48 LIFE OP WALTON. 



as the several no less differing parties into which the! 

 reformed religion is unhappily subdivided, have pro- 

 duced men equally remarkable for their endowments, 

 sincere in their professions, and exemplary in their 

 lives * ; but were it necessary, after what has been 

 above remarked of him, to be particular on this head, 

 with respect to our Author we should say, that he 

 was a very dutiful son of the Church of England ; 

 nay further, that he was a friend to an hierarchy, or, 

 as we should now call such a one, a high churchman; 

 for which propensity of his, if it needs an apology, it 

 may be said, That he had lived to see hypocrisy and 

 fanaticism triumph in the subversion of both our 

 ecclesiastical and civil constitution, the important 

 question of toleration had not been discussed, the 

 extent of regal prerogative, and the bounds of civil 

 and religious liberty, had never been ascertained, 

 and he, like many other good men, might look on the 

 interests of the Church, and those of Religion, as in- 

 separable. 



[At a time when animosities between the Sectarian and 

 High-church parties prevailed without any prospect 

 of their termination, Walton, from solicitude for the 

 welfare of his country-rand not with a view to em- 

 barrass himself in disputation, for his nature was ab- 

 horrent from controversy gave an ingenuous and un- 

 dissembled account of his faith and practice, as a true 

 son of the Church of England : publishing, in 1680, 

 a treatise under the title of Love and Truth, in two 

 modest and peaceable Letters concerning the Distem- 

 pers of the present Times ; written from a quiet and 

 conformable citizen of London, to two busie and /c- 

 tious shopkeepers in Coventry. The motto to it, was, 

 < c But let none of you suffer as a busie-body in other 

 u men's matters !" 1 Pet. 4. 15. Walton suppressed 

 his name in the title page : but for ascribing it to his 

 pen, there is the sufficient authority of Archbishop 

 Bancroft, who, in the volume of Miscellanies, (Miscel- 



* If the intelligent reader doubts the truth of this position ; let him re- 

 flect on, and compare with each other, the characters of HOOKER, Father 

 PAUL, and Mr. RICHARD BAXTER. 



