of his mother earth, and eat his own bread without oppositions ;" i. e. first to Boscomb near Salisbury, (in 1591,) and afterwards to Bishopsborne near Canterbury, in 1595; it seems not to have been without special providence that he was brought into near neighbourhood, which soon became familiar intimacy, with Dr. Adrian Saravia, Prebendary of Canterbury. Saravia was, as far as appears, the first to avow of the church doctrine of the apostolical succession, after the sort of abeyance in which it had been held (however distinctly implied in the Prayer Book) since the beginning of our intercourse with foreign reformers. The effects of this friendship with Saravia, as concurring with Hooker's own researches, are not obscurely to be discerned in his later compositions; nay, even in the tone of this fifth book, as compared with that of the four preceding. One may perceive throughout a growing tendency to judge of things by the rules of the ancient Church, and to take not a Roman nor a Protestant, but always, if possible, a Catholic view. Nor will it be thought that Saravia's probable influence with him is here overrated, when we read what follows, communicated to Walton by a near neighbour of Hooker's, and the sister of his most intimate friend. "About one day before his death, Dr. Saravia, who knew the very secrets of his soul, (for they were supposed to be confessors to each other,) came to him, and, after a conference of the benefit, the necessity, and safety of the Church's absolution, it was resolved the Doctor should give him both that and the Sacrament the day following. To which end the Doctor came, and, after a short retirement and privacy, they two returned to the company; and then the Doctor gave him, and some of those friends which were with him, the blessed Sacrament of the body and blood of our Jesus. Which being performed, the Doctor thought he saw a reverend gayety and joy in his face; but it lasted not long; for his bodily infirmities did return suddenly, and became more visible, insomuch that the Doctor apprehended death ready to seize him; yet, after some amendment, left him at night, with a promise to return early the day following; which he did, and then found him better in appearance, deep in contemplation, and not in clinable to discourse: which gave the Doctor occasion to require his present thoughts. To which he replied, That he was meditating the number and nature of angels, and their blessed obedience and order, without which peace could not be in heaven; and oh, that it might be so on earth!""c By this report of their last conversation, we may conjecture how they must have helped each other in the contemplation of that Catholic order, of which they seem to have gone on daily discerning more and more, as they drew nearer that place, where only it can be perfectly realized. It might not perhaps be wrong to enumerate, among these providential circumstances, the discomfort of Hooker's domestic life, to which the same tradition bears witness. His "restless studies," might bear the more fruit, as he had less temptation to withdraw himself from them. And as the author was thus raised up, and guided, and spared, to the completion of that c This was on the day he died, the 2nd of November, 1600, about two in the afternoon, he being then forty-six or fortyseven years old, leaving a widow and four daughters. He was buried in the chancel of Bishopsborne, about four miles from Canterbury. b part of his treatise especially which relates to the Prayer Book, (for of the three later books, although he had finished them, only fragments and sketches now remain ;) so there are not wanting corresponding tokens of a Providence, tending to prepare men's minds for the reception of his views, in the course of public affairs at the same time. The death of the Queen of Scots, and the destruction of the Spanish Armada, taking off men's immediate dread of a violent introduction of the Papal power, left them at leisure to understand that there might be dangers in another direction, and to admit and appreciate those safeguards, which the Catholic Church, and that alone, provides against both. The disorganizing tendencies of extreme Protestant principles had been largely exhibited in some other countries, and were apparent enough here in the proceedings of the discontented reformers all through Elizabeth's reign. The Earl of Leicester, who had favoured the puritans, was dead: the court interfered less, and the Church of England was left freer to right and settle herself on her own proper middle ground. She did not, as some years before she might have done, resist the hand which was commissioned to steady her. Such are some of the facts which, if one may šo conjecture without irreverence, would lead to our regarding the Fifth Book especially of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, from which the following extracts are taken, as a providential gift to this Church: how seasonable and how effectual, none can know till the day comes when all such mysteries shall be revealed. One thing however is quite certain; that as the Church is responsible for her use of the whole work, so must each individual bear his burden, when once it, or any part of it, has been brought fairly under his notice. He may, if he chooses, be content to read it as a classical English book, or as a curious chapter in ecclesiastical or civil history. Or according to its author's intention, he may suffer himself to be led by it to a thoughtful estimate of his own privileges as a member of the English Catholic Church, and of the degree in which he has hitherto laboured to improve them. In any case, the readers of such books cannot remain just where they were. the better or the worse. They must be either |