t and eat and drink: but when they went about this work, there
was a want of some joint-stools, which the Minister sent the Clerk to
fetch, and then to fetch cushions,--but not to kneel upon.--When the
Clerk saw them begin to sit down, he began to wonder; but the Minister
bade him "cease wondering, and lock the Church-door:" to whom he
replied, "Pray take you the keys, and lock me out: I will never come
more into this Church; for all men will say, my master Hooker was a
good man, and a good scholar; and I am sure it was not used to be
thus in his days:" and report says the old man went presently home and
died; I do not say died immediately, but within a few Christian days
after.[30]

[Sidenote: His Christian behavior]

But let us leave this grateful Clerk in his quiet grave, and return
to Mr. Hooker himself, continuing our observations of his Christian
behaviour in this place, where he gave a holy valediction to all the
pleasures and allurements of earth; possessing his soul in a virtuous
quietness, which he maintained by constant study, prayers, and
meditations. His use was to preach once every Sunday, and he, or his
Curate, to catechise after the second Lesson in the Evening Prayer.
His Sermons were neither long nor earnest, but uttered with a grave
zeal and an humble voice: his eyes always fixed on one place, to
prevent imagination from wandering; insomuch that he seemed to
study as he spake. The design of his Sermons--as indeed of all his
discourses--was to shew reasons for what he spake; and with these
reasons such a kind of rhetoric, as did rather convince and persuade,
than frighten men into piety; studying not so much for matter,--which
he never wanted,--as for apt illustrations, to inform and teach his
unlearned hearers by familiar examples, and then make them better by
convincing applications; never labouring by hard words, and then by
heedless distinctions and sub-distinctions, to amuse his hearers, and
get glory to himself; but glory only to God. Which intention, he would
often say, was as discernible in a Preacher, "as a natural from an
artificial beauty."

[Sidenote: Fasting and prayer]

He never failed the Sunday before every Ember-week to give notice
of it to his parishioners, persuading them both to fast, and then
to double their devotions for a learned and a pious Clergy, but
especially the last; saying often, "That the life of a pious Clergyman
was visible rhetoric; and so convincing, that the mo