CHAP. I.] THE FIRST DA V. 49 



catalogue of his twelve Apostles,* as, namely, first St Peter, St 

 Andrew, St James, and St John ; and then the rest in their 

 order. 



And it is yet more observable that when our blessed Saviour 

 went up into the mount, when he left the rest of his disciples, 

 and chose only three to bear him company at his Transfiguration, 

 that those three were all fishermen. And it is to be believed 

 that all the other Apostles, after they betook themselves to follow 

 Christ, betook themselves to be fishermen too ; for it is certain 

 that the greater number of them were found together, fishing, by 

 Jesus after his resurrection, as it is recorded in the twenty-first 

 chapter of St John's Gospel. 



And since I have your promise to hear me with patience, I 

 will take a liberty to look back upon an observation that hath 

 been made by an ingenious and learned man ; who observes 

 that God hath been pleased to allow those whom he himself hath 

 appointed to write his holy will in holy writ, yet to express his 

 will in such metaphors as their former affections or practice had 

 inclined them to. And he brings Solomon for an example, who, 

 before his conversion, was remarkably carnally amorous ; and 

 after, by God's appointment, wrote that spiritual dialogue, or holy 

 amorous love-song, the Canticles, betwixt God and his Church : 

 in which he says, " his beloved had eyes like the fish-pools of 

 Heshbon." 



And if this hold in reason, as I see none to the contrary, then 

 it may be probably concluded that Moses, who I told you before 

 writ the Book of Job, and the prophet Amos, who was a shepherd, 

 were both Anglers ; for you shall, in all the Old Testament, find 

 fish-hooks, I think, but twice mentioned, namely, by meek Moses 

 the friend of God, and by the humble prophet Amos.f 



Concerning which last, namely, the prophet Amos, I shall make 



* Matt. x. 2. 



t Walton was a good Scripturist, and therefore can hardly be supposed to have been 

 ignorant of the passage in Isaiah, chap. xix. 8, " The fishers shall mourn, and all they 

 thnt cast angle upon the brooks shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the 

 waters shall languish." Which words, as they do but imply the use of fish-hooks, he 

 might think not directly to his purpose ; but in the translation of the above prophet by 

 the learned Bishop Lowth, who himself assures me that the word hook is truly rendered, 

 the passage stands thus : 



" And the fishers shall mourn and lament ; 

 All those that cast the hook in the river, 

 And those that spread nets on the face of the waters shall languish." 



The following passage Walton seems likewise to have forgotten when he wrote the 

 above, unless the reason before assigned induced him to reject it : " They take uo all 

 of them with the angle, they catch them in their net, and gather them in their drag, 

 therefore they rejoice and are glad." Habakkuk i. 15. H. 



D 



