with balance of clauses and intricacies of construction. With the inspiration which springs up from deep feeling and the sense of great truths, he combines occasionally an acute and powerful sarcasm, which he introduces dexterously and with ease into the fitting place; thus exhibiting all the resources and the full armour of a theologian and controversialist.

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THIS world's first creation, and the preservation since of things created, what is it but only so far forth a manifestation by execution, what the eternal law of God is concerning things natural? And as it cometh to pass in a kingdom rightly ordered, that after a law is once published, it presently takes effect far and wide, all states framing themselves thereunto; even so let us think it fareth in the natural course of the world: since the time that God did first proclaim the edicts of his law upon it, heaven and earth have hearkened unto his voice, and their labour hath been to do his will: He 'made a law for the rain;' He gave his 'decree unto the sea, that the waters should not pass his commandment.' Now if nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether though it were but for a while the observation of her own laws; if those principal and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have; if the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions, and by irregular volubility turn themselves any way as it might happen; if the prince of the lights of heaven, which now as a giant

doth run his unwearied course, should as it were through a languishing faintness begin to stand and to rest himself; if the moon should wander from her beaten way, the times and seasons of the year blend themselves by disordered and confused mixture, the winds breathe out their last gasp, the clouds yield no rain, the earth be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruits of the earth pine away as children at the withered breasts of their mother no longer able to yield them relief: what would become of man himself, whom these things now do all serve? See we not plainly that obedience of creatures unto the law of nature is the stay of the whole world?

2. Faith, Hope, and Charity.

CONCERNING Faith, the principal object whereof is that eternal Verity which hath discovered the treasures of hidden wisdom in Christ; concerning Hope, the highest object whereof is that everlasting Goodness which in Christ doth quicken the dead; concerning Charity, the final object whereof is that incomprehensible Beauty which shineth in the countenance of Christ the Son of the living God: concerning these virtues, the first of which beginning here with a weak apprehension of things not seen, endeth with the intuitive vision of God in the world to come; the second beginning here with a trembling expectation of things far removed and as yet but only heard of, endeth with real and actual fruition of that which no tongue can express; the third beginning here with a weak inclination of heart towards him unto whom we are not able to approach, endeth with endless union, the mystery whereof is higher than the reach of the thoughts of men; concerning that Faith, Hope, and Charity, without which there can be no

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