THE CONFERENCE. 65 



all fishers, with the glorious language and high metaphors 

 of St. Paul, whom we may believe was not. 



And for the lawfulness of fishing : it may very well be 

 maintained by our Saviour's bidding St. Peter cast his hook 

 into the water and catch a fish, for money to pay tribute to 



And let me tell you, that angling is of high esteem and 

 much use in other nations. He that reads the voyages of 

 Ferdinand Mendez Pinto," shall find, that there he declares 

 to have found a king and several priests a-fishing. 



And he that reads Plutarch 1 shall find that angling was not 

 contemptible in the days of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, 

 and that they, in the midst of their wonderful glory, used 

 angling as a principal recreation. And let me tell you, that 

 in the Scripture, angling is always taken in the best sense, 

 and that though hunting may be sometimes so taken, yet it 

 is but seldom to be so understood. And let me add this 

 more, he that views the ancient ecclesiastical canons, shall 

 find hunting to be forbidden to churchmen, as being, a 

 turbulent, toilsome, perplexing recreation ; and shall find 

 angling allowed to clergymen, as being a harmless recrea- 

 tion, a recreation that invites them to contemplation and 

 quietness. 



I might here enlarge myself by telling you what com- 

 mendations our learned Perkins 11 bestows on angling ; and 

 how dear a lover, and great a practiser of it our learned 

 Doctor Whittaker was, as indeed many others of great 

 learning have been. But I will content myself with two 

 memorable men, that lived near to our own time, whom I 

 also take to have been ornaments to the art of angling. 



The first is Doctor Nowel/ sometime Dean of th 



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