IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 95 



Luther?" ^ he replied, "My religion was to be 

 found then where yours is not to be found now, 

 in the written Word of God." He asked the same 

 priest, "Do you believe all those many thousands 

 of poor Christians were damned, that were ex- 

 communicated because the Pope and the Duke of 

 Venice could not agree about their temporal 

 power? even those poor Christians that knew 

 not why they quarrelled." To which the priest 

 replied in French, "Monsieur, excusez-moi." To 

 one that asked him "whether a Papist may be 

 saved," he replied : " You may be saved without 

 knowing that. Look to yourself." But to another 

 he gave this advice : ''Take heed of thinking, the 

 farther you go from the Church of Kome, the 

 nearer you are to God." 



He took Deacon's orders late in life, and 

 became Provost of Eton in 1624. Near the end 

 of his life he said to a friend, the learned John 

 Hales, Fellow of Eton College : "I now see that 

 I draw near my harbour of death ; that harbour 

 that will secure me from all the future storms 

 and waves of this restless world ; and I praise 

 God I am willing to leave it, and expect a better ; 



^ "They may ask us, where was your religion before Luther? and 

 our reply is. In the Word of the living God, in the creeds of Apostles 

 and apostolical men, and in the practice of those witnesses who in 

 every age refused to participate in the abominations of Eome" 

 {Sermons hy Henry Melvill, Canon of St PauTs Cathedral, Vol. II., p. 

 100 : Rivingtons, 1872). 



