Romish Idolatry.-Though the learned Papists pray not to images, yet it is to be feared the ignorant do, as appears by that story of St Nicholas in Spain. A countryman used to offer daily to St Nicholas's image. At length, by mischance, the image was broken, and a new one made of his own plumtree; after that the man forbore. Being complained of to his ordinary, he answered, 'Tis true he used to offer to the old image, but to the new one he could not find in his heart, because he knew it was a piece of his own plum-tree. You see what opinion this man had of the image; and to this tended the bowing of their images, the twinkling of their eyes, the Virgin's milk, &c. Had they only meant representations, a done as well as these tricks. It may be with us in England, they do not worship images; because, living amongst Protestants, they are either laughed out of it, or beaten out of it by shock of argument.

picture would have

Ministerial Apparatus.-There be four things a minister should be at the concionary part, ecclesiastical story, school divinity, and the casuists.

1. In the concionary part he must read all the chief fathers, both Latin and Greek, wholly-St Austin, St Ambrose, St Chrysostom, both the Gregories, Tertullian, Clemens, Alexandrinus, and Epiphanius, which last have more learning in them than all the rest, and writ freely.

2. For ecclesiastical story let him read Baronius, with the Magdeburgenses, and be his own judge-the one being extremely for the Papists, the other extremely against them.

3. For school divinity let him get Cavellus's edition of Scotus or Mayco, where there be quotations that direct you to every schoolman, where such and such questions are handled. Without school divinity a divine knows nothing logically, nor will he be able to satisfy a rational man out of the pulpit.

4. The study of the casuists must follow the study of the schoolmen, because the division of their cases is according to

A MORAL MASTIFF.

165

their divinity; otherwise, he that begins with them will know little, as he that begins with the study of the reports and cases in the common law will thereby know little of the law. Casuists may be of admirable use, if discreetly dealt with, though among them you shall have many leaves together very impertinent. A case well decided would stick by a man, they would remember it whether they will or no, whereas a quaint position dieth in the birth. The main thing is to know where to search; for talk what they will of vast memories, no man will presume upon his own memory for anything he means to write or speak in public.

Moral Honesty.-They that cry down moral honesty, cry down that which is a great part of religion-my duty towards God, and my duty towards man. What care I to see a man run after a sermon, if he cozens and cheats as soon as he comes home? On the other side, morality must not be without religion; for if so, it may change as I see convenience. Religion must govern it. He that has not religion to govern his morality is not a dram better than my mastiff-dog; so long as you stroke him, and please him, and do not pinch him, he will play with you as finely as may be―he is a very good moral mastiff; but if you hurt him, he will fly in your face and tear throat.

out your

Preaching. First in your sermons use your logic, and then your rhetoric. Rhetoric without logic is like a tree with leaves and blossoms, but no root; yet, I confess, more are taken with rhetoric than logic, because they are catched with a free expression, when they understand not reason. Logic must be natural, or it is worth nothing at all; your rhetoric figures may be learned. That rhetoric is best which is most seasonable and most catching. An instance we have in that old blunt commander at Cadiz, who shewed himself a good orator; being to say something to his soldiers, which he was not used to do, he made them a speech to this purpose: "What a shame will

it be, you Englishmen, that feed upon good beef and brewess, to let those rascally Spaniards beat you, that eat nothing but oranges and lemons!" and so put more courage into his men than he could have done with a more learned oration. Rhetoric is very good, or stark naught-there's no medium in rhetoric. If I am not fully persuaded, I laugh at the orator.

Transubstantiation.-The fathers, using to speak rhetorically, brought up transubstantiation, as if, because. it is commonly said, "amicus est alter idem,' one should go about to prove a man and his friend are all one. turned into logic.

That opinion is only rhetoric

IZAAK WALTON.

Born at Stafford in 1593, Izaak Walton (for, like all his admirers, we must retain his own antique spelling of his name) came early to London, and spent in it the great part of a long and happy life as a shopkeeper, a scholar, and a Christian. His first premises, in Cornhill, were seven and a-half feet long by five feet wide. In those quiet times, a draper or "sempster" was able to earn a competence without an immense establishment. Besides plying his calling, he often found leisure for a day's fly-fishing on the Lea or the Wandle, and in 1653 he published "The Complete Angler," a lively and endearing old book, in which he has embalmed the freshness of the fields and bottled up the sunshine of two hundred years ago. At the same time, his piety, his genius, and his attachment to monarchy, gained him the friendship of Hammond and Fuller, Hales of Eton, Archbishop Ussher, and many others of the great men who adorned the Church of England, and, after his retirement from business, he beguiled a portion of his leisure writing accounts of some of his contemporary worthies-Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Bishop SanderThe life of Dr Donne he had written as early as 1640.

son.

* A friend is another self.

When he transferred his shop from Cornhill to Fleet Street, he became an inhabitant of St Dunstan's, and one of Dr Donne's parishioners.

These exquisite biographies are above all praise, unless it be such praise as Wordsworth's :

"There are no colours in the fairest sky,

So fair as these; the feather whence the pen

Was shaped, that traced the lives of these good men,
Dropped from an angel's wing: with moistened eye,
We read of faith, and purest charity,

In statesman, priest, and humble citizen.
Oh! could we copy their mild virtues then,
What joy to live, what blessedness to die!
Methinks their very names shine still and bright;
Apart-like glow-worms on a summer night;
Or, lonely tapers, when from far they fling
A guiding ray; or seen-like stars on high,
Satellites burning in a lucid ring

Around meek Walton's heavenly memory."

The life of Bishop Sanderson was the last which Walton wrote. It concludes with these touching words: ""Tis now too late to wish that my life may be like his; for I am in the eighty-fifth year of my age: but I humbly beseech Almighty God, that my death may; and do as earnestly beg of every reader to say, Amen." Our extract will shew how green was his old age, and how fresh to the last his faculty of relating a story. The passage on Thankfulness is taken from "The Angler."

Walton died in the house of one of the prebendaries of Winchester, "in the great frost," December 15, 1683, and was buried in the cathedral.

The Country Parson.

Being now resolved to set down his rest in a quiet privacy at Boothby Pannell, and looking back with some sadness upon

his removal from his general acquaintance left in Oxford, and the peculiar pleasures of a University life, he could not but think the want of society would render this of a country parson the more uncomfortable, by reason of that want of conversation; and therefore he did put on some faint purposes to marry. For he had considered, that though marriage be cumbered with more worldly care than a single life; yet a complying and a prudent wife changes those very cares into so mutual a content, as makes them become like the sufferings of St Paul (Col. i. 24), which he would not have wanted because they occasioned his rejoicing in them. And he, having well considered this, and observed the secret, unutterable joys that children beget in parents, and the mutual pleasures and contented trouble of their daily care, and constant endeavours to bring up those little images of themselves, so as to make them as happy as all those cares and endeavours can make them: he having considered all this, the hopes of such happiness turned his faint purposes into a positive resolution to marry. And he was so happy as to obtain Anne, the daughter of Henry Nelson, bachelor in divinity, then rector of Haugham, in the county of Lincoln, a man of noted worth and learning. And the Giver of all good things was so good to him as to give him such a wife as was suitable to his own desires; a wife, that made his life happy by being always content when he was cheerful; that divided her joys with him, and abated of his sorrow, by bearing a part of that burden; a wife, that demonstrated her affection by a cheerful obedience to all his desires, during the whole course of his life, and at his death too, for she outlived him.

And in this Boothby Pannel, he either found or made his parishioners peaceable, and complying with him in the decent and regular service of God. And thus his parish, his patron, and he lived together in a religious love, and a contented quietness; he not troubling their thoughts by preaching high and