16 LIEE OF WALTON. 



re-establishment of episcopacy and the liturgy (both which, it is 

 well known, were abolished by the usurpers under Cromwell) 

 revived the question of the lawfulness of both the one and the 

 other, and gave rise to a controversy which is never likely to end. 



Hooker's book is written with great force of argument, and in 

 a truly Christian temper : it contains a wonderful variety of 

 learning and curious information ; and for richness, correctness, 

 and elegance of style, may be justly deemed the standard of 

 perfection in the English language. 



This excellent man, Hooker, was by a crafty woman, betrayed 

 into a marriage with her daughter ; a homely ill-bred wench, 

 and, when married, a shrew ; who is more than suspected to have 

 destroyed, at the instigation of his adversaries, the corrected copy 

 of the three last books of his invaluable work, of which only the 

 former five were published by himself. He was sometime Master 

 of the Temple ; but his last preferment was to the rectory of 

 Bishop's Bourne, near Canterbury. In his passage from Graves- 

 end to London, in the tilt-boat, he caught a cold ; which brought 

 on a sickness that put an end to his days, in 1600, when he had 

 but just completed his forty-seventh year. 



HERBERT was of the noble family of that name ; and a younger 

 brother of the first of modern Deists, 1 the famous Edward, Lord 

 Herbert of Cherbury. He was a King's scholar at Westminster, 

 and, after that, a fellow of Trinity College, in Cambridge. In 

 1619, he was chosen university orator ; and, while in that 

 station, studied the modern languages, with a view to the office 

 of Secretary of State : but being of a constitution that indicated 

 a consumptioD, and withal of an ascetic turn of mind, he gave up 

 the thoughts of a court life, and entered into holy orders. His 



1 So, truly, termed ; as being the author of a treatise De Vcritate prout 

 distingmtur a revelatione, a verisimili, a possibili, a falsa. Touching which 

 book, and the religious opinions of the author, I shall here take occasion 

 to mention a fact that I find related in a collection of periodical papers, 

 entitled the "Weekly Miscellany," published in 1736, in two vols. 8vo. 

 Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, being dangerously ill, and apprehensive that 

 his end was approaching, sent for Dr. Jeremy Taylor, and signified a desire 

 of receiving the sacrament at his hands ; the doctor objected to him the 

 tenets contained in his writings, particularly those wherein he asserts the 

 sufficiency and absolute perfection of natural religion, with a view to show 

 that any extraordinary revelation is needless ; and exhorted him to retract 

 them ; but his lordship refusing, the doctor declared that he could not 

 administer so holy and solemn a right to an unbeliever. 



The doctor upon this left him ; and, conceiving hopes that his lordship's 

 sickness was not mortal, he wrote that discourse proving that the 

 religion of Jesus Christ is from God which is printed in his "Ductor 

 Dubitantium." H. 



