thirsted; and yet this was denied him. For his admission into this place was the very beginning of those oppositions and anxieties, which till then this good man was a stranger to, and of which the reader may guess by what follows.

In this character of the times, I shall, by the reader's favour, and for his information, look so far back as to the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; a time in which the many pretended titles to the crown, the frequent treasons, the doubts of her successor, the late civil war, and the sharp persecution that had raged to the effusion of so much blood in the reign of Queen Mary, were fresh in the memory of all men; and these begat fears in the most pious and wisest of this nation, lest the like days should return again to them or their present posterity. The apprehension of which dangers begat an earnest desire of a settlement in the church and state; believing there was no other way to make them sit quietly under their own vines and fig-trees, and enjoy the desired fruit of their labours. But time, and peace, and plenty, begat self-ends; and those begat animosities, envy, opposition, and unthankfulness, for those blessings for which they lately thirsted, being then the very utmost of their desires, and even beyond their hopes.

This was the temper of the times in the beginning and progress of her reign; and thus it continued too long: for those very people that had enjoyed the desires of their hearts in a reformation from the church of Rome, became at last so like the grave, as never to be satisfied; but were still thirsting for more and more: neglecting to pay that obedience to government, and perform those vows to God, which they made in their days of adversities and fears: so that in short time there appeared three several interests, each of them fearless and restless in the prosecution of their designs; they may for distinction be called, the active Romanists, the restless nonconformists (of which there were many sorts), and the passive, peaceable protestant. The counsels of the first considered and resolved on in Rome: the second in Scotland, in Geneva, and in divers selected, secret, dangerous conventicles, both there, and within the bosom of our own nation: the third pleaded and defended their cause by established laws, both ecclesiastical and civil: and if they were active, it was to prevent the other two from destroying what was by those known laws happily established to them and their posterity.

I shall forbear to mention the very many and dangerous plots of the Romanists against the church and state; because what is principally intended in this digression, is an account of the opinions and activity of the nonconformists; against whose judgment and practice Mr. Hooker became at last, but most unwillingly, to be engaged, in a book-war; a war which he maintained, not as against an enemy, but with the spirit of meekness and reason.

Nonconfor

mists represented.

In which number of nonconformists, though some might be sincere and well-meaning men, whose indiscreet zeal might be so like charity, as thereby to cover a multitude of errors, yet of this party there were many that were possessed of a high degree of spiritual wickedness; I mean with an innate, restless, radical pride and malice; I mean not those lesser sins which are more visible and more properly carnal, and sin against a man's self, as gluttony and drunkenness, and the like, (from which good Lord deliver us!) but sins of a higher nature; because more unlike to the nature of God, which is love, and mercy, and peace; and more like the devil (who is not a glutton, nor can be drunk; and yet is a devil): those wicked. nesses of malice and revenge, and opposition, and a complacence in working and beholding confusion (which are more properly his work, who is the enemy and disturber of mankind; and greater sins, though many will not believe it): men whom a furious zeal and prejudice had blinded and made incapable of hearing reason, or adhering to the ways of peace; men whom pride and self-conceit had made to overvalue their own wisdom, and become pertinacious, and to hold foolish and unmannerly disputes against those men which they ought to reverence, and those laws which they ought to obey; men that laboured and joyed to speak evil of government, and then to be the authors of confusion (of confusion as it is confusion): whom company, and conversation, and custom had blinded, and many insensible that these were errors; and at last became so restless, and so hardened in their opinions, that like those which "perished in the gainsaying of Core," so these died without repenting these spiritual wickednesses, of which Coppinger and Hacket, and their adherents, are too sad testimonies.

And in these times, which tended thus to confusion, there were also many others that pretended to tenderness of conscience, refusing to submit to ceremonies, or to take an oath before a lawful magistrate and yet these very men did, in their secret conventicles, covenant and swear to each other, to be assiduous and faithful in using their best endeavours to set up a church-government that they had not agreed on. To which end there were many select parties that wandered up and down, and were active in sowing discontents and sedition, by venomous and secret murmurings, and a dispersion of scurrilous pamphlets and libels against the church and state; but especially against the bishops; by which means, together with very bold, and as indiscreet sermons, the common people became so fanatic, as St. Peter observed there were in his time" some that wrested the Scripture to their own destruction;" so by these men, and this means many came to believe the bishops to be antichrist, and the only obstructors of God's discipline; and many of them were at last given over to such desperate delusions, as to find out a text in the Reve

lation of St. John, that "antichrist was to be overcome by the sword," which they were very ready to take into their hands. So that those very men, that began with tender meek petitions, proceeded to print public admonitions, and then to satirical remonstrances; and at last (having, like David, numbered who was not, and who was, for their cause), they got a supposed certainty of so great a party, that they durst threaten first the bishops, and, not long after, both the Queen and parliament; to all which they were secretly encouraged by the Earl of Leicester, then in great favour with her Majesty, and the reputed cherisher and patron-general of these pretenders to tenderness of conscience; whom he used as a sacrilegious snare to farther his design, which was by their means to bring such an odium upon the bishops, as to procure an alienation of their lands, and a large proportion of them for himself: which avaricious desire had so blinded his reason, that his ambitious and greedy hopes had almost flattered him into present possession of Lambeth-house.

b

And to these strange and dangerous undertakings, the nonconformists of this nation were much encouraged and heightened by a correspondence and confederacy with that brotherhood in Scotland; so that here they became so bold, that one a told the Queen openly in a sermon, she was like an untamed heifer, that would not be ruled by God's people, but obstructed his discipline." And in Scotland they were more confident, for there they declared her an atheist, and grew to such a height as not to be accountable for any thing spoken against her; no nor for treason against their own King, if. spoken in the pulpit : shewing at last such a disobedience even to him, that his mother being in England, and then in distress, and in prison, and in danger of death, the church denied the King their prayers for her; and at another time, when he had appointed a day of feasting, their church declared for a general fast, in opposition to his authority.

To this height they were grown in both nations, and by these means there was distilled into the minds of the common people such other venomous and turbulent principles, as were inconsistent with the safety of the church and state: and these vented so daringly, that, besides the loss of life and limbs, the church and state were both forced to use such other severities, as will not admit of an excuse, if it had not been to prevent confusion, and the perilous consequences of it; which, without such prevention, would in a short time have brought unavoidable ruin and misery to this numerous nation.

These errors and animosities were so remarkable, that they begat wonder in an ingenious Italian, who being about this time come newly into this nation, writ scoffingly to a friend in his own coun2 Mr. Dering.

b. See Bishop Spotswood's History of the Church of Scotland.

try; "That the common people of England were wiser than the wisest of his nation; for here the very women and shopkeepers were able to judge of predestination, and determine what laws were fit to be made concerning church government; then, what were fit to be obeyed or abolished. That they were more able (or at least thought so), to raise and determine perplexed cases of conscience, than the most learned colleges in Italy. That men of the slightest learning, and the most ignorant of the common people were mad for a new, or super, or re-reformation of religion; and that in this they appeared like that man, who would never cease to whet and whet his knife, till there was no steel left to make it useful. And he concluded his letter with this observation," that those very men than were most busy in oppositions and disputations, and controversies, and finding out the faults of their governors, had usually the least of humility and mortification, or of the power of godliness." And to heighten all these discontents and dangers, there was also sprung up a generation of godless men; men that had so long given way to their own lusts and delusions, and had so often, and so highly opposed the blessed motions of the blessed Spirit, and the inward light of their own consciences, that they had thereby sinned themselves to a belief of what they would, but were not able to believe into a belief, which is repugnant even to human nature (for the heathens believe there are many gods); but these have sinned themselves into a belief, that there is no God; and so finding nothing in themselves, but what is worse than nothing, began to wish what they were not able to hope for, "that they should be like the beasts that perish;" and, in wicked company (which is the atheists's sanctuary), were so bold as to say so: though the worst of mankind, when he is left alone at midnight, may wish, but cannot then think it. Into this wretched, this reprobate condition, many had then sinned themselves.

And now, when the church was pestered with them, and with all these other irregularities; when her lands were in danger of alienation, her power at least neglected, and her peace torn in pieces by several schisms, and such heresies as do usually attend that sin: when the common people seemed ambitious of doing those very things which were attended with most dangers, that thereby they might be punished, and then applauded and pitied: when they called the spirit of opposition a tender conscience, and complained of persecution, because they wanted power to persecute others: when the giddy multitude raged, and became restless to find out misery for themselves and others; and the rabble would herd themselves together, and endeavour to govern and act in spite of authority—In this extremity, fear, and danger of the church and state, when, to suppress the growing evils of both, they needed a man of

prudence and piety, and of a high and fearless fortitude; they were blest in all by John Whitgift, his being made archbishop of Canterbury; of whom ingenious Sir Henry Wotton (that knew him well) hath left this true character, that he was a man of a reverend and sacred memory; and of the primitive temper, a man of such a temper, as when the church by lowliness of spirit did flourish in highest examples of virtue.

And though I dare not undertake to add to his character, yet I shall neither do right to this discourse, nor to my reader, if I forbear to give him a farther and short account of the life and manners of this excellent man; and it shall be short, for I long to end this digression, that I may lead my reader back to Mr. Hooker, where we left him at the Temple.

count of

of Canter

bury.

John Whitgift was born in the county of Lincoln, of a family Some acthat was ancient, and noted to be prudent and affable, and gentle Whitgift, by nature. He was educated in Cambridge; much of his learning archbishop was acquired in Pembroke-hall (where Mr. Bradford the martyr was his tutor): from thence he was removed to Peter-house; from thence to be master of Pembroke-hall; and from thence to the mastership of Trinity college. About which time the Queen made him her chaplain; and not long after prebendary of Ely, and then dean of Lincoln; and having for many years past looked upon him with much reverence and favour, gave him a fair testimony of both, by giving him the bishopric of Worcester, and (which was not an usual favour) forgiving him his first-fruits; then by constituting him vice-president of the principality of Wales. And having for several years experimented his wisdom, his justice and moderation in the manage of her affairs, in both these places, she in the twenty-sixth of her reign made him archbishop of Canterbury; and, not long after, of her privy council; and trusted him to manage all her ecclesiastical affairs and preferments. In all which removes, he was like the ark, which left a blessing upon the place where it rested; and in all his employments, was like Jehoiada, that did good unto Israel.

These were the steps of this Bishop's ascension to this place of dignity and cares; in which place (to speak Mr. Camden's very words in his Annals) "he devoutly consecrated both his whole life to God, and his painful labours to the good of his church." And yet in this place he met with many oppositions in the regulation of church affairs, which were much disordered at his entrance, by reason of the age and remissness of Bishop Grindal (his immediate predecessor), the activity of the nonconformists, and their chief

a Or rather by reason of his suspension and sequestration, which he lay under (together with the Queen's displeasure) for some years, when the ecclesiastical affairs were managed by certain civilians. J. S.