IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 115 



was totally abhorrent of controversy — but to give 

 an ingenuous and undissembled account of his own 

 faith and practice, as a true son of the Church of 

 England." According to his very confident opinion 

 Walton in 1680 published the treatise entitled 

 Love and Truth, the full title was "Love and 

 Truth in two Modest and Peaceable Letters, con- 

 cerning the Distempers of the Present Times, 

 written from a Quiet and Conformable Citizen of 

 London, to two Busie and Fractious Shopkeepers 

 in Coventry." The motto to it was, " But let none 

 of you suffer as a busie-body in other men's 

 matters" (1 Peter iv. 15). It is generally con- 

 sidered very doubtful who wrote it. 



The authorship has been credited to Walton by 

 many, merely on account of Archbishop Bancroft 

 having in a volume called Miscellanea (Press-mark 

 now 32-2-34, but formerly 14-2-34), in the library 

 of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, with his own 

 hand marked its title thus : — " Is. Walton's 2 letters 

 cone, ye Distemps of ye Times 1680." The author, 

 whoever he was, tries to answer the arguments put 

 forth in the pamphlet The Naked Truth, and 

 specially deprecates schism and resistance to the 

 authority of the Bishops, as regards the Church 

 ceremonies enjoined by them. " Remember," the 

 writer says in his second letter, "you and I are 

 but citizens, and must take much that concerns 

 our religion and salvation upon trust." He refers 



