peaceable, and impartial readers, so especially from your Majesty's royal father, who, a few days before he was crowned with martyrdom, recommended to his dearest children the diligent reading of Mr. Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, even next the Bible; as an excellent means to settle them in the truth of religion, and in the peace of this church, as much Christian, and as well reformed as any under heaven: as if God had reserved this signal honour tobe done by the best of kings, and greatest sufferers for this church, to him who was one of the best writers and ablest defenders of it.

To this completed edition, is added such particular accounts as could be got of the Author's person, education, temper, manners, fortunes, life, and death, which are now done with much exactness and proportion that hereby your Majesty, and all the world, may see what sort of men are fittest for church-work (which, like the building of Solomon's temple, is best carried on with most evenness of judgment, and least noise of passion). Also, what manner of man he was, to whom we all owe this noble work, and durable defence.

Which is indeed at once (as the tongues of eloquent princes are to themselves and their subjects) both a treasury and an armoury, to enrich their friends, and defend them against the church of England: a rare composition of unpassionate reason, and impartial religion; the mature product of a judicious scholar, a loyal subject, an humble preacher, and a most eloquent writer: the very abstract and quintessence of laws human and Divine; a summary of the grounds, rules, and proportions, of true polity in church and state upon which clear, solid, and safe foundations, the good order, peace, and government, of this church were anciently settled, and on which, while it stands firm, it will be flourishing: all other popular and specious pretensions being found by late sad experiences, to be as novel and unfit, so factious and fallacious, yea, dangerous and destructive to the peace and prosperity of this church and kingdom, whose inseparable happiness and interests are bound up in monarchy and episcopacy.

The politic and visible managing of both which, God hath now graciously restored and committed to your Majesty's sovereign wisdom and authority, after the many and long tragedies suffered from those club-masters and tub-ministers, who sought not fairly to obtain reformation of what might seem amiss, but violently and wholly to overthrow the ancient and goodly fabric of this church and kingdom. For finding themselves not able in many years to answer this one book, long ago written in defence of the truth, order, government, authority, and liberty (in things indifferent), of this reformed church, agreeable to right reason and true religion (which make this well-tempered piece, a file capable to break

the teeth of any that venture to bite it); they conspired at last to betake themselves to arms, to kindle those horrid fires of civil wars, which this wise Author foresaw and foretold in his admirable preface would follow those sparks and that smoke which he saw rise in his days: so that from impertinent disputes (seconded with scurrilous pamphlets) they fled to tumults, sedition, rebellion, sacrilege, parricide, yea, regicide; counsels, weapons, and practices, certainly no way becoming the hearts and hands of Christian subjects, nor ever sanctified by Christ for his service, or his church's good.

What now remains, but your Majesty's perfecting and preserving that (in this church) which you have with much prudence and tenderness so happily begun and prosecuted, with more zeal than the establishment of your own throne. The still crazy church of England, together with this book (its great and impregnable shield), do farther need, and humbly implore, your Majesty's royal protection under God: nor can your Majesty, by any generous instance and perseverance (most worthy of a Christian king) more express that pious and grateful sense which God and all good men expect from your Majesty, as some retribution for his many miraculous mercies to yourself, than in a wise, speedy, and happy settling, of our religious peace; with the least grievance, and most satisfaction to all your good subjects; sacred order and uniformity being the centre and circumference of our civil tranquillity; sedition naturally rising out of schism, and rebellion out of faction: the only cure and antidote against both, are good laws and canons, first wisely made, with all Christian moderation and seasonable charity; next, duly executed with justice and impartiality; which sober severity is indeed the greatest charity to the public; whose verity, unity, sanctity, and solemnity, in religious concernments, being once duly established, must not be shaken, or sacrificed to any private varieties and extravagances. Where the internals of doctrine, morality, mysterious and evangelical duties, being (as they are in the church of England) sound and sacred, the externals of decent forms, circumstances, rites, and ceremonies, being subordinate and servient to the main, cannot be either evil or unsafe, neither offensive to God nor good Christians.

For the attaining of which blessed ends of piety and peace, that the sacred sun and shield of the Divine grace and power directing and protecting, may ever shine upon your Majesty's person and family, counsels and power, is the humble prayer of

Your sacred Majesty's

Most loyal subject, and devoted servant,

JOH. EXON.

ΤΟ

THE READER.

I THINK it necessary to inform my reader, that Dr. Gauden (the late bishop of Worcester) hath also lately wrote and published the life of Master Hooker. And though this be not writ by design to oppose what he hath truly written; yet I am put upon a necessity to say, that in it there be many material mistakes, and more omissions. I conceive some of his mistakes did proceed from a belief in Master Thomas Fuller, who had too hastily published what he hath since most ingenuously retracted. And for the Bishop's omissions, I suppose his more weighty business, and want of time, made him pass over many things without that due examination, which my better leisure, my diligence, and my accidental advantages, have made known unto me.

And now for myself, I can say, I hope, or rather know, there are no material mistakes in what I here present to you that shall become my reader. Little things that I have received by tradition (to which there may be too much and too little faith given), I will not at this distance of time undertake to justify; for though I have used great diligence, and compared relations and circumstances, and probable results and expressions; yet I shall not impose my belief upon my reader; I shall rather leave him at liberty: but if there shall appear any material omission, I desire every lover of truth and the memory of Master Hooker, that it may be made known unto And, to incline him to it, I here promise to acknowledge and rectify any such mistake in a second impression, which the printer says he hopes for; and by this means my weak (but faithful) endeavours may become a better monument, and in some degree more worthy the memory of this venerable man.

me.

I confess, that when I consider the great learning and virtue of Master Hooker, and what satisfaction and advantages many eminent scholars and admirers of him have had by his labours; I do not a little wonder, that in sixty years no man did undertake to tell posterity of the excellences of his life and learning, and the accidents of both; and sometimes wonder more at myself, that I have been persuaded to it; and, indeed, I do not easily pronounce my own pardon, nor expect that my reader shall, unless my Introduction shall prove my apology, to which I refer him.

A

COPY OF A LETTER

WRITTEN TO MR. WALTON,

BY DR. KING, LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER.

HONEST ISAAC,

THOUGH a familiarity of forty years continuance, and the constant experience of your love, even in the worst times, be sufficient to endear our friendship; yet I must confess my affection much improved, not only by evidences of private respect to those very many that know and love you, but by your new demonstration of a public spirit, testified in a diligent, true, and useful collection, of so many material passages as you have now afforded me in the life of venerable Mr. Hooker; of which, since desired by such a friend as yourself, I shall not deny to give the testimony of what I know concerning him and his learned books; but shall first here take a fair occasion to tell you, that you have been happy in choosing to write the lives of three such persons, as posterity hath just cause to honour; which they will do the more for the true relation of them by your happy pen; of all which I shall give you my unfeigned censure.

I shall begin with my most dear and incomparable friend, Dr. Donne, late dean of St. Paul's church, who not only trusted me as his executor, but three days before his death delivered into my hands those excellent sermons of his which are now made public; professing before Dr. Winniff, Dr. Montford, and I think yourself, then present at his bed-side, that it was by my restless importunity that he had prepared them for the press; together with which (as his best legacy) he gave me all his sermon-notes, and his other papers, containing an extract of near fifteen hundred authors. How these were got out of my hands, you, who were the messenger for them, and how lost both to me and yourself, is not now seasonable to complain; but, since they did miscarry, I am glad that the general demonstration of his worth was so fairly preserved, and represented to the world by your pen in the history of his life; indeed so well, that, beside others, the best critic of our later time (Mr. John Hales, of Eton-college) affirmed to me, he had not seen

a life written with more advantage to the subject, or more reputation to the writer, than that of Dr. Donne's.

After the performance of this task for Dr. Donne, you undertook the like office for our friend Sir Henry Wotton, betwixt which two there was a friendship begun in Oxford, continued in their various travels, and more confirmed in the religious friendship of age, and doubtless this excellent person had writ the life of Dr. Donne, if death had not prevented him: by which means, his and your precollections for that work fell to the happy manage of your pen: a work, which you would have declined if imperious persuasions had not been stronger than your modest resolutions against it. And I am thus far glad, that the first life was so imposed upon you, because it gave an unavoidable cause of writing the second: if not, it is too probable we had wanted both, which had been a prejudice to all lovers of honour and ingenious learning. And let me not leave my friend Sir Henry without this testimony added to yours, that he was a man of as florid a wit, and elegant a pen, as any former, or ours, which in that kind is a most excellent age, hath ever produced.

And now having made this voluntary observation of our two deceased friends, I proceed to satisfy your desire concerning what I know and believe of the ever-memorable Mr. Hooker, who was schismaticorum malleus, so great a champion for the church of England's rights, against the factious torrent of separatists that then ran high against church discipline, and in his unanswerable books continues still to be so against the unquiet discipline of their schism, which now under other names carry on their design; and who (as the proper heirs of their irrational zeal) would again rake into the scarce-closed wounds of a newly-bleeding state and church.

And first, though I dare not say I knew Mr. Hooker, yet, as our ecclesiastical history reports to the honour of Ignatius, that he lived in the time of St. John, and had seen him in his childhood; so I also joy, that in my minority I have often seen Mr. Hooker, with my father, then lord bishop of London; from whom, and others at that time, I have heard most of the material passages which you relate in the history of his life; and from my father received such a character of his learning, humility, and other virtues, that, like jewels of invaluable price, they still cast such a lustre as envy or the rust of time shall never darken. From my father I have also heard all the circumstances of the plot to defame him; and how Sir Edwin Sandys outwitted his accusers, and gained their confession; and could give an account of each particular of that plot, but that I judge it fitter to be forgotten, and rot in the same grave with the malicious authors. I may not omit to declare, that my father's knowledge of Mr. Hooker was occasioned by the