80 THE COMPLETE AN GLEE. [PART Iv 



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. 1 



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

 make but this observation, that he that shall read the 

 humble, lowly, plain style of that prophet ; and compare it 

 with the high, glorious, eloquent style of the prophet Isaiah ; 

 though they be both equally true; may easily believe Amos 

 to be, not only a shepherd, but a good-natured plain 

 fisherman. 



"Which I do the rather believe ; by comparing the affec- 

 tionate, loving, lowly, humble, " Epistles " of St. Peter, 

 St. James, and St. John, whom we know were all fishers, with 



1 Walton -was a good Scripturist, and therefore can hardly have 

 been ignorant of the passage in Isaiah, chap. xix. v. 8. "The fishers 

 shall mourn, and all they that 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 offish-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 Iwok 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 up 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, chap. i. v. 15. H. 



