doth turn such groans into songs of gladness, Mr. Herle departed this life about 1655.”*

The notification of license is followed by an anonymous advertisement, affirming that Mr. John Downam, had received from Fuller a promise which the latter did not fulfil, to alter some passages in his sermon of Reformation. Saltmarsh dedicated his "Examinations" to the Assembly of Divines; he professed that his thoughts took him but one afternoon, and they accordingly evince neither learning nor caution. Fuller answered them with

more than sufficient minuteness; his reply he entitled, “Truth Maintained, or Positions delivered in a Sermon at the Savoy: since traduced for dangerous now asserted for sound and safe. Oxford, 1643." After the Dedication to the two Universities, is a letter to Mr. Herle, who had vouched for the utility of Saltmarsh's hasty animadversions in the license he affixed to them. This Fuller regarded, and justly too, as nothing short of joining in the charges brought against him by Saltmarsh, charges that might have endangered him in such times as those. Then follows a letter to Mr. Downam in which Fuller denies altogether the anonymous report respecting his having promised to Downam to alter certain passages in the sermon that gave rise to this dispute. This is succeeded by an epistle to Saltmarsh himself, and by another to his parishioners of St. Mary, Savoy.

Of Herle, Fuller in the fifth chapter of his Wor

*Worthies of England, Cornwall, p. 212.

thies of England, gives the following pleasant relation : "I know the man full well, to whom Mr. Charles Herle, President of the Assembly, said somewhat insultingly, I'll tell you news: last night I buried a Bishop (dashing more at his profession than person) in Westminster Abbey. То whom the other returned with like latitude to both, Sure you buried him in hope of resurrection. This our eyes at this day see performed; and, it being the work of the Lord, may justly seem marvellous in our sight." *

In his Reply to Saltmarsh, Fuller draws a very dark, but doubtless, faithful picture of the times. Profanity, adultery, and theft, were never more common, "lying both in word and print grown epidemical, so that it is questionable whether guns or printing (two inventions of the same country and standing) at the present do more mischief in this kingdom."

*Fuller, dividing the Bishops into companies according to the primates, Cranmer, Parker, Whitgift, Abbot, and Juxon, observes, "It is also very remarkable that of this fifth and last company [all Bishops in 1642,] nine are alive at this present; London, [Juxon, translated thence to Canterbury,] Bath and Wells, [William Piers,] Ely, [Wren,] Salisbury, [Duppa,] Bangor, [Roberts,] Coventry and Lichfield, [Frewen, translated to York,] Oxford, [Skinner,] Rochester, [Warner,] and Chichester, [King,] a vivacity hardly to be paralleled of so many Bishops in any other age, Providence purposely prolonging their lives, that, as they had seen the violent ruining, they might also behold the legal restitution of their order." Worthies of England, c. 5, p. 15, vol. i.

Herle, before three sermons, entitled, "Ahab's Fall by his Prophet's Flatteries,” London, 1644, put forth a letter to Fuller by the leave of the author of these sermons. This letter is itself a proof of the hypocritical and double-minded spirit of the pseudo-patriots that abounded in this age of discord.

Fuller spent somewhat more than a quarter of a year at Oxford, and is said to have been appointed a chaplain in the army to Lord Hopton, one of the most faithful of all the King's servants, and one of the most religious of his generals. Whilst at Oxford, his library and all that he left in London, fell into the hands of the Parliament; another was appointed in his place at the Savoy, and he was reduced to as great poverty as it was in the power of his enemies to bring upon him. His going to Oxford, he tells us, cost him all that he had, a dear seventeen weeks compared with the seventeen years he spent in Cambridge. To his losses he thus alludes in his Mixt Contemplations: "I have observed, that towns which have been casually burnt, have been built again more beautiful than before; mud walls afterwards made of stone; and roofs formerly but thatched, after advanced to be tiled. The apostle tells me, that I must not think strange concerning the fiery trial which is to happen unto me. May I likewise prove improved by it. Let my renewed soul, which grows out of the ashes of the old man, be a more firm fabric, and stronger

structure: so shall affliction be my advantage." And in another place, "This nation is scourged with a wasting war. Our sins were ripe; God could no longer be just if we were prosperous. Blessed be his name, that I have suffered my share in the calamities of my country. Had I poised myself so politically betwixt both parties that I had suffered from neither, yet could I have taken no contentment in my safe escaping. For why should I, equally engaged with others in sinning, be exempted above them from the punishment? And seeing the bitter cup which my brethren have pledged, to pass by me, I should fear it would be filled again, and returned double, for me to drink it. Yea, I should suspect that I were reserved alone for a greater shame and sorrow. It is, therefore, some comfort, that I draw in the same yoke with my neighbours, and with them jointly bear the burden which our sins jointly brought upon us."‡

In these times of legalized injustice, not only did our author suffer, but his library. In his dedication of the fifth Book of his Church History to the Rt. Honourable Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, Baron Cranfield of Cranfield, &c. he says, "Was it not cruelty to torture a library by maiming and mangling the authors therein? neither leaving nor taking them entire. Would they had took less, that so what they left, might have been useful to me, or left less, that so what they took, might have

Mixt Contemplations, Fuller's Good Thoughts in Bud Times, ed. Pickering. London, 1841, pp. 60, 63.

been useful to others. Whereas now, mischievous ignorance did a prejudice to me, without a profit to itself or any body else.

"But would to God all my fellow-brethren, which with me bemoan the loss of their books, with me might also rejoice for the recovery thereof, though not the same numerical volumes. Thanks be to your Honour, who have bestowed on me (the treasure of a Lord Treasurer) what remained of your father's library: your father who was the greatest honourer and disgracer of students, bred in learning honourer, giving due respect to all men of merit; disgracer, who by his mere natural parts and experience acquired that perfection of invention, expression, and judgment, to which those who make learning their sole study, do never arrive.”

His loss he thus notices in the seventeenth of his Meditations on the Times: "One Nicias, a philosopher, having his shoes stolen from him, may they, said he, fit his feet that took them away; a wish at the first view very harmless, but there was that in it which poisoned his charity into a malicious revenge. For he, himself, had hurled or crooked feet, so that in effect he wished the thief to be lame.

"Whosoever hath plundered me of my books and papers, I freely forgive him, and desire that he may fully understand and make good use thereof, wishing him more joy of them, than he hath right to them. Nor is there any snake under my herbs, nor have I, as Nicias, any reservation or latent sense to myself, but from my heart do desire, that