66

With how unwilling a heart I leave you, He knows, that searches the heart: neither durst I go, but that I sensibly see his hand pulling me from you. Indeed, desire of competency betrayed me, at first; and drew mine eyes to look aside: but, when I bent them upon the place, and saw the number and the need of the people, together with their hunger and applause, meeting with the circumstances of God's strange conveyance of this offer to me; I saw, that was but as the fowler's feather, to make me stoop: and, contemning that respect of myself, I sincerely acknowledged higher motives of my yielding; and resolved I might not resist.

"You are dear to me, as a Charge to a Pastor: if my pains to you have not proved it, suspect me. Yet I leave you. God calls me to a greater work: I must follow him. It were more ease to me, to live secretly hidden in that quiet obscurity, as Saul amongst the stuff, than to be drawn out to the of the world; to act so high a part, before a thousand witnesses. In this point, if I seem to neglect you, blame me not: I must neglect and forget myself.

eye

"I can but labour, wheresoever I am. God knows how willingly I do that; whether there or here. I shall dig, and delve, and plant, in what ground soever my Master sets me. If he take

me to a larger field, complain you not, of loss, while the Church may gain.

But, you are my own charge: no wise father neglects his own, in compassion of the greater need of others: yet consider, that even careful parents, when the prince commands, leave their families, and go to warfare.

"What if God had called me to heaven? would you have grudged my departure? Imagine that I am there, where I shall be; although the case be not to you altogether hopeless: for, now I may hear of you, visit you, renew my holy counsels, and be mutually comforted from you; there, none of these. He, that will once transpose me from earth to heaven, hath now chosen to transpose me from one piece of earth to another: what is here worthy of your sorrow; worthy of complaint? That should be for my own good: this shall be for the good of many. If your experience have taught you, that my labours do promise profit; obtain of yourself to deny yourself so much, as to rejoice that the loss of a few should be the advantage of many souls. Though, why do I speak of loss ? I speak that, as your fear, not my own: and your affection causes that fear, rather than the occasion.

"The God of the Harvest shall send you a labourer, more able; as careful. That is my prayer, and hope, and shall be my joy. I dare

not leave, but in this expectation, this assurance. Whatever become of me, it shall be my greatest comfort to hear you commend your change; and to see your happy progress in those ways, I have both shewed you, and beaten. So shall we meet in the end, and never part.

About the time he was collated to Waltham Holy Cross, that is about the year 1612, he took his degree of Doctor in Divinity. He was also at this time a principal instrument in determining Thomas Sutton, Esq. the founder of the Charterhouse, to purchase and erect that famous hospital. See his letter to Mr. Sutton in the 7th volume of his Works, p. 243, wherein he excites "him, and in him, all others, to early and cheerful beneficence, shewing the necessity and benefit of good works."†

He continues his own account." Too late now did my former noble patron relent; and offer me those terms, which had, before, fastened me for ever.

Bp. Hall's Works, vol. vii, p. 143.

+ Hern. in vit. Sutton 59. Thomas Sutton, Esq. purchased the dissolved Charter House, in 1611, for £ 13,000, and founded the hospital as it now stands, with an intention of being the first master, but died before its completion, Dec. 12, the same year. At his death, he was the richest commoner in the kingdom.

"I returned home, happy in a new master, and in a new patron: betwixt whom I divided myself and my labors, with much comfort and no less acceptation."

About the year 1610, Mr. Hall appeared a very able apologist for the Church of England against the Brownists, a sect then newly sprung up, and so denominated from one Robert Brown, a fiery, hot-headed person, who, about the year 1580, and before, went about the country, inveighing against the discipline and ceremonies of the church, and exhorting the people by no means to comply with them. He boasted that for his preaching against Bishops, ceremonies, &c. he had been committed to thirty-two prisons, in some of which he could not see his hand at noonday. He and several of his followers left the kingdom, and settled at Middleburg in Zealand. There he formed a church according to his own model; but his people began to quarrel so violently, and divide into parties, that he returned to England in 1585. His father would not admit him into his house, saying, "that he would not own him for a son who would not own the Church of England for his mother. After rambling and preaching against the church up and down the country, he settled at Northampton. But here

his preaching was so offensive that he was cited before Dr. Linsdale, Bishop of Peterborough, who, upon refusing to appear, publicly excommunicated him for contempt. This made such an impression upon the mind of Brown, that he renounced his principles of separation, and having obtained absolution, he was about the year 1592, preferred to the rectory of a church near Oundle in Northamptonshire. According to Fuller, that far from the sabbatarian strictness espoused by his followers, he was rather dissolute and a libertine;"in a word," continues our historian," he had a wife with whom he never lived, a church in which he never preached, and as all the other scenes of his life were stormy and turbulent, so was his end.”* For being poor, and proud and very passionate, he struck the constable of his parish for demanding the payment of a rate; and being beloved by no body, he was summoned before a magistrate Sir Rowland St. John, who committed him to Northampton goal. The decrepid old man not being able to walk, was carried thither upon a feather bed in a cart, where not long after he died, in 1630, in the 81st year of his age. The Brownists, though they pretended that they did not differ from the Church of England in any article of faith, yet so far