God hath created nothing simply for itself: but each thing in all things, and of every thing each part in other hath such interest, that in the whole world nothing is found whereunto anything created can say, "I need thee not." The prophet Hosea, to express this, maketh by a singular grace of speech the people of Israel suitors unto corn and wine and oil, as men are unto men which have power to do them good; corn and wine and oil supplicants unto the earth; the earth to the heavens; the heavens to God. "In that day, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens, and the heavens shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the corn and wine and oil, and the corn and wine and oil shall hear Israel." They are said to hear that which we ask; and we to ask the thing which we want, and wish to have. So hath that supreme commander disposed it, that each creature should have some peculiar task and charge, reaching further than only unto its own preservation. What good the sun doth, by heat and light; the moon and stars, by their secret influence; the air, and wind, and water, by every their several qualities: what commodity the earth, receiving their services, yieldeth again unto her inhabitants: how beneficial by nature the operations of all things are; how far the use and profit of them is extended; somewhat the greatness of the works of God, but much more our own inadvertency and carelessness, doth disable us to conceive. Only this, because we see, we cannot be ignorant of, that whatsoever doth in dignity and pre-eminence of nature most excel, by it other things receive most benefit and commodity.

(From the Sermon on the Nature of Pride.)

A VIRTUOUS WOMAN

And

THE death of the saints of God is precious in His sight. shall it seem unto us superfluous at such times as these are to hear in what manner they have ended their lives? The Lord Himself hath not disdained so exactly to register in the book of life after what sort His servants have closed up their days on earth, that He descendeth even to their very meanest actions, what meat they have longed for in their sickness, what they have spoken unto their children, kinsfolk, and friends, where they have willed their dead carcasses to be laid, how they have framed their

wills and testaments, yea the very turning of their faces to this side or that, the setting of their eyes, the degrees whereby their natural heat hath departed from them, their cries, their groans, their pantings, breathings, and last gaspings, He hath most solemnly commended unto the memory of all generations. The care of the living both to live and to die well must needs be somewhat increased, when they know that their departure shall not be folded up in silence, but the ears of many be made acquainted with it. Again when they hear how mercifully God hath dealt with others in the hour of their last need, besides the praise which they give to God, and the joy which they have or should have by reason of their fellowship and communion of saints, is not their hope also much confirmed against the day of their own dissolution? Finally, the sound of these things doth not so pass the ears of them that are most loose and dissolute of life, but it causeth them some time or other to wish in their hearts, "Oh that we might die the death of the righteous, and that our end may be like his!" Howbeit because to spend herein many words would be to strike even as many wounds into their minds whom I rather wish to comfort: therefore concerning this virtuous gentlewoman only this little I speak, and that of knowledge, "She lived a dove, and died a lamb.” And if amongst so many virtues, hearty devotion towards God, towards poverty tender compassion, motherly affection towards servants, towards friends even serviceable kindness, mild behaviour and harmless meaning towards all; if, where so many virtues were eminent, any be worthy of special mention, I wish her dearest friends of that sex to be her nearest followers in two things: Silence, saving only where duty did exact speech; and Patience, even then when extremity of pains did enforce grief. "Blessed are they which die in the Lord." And concerning the dead which are blessed, let not the hearts of any living be overcharged, with grief overtroubled.

(From a Funeral Sermon.)

AN APPEAL

I APPEAL to the conscience of every soul, that hath been truly converted by us, Whether his heart were never raised up to God

by our preaching; whether the words of our exhortation never wrung any tear of a penitent heart from his eyes; whether his soul never reaped any joy, any comfort, any consolation in Christ Jesus, by our sacraments, and prayers, and psalms, and thanksgiving; whether he were never bettered, but always worsed by us. O merciful God! If heaven and earth in this case do not witness with us, and against them, let us be razed out from the land of the living! Let the earth on which we stand swallow us quick, as it hath done Corah, Dathan, and Abiram! But if we belong unto the Lord our God, and have not forsaken Him; if our priests, the sons of Aaron, minister unto the Lord, and the Levites in their office; if we offer unto the Lord every morning and every evening the burnt-offerings and sweet incense of prayers and thanksgivings; if the bread be set in order upon the pure table, and the candlestick of gold, with the lamps thereof, to burn every morning; that is to say, if amongst us God's blessed sacraments be duly administered, His holy Word sincerely and daily preached; if we keep the watch of the Lord our God, and if ye have forsaken Him: then doubt ye not, this God is with us as a captain, His priests with sounding trumpets must cry alarm against you; "O ye children of Israel, fight not against the Lord God of your fathers, for ye shall not prosper."

(From a Sermon on St. Jude's Epistles.)

RICHARD KNOLLES

[Richard Knolles, who was of a good Northamptonshire family, was born at Cold Ashby-one of the numerous Ashbys of that county, between Naseby and Crick-in an uncertain year. He took his degree at Oxford in 1564, and was elected to a fellowship in Lincoln College. Sir Roger Manwood, the well-known Kentish lawyer, installed Knolles as master of a free grammar school which he had founded at Sandwich, and in this office the historian of the Turks spent by far the greater part of his life. The huge and remarkable book which made him well known in his own time, and has gained him a posthumous fame secure, though somewhat second-hand, must have occupied him, in point of preparation, for many years. But it does not seem to have been formally begun till after the death in 1592 of Sir Roger Manwood, when his son Peter, afterwards Sir Peter, as Knolles records in his first preface, "moved him" to it. It was published in 1603, the second edition appearing in 1610, and the third in 1621, details not discreditable to the book-buying habits of our ancestors, for the volume, though very handsome and illustrated with delightful portraits of Sultans, contains more than fourteen hundred closely packed folio pages. Knolles died in the year of the publication of the second edition.]

FOR one person to whom Knolles is known in his own work, he is probably known to hundreds by the panegyric, a little exaggerated perhaps, of Johnson in the Rambler, by the affectionate notices of Byron, and by the reference in Thackeray's Virginians. He has been decried by other authorities of less importance and less judgment, and it may be admitted that to have a thorough appreciation of him, it is perhaps necessary to have read him, as Byron certainly and Johnson probably did, in early youth. Not that both his matter and his style do not deserve praise from the sanest judgment; but his immense volume, bestowed upon subjects of inferior interest and importance, may give a little pause to the critic and very much to the idle or the busy reader. The main body of Knolles's book covers a period of not much more than two hundred years, and at a rough estimate this part is by