may be saved. They gave plentiful alms to the poor; we, instead of filling their bellies, grind their faces. What excellent laws had we lately enacted that there should be no beggar in Israel! Let our streets, ways, hedges, witness the execution. Thy liberality relieves some poor; it is well: but hath not thy oppression made more? Thy usury, extorting, racking, enclosing, hath wounded whole villages; and now thou befriendest two or three with the plasters of thy bounty. The mercies of the wicked are cruel. They were precise in their Sabbath; we so loose in ours, as if God had no day. See whether our taverns, streets, highways, descry any great difference. These things I vowed in myself to reprove if too bitterly, as you think, pardon, I beseech you, this holy impatience, and blame the foulness of these vices, not my just vehemency."

Of his more fervid passages, one of the most impressive occurs in his "Passion Sermon:"-" O beloved, is it not enough that He died once for us? Were those pains so light that we should every day redouble them? Is this the entertainment that so gracious a Saviour hath deserved of us by dying? Is this the recompense of that infinite love of His, that thou shouldest thus cruelly vex and wound Him with thy sins? Every one of our sins is a thorn, and nail, and spear to Him. Whilst thou pourest down thy drunken carouses, thou givest thy Saviour a potion of gall: while thou despisest His poor servants, thou spittest on His face while thou puttest on thy proud dresses, and liftest up thy heart with vain conceits, thou settest a crown of thorns on His head while thou wringest and oppressest His poor children, thou scourgest Him, and drawest blood of His hands and feet. Thou hypocrite, how darest thou offer to receive the sacrament of God with that hand which is thus imbrued with the blood of Him whom thou receivest? In every ordinary thy profane tongue walks, in the disgrace of the religious and the conscionable.

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Thou makest no scruple of thine own sins, and scornest those that do. Hear Him that saith, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? Saul strikes at Damascus ; Christ suffers in heaven. Thou strikest; Christ Jesus smarteth, and will revenge. These are what remains' of Christ's sufferings. In Himself it is finished; in His members it is not. We must toil, and groan, and bleed, that we may reign. This is our warfare; this is the region of our sorrow and death. Now are we set upon the sandy pavement of our theatre, and are matched with all sort of evils-evil men, evil spirits, evil accidents, and, which is worst, our own evil hearts; temptations, crosses, persecutions, sicknesses, wants, infamies, death: all these must, in our courses, be encountered by the law of our profession. What should we do but strive and suffer, as our General hath done, that we may reign as He doth, and once triumph in our 'Consummatum est?' God and His angels sit upon the scaffolds of heaven, and behold us. * Our crown is ready; our day of deliverance shall come; yea, our redemption is near, when all tears shall be wiped from our eyes, and we, that have sown in tears, shall reap in joy."

In three successive years Dr Hall was employed in as many several embassies by his sovereign. First, he accompanied the Earl of Carlisle on his splendid mission to France; but being seized with violent sickness, he was sent back from Paris to Dieppe in a litter "of so little ease, that Simeon's penitential lodging or a malefactor's stocks had been less penal." Then, in 1617, he was selected to attend his Majesty himself in his visit to Scotland, to aid in the effort to introduce Episcopacy. The Anglican system could have no sincerer advocate than the man who, at that moment, was its brightest ornament; but because he made the concessions which the candour of strong conviction is apt to make, and because he attracted to himself the regard and affection which obvious goodness can hardly *The seats of an amphitheatre.

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fail to win, he returned from this journey laden with the envy of less popular brethren, and had some difficulty in convincing the king that he had not betrayed the cause. However, after a momentary distrust, the king's confidence was restored; and in the following year Dr Hall, now Dean of Worcester, was deputed, along with Bishop Carleton and Drs Davenant and Ward, to attend the Synod of Dort. After two months, the same failure of health which necessitated his return from France hastened his departure from Holland. The noise of a garrison town at night deprived him of sleep; and after taking leave of his colleagues in an eloquent Latin valediction, he was thankful to return for the last time to his native shores.

Diversified by such expeditions, and by his stated attendances at court, upwards of a quarter of a century passed peacefully and usefully at Halsted and Waltham Cross. His sons were growing up good scholars, and promising young men, as, indeed, three of them were destined to become ministers like himself, and one of them a bishop. Through his affectionate assiduity, and especially through his diligence in catechising, his parishioners had attained an amount of Christian intelligence and sobriety then unusual in England. And although he himself overtasked a delicate constitution by the writing out of three sermons a-week, and by a devotion to study which sometimes stinted itself to one meal in the day, his fund of cheerfulness was a constant restorative, occasionally combined with a few hours of piscatorial relaxation on the banks of the Lea. And now he was upwards of fifty years of age, and could no longer escape the mitre with which his high standing had for some time been threatened. Gloucester he resisted with success; but the reprieve was short, and in 1627 he was obliged to become Bishop of Exeter.

Before leaving that pleasant Waltham parsonage, let us peep into the study as sketched by the pen of its industrious occupant in one of his most delightful epistles :

"Every day is a little life, and our whole life is but a day repeated: whence it is that old Jacob numbered his life by days, and Moses desired to be taught this point of holy arithmetic, to number not his years but his days. Those, therefore, that dare lose a day, are dangerously prodigal; those that dare misspend it, desperate. First, therefore, I desire to awake at those hours, not when I will, but when I must pleasure is not a fit rule for rest, but health; neither do I consult so much with the sun, as with mine own necessity, whether of body or in that of the mind. If this vassal could well serve me waking, it should never sleep; but now it must be pleased that it may be serviceable. Now, when sleep is rather driven away than leaves me, I would ever awake with God; my first thoughts are for Him who hath made the night for rest, and the day for travail; and as He gives, so blesses both. If my heart be early seasoned with His presence, it will savour of Him all day after. While my body is dressing, not with an effeminate curiosity, nor yet with rude neglect, my mind addresses itself to her ensuing task, bethinking what is to be done, and in what order, and marshalling (as it may) my hours with my work. That done, after some while's meditation, I walk up to my masters and companions, my books; and sitting down amongst them with the best contentment, I dare not reach forth my hand to salute any of them till I have first looked up to heaven, and craved favour of Him to whom all my studies are duly referred; without whom I can neither profit nor labour. After this, out of no great variety, I call forth those which may best fit my occasions, wherein I am not too scrupulous of age. Sometimes I put myself to school to one of those ancients whom the Church hath honoured with the name of Fathers, whose volumes I confess not to open without a secret reverence of their holiness and gravity; sometimes to those later doctors, who want nothing but age to make them classical; always to God's book. That day is lost

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whereof some hours are not improved in those divine monuments others I turn over out of choice, these out of duty. Ere I can have sate unto weariness, my family, having now overcome all household distractions, invite me to our common devotions; not without some short preparation. These, heartily performed, send me up with a more strong and cheerful appetite to my former work, which I find made easy to me by intermission and variety. Now, therefore, can I deceive the hours with change of pleasures-that is, of labours. while my eyes are busied, another while my hand, and sometimes my mind takes the burden from them both. One hour is spent in textual divinity, another in controversy; histories relieve them both. Now, when my mind is weary of others' labours, it begins to undertake its own: sometimes it meditates, and winds up for future use; sometimes it lays forth its conceits into present discourse, sometimes for itself, often for others. Neither know I whether it works or plays in these thoughts; I am sure no sport hath more pleasure, no work more use. Only the decay of a weak body makes me think these delights insensibly laborious. Thus could I all day (as ringers use) make myself music with changes, were it not that this faint monitor interrupts me still in the midst of my busy pleasures, and enforces me both to respite and repast. I must yield to both; while my body and mind are joined together in these unequal couples, the better must follow the weaker. Before my meals, therefore, and after, I let myself loose from all thoughts, and now would forget that I ever studied. A full mind takes away the body's appetite, no less than a full body makes a dull and unwieldy mind. Company, discourse, recreations, are now seasonable and welcome. These prepare me for a diet, not gluttonous but medicinal. The palate may not be pleased, but the stomach, nor that for its own sake; neither would I think any of these comforts worth respect in themselves, but in their use, in their end, so far as they may