reverend Pastor departed from a place where he had endeared himself to all by his piety and munificence. Many an orphan whose sorrows he had dried; many a widow whose heart he had made to sing within her; many a wanderer whom he had guided into the paths of peace; doubtless hung upon his garments, as he passed over the threshold of his palace, and blessed him through their tears. Of worldly treasure he carried little away. All his property, with the exception of his books which he never sold, did not exceed seven hundred pounds; for that sum, Lord Weymouth undertook to allow him an annuity of eighty pounds. He carried with him the lute on which he had so often sung the Songs of Sion, a favourite but "sorry horse," and a Greek Testament, the companion and soother of all his wanderings, which is said to open, as of its own accord, at the fifteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Corinthians,-a beautiful and affecting illustration of his piety, and of the sleepless eye of faith, with which he looked for the resurrection to immortality. "I told you,” he wrote to Bishop Lloyd, " that a London journey was not agreeable to my purse. It was no pretence, but a real truth. I am not able to support the expense of it, which all who know my condition will easily believe. I thank God that I have enough to bring the year about while I remain in the country, and that is as much as I desire. I have been often offered money for saints,' which at present threatens us, and from the spirit of latitudinarianism, which is a common sewer of all heresies imaginable; and I am not a little satisfied that I have made the best provision for the flock, which was possible in our present circumstances." He had previously requested Hooper to accept the see, accompanying his wish with a warm tribute to the virtues of his friend, and alluding to his own distemper, which disabled him, he said, from any pastoral duty.-See Prose Works by Round, p. 66. myself, but always refused it, and never take any but to distribute it in the country. I have nothing now for that good use put into my hands." "He was so charitable," says the daughter of Dr. Hooper, "as to give away more than he could spare; so that his habit was mean, and a poor horse to carry him about*" For some years before his death his income was more ample. Of his latter days little remains to be told, for the path of the secluded Christian, like the summerbrook which it resembles, is only revealed by the verdure it diffuses in its course: Longleate continued to be his home, but he was an occasional visitor at the houses of Mrs. Thynne, Mrs. Meymis, and Archdeacon Sandys,— and wherever he went, we are told, it was his happiness to be loved. But his health was precarious, and he suffered under amost painful malady. The hour at length arrived when he should depart in joy, bearing his sheaves with him. Death stole gently on his weakened frame, and he expired in the seventy-third year of his age, under that roof which had so often sheltered him. Mr. Bowles extracts a notice of the event from the Diary of Dr. Merewether of Devizes: "March 16, (1711) I went to Longleate to visit Bishop Ken,— met Dr. Benson;-18th, I waited on him again; Ibid.— 19th, All glory be to God. Between 5 and 6, in ye morning, Thomas, late Bishop of Bath and Wells, died at Longleate." It was just as the sun rose over the majestic woods, concludes his amiable and gifted biographer, that his faithful friends and affectionate mourners followed his remains, to be consigned to earth in the church-yard of Frome. * Memorials of Hooper, quoted by Mr. Bowles. To him is reared no marble tomb, But some faint flowers of summer bloom, And silent falls the winter's rain. No village monumental stone Records a verse, a date, a name; What boots it? When thy task is done, CHRISTIAN, how vain the sound of Fame!-BOWLES. Ken was a preacher of very great celebrity: frequent mention of him occurs in the Diary of Evelyn, the friend and the hearer of Jeremy Taylor. “March 14, 1686. The Bishop of Bath and Wells preached on 6 John 17, a most excellent and pathetic discourse; after he had recommended the duty of fasting and other penitential duties, he exhorted to constancy in the Protestant religion, detestation of the unheard-of cruelties of the French, and stirring up to a liberal contribution. This sermon was the more acceptable as it was unexpected from a bishop who had undergone the censure of being inclined to popery, the contrary whereof no man showed more." Evelyn heard him again in the March of the following year at Whitehall and at St. Martin's, where he preached "to a crowd of people not to be expressed.” The testimony of Burnet, no friendly witness, confirms the judgment of Evelyn. "He had a very edifying way of preaching, but it was more apt to move the passions than to instruct, so that his sermons were rather beautiful than solid, yet his way in them was very taking." Only three of his sermons have come down to us, and in these we are particularly struck with the grace and polished construction of the language. The following passage is taken from a sermon upon Daniel : "It was this love to God which made his greatlybeloved Daniel prosperous in adversity, that gave him freedom in captivity, friendship among enemies, safety among infidels, victory over his conquerors, and all the privileges of a native in strange countries. · ... But beyond all this, it was the love of God that presented him with a clearer landscape of the Gospel than any other prophet ever had; he was the beloved prophet under the old dispensation, as John was the beloved disciple under the new; and both being animated by the same divine love, there was a wonderful harmony between them; both of them had miraculous preservations, one from the lions, the other from the boiling caldron; both engaged young in the service of God, and consecrated their lives by an early piety, and both lived to a great and equal age, to about a hundred years; both had the like intimacy with God, the like admittance into the most adorable mysteries, and the like abundance of heavenly visions." He continues the parallel with great cogency of argument and abundance of scriptural learning, and concludes with a forcible and searching appeal to the hearts of his hearers. "For when we have in vain tried all other methods, there is nothing stable but virtue; nothing that can keep us steady in all revolutions but the love of God; and when the worldly-wise men, and the mighty, fall by their own weakness, or moulder by the decays of time, or wear out of fashion, or are overwhelmed by a deluge of envy, or are blown away by the breath of God's displeasure, or when the world, of its own accord, frowns and forsakes them, and their name and memory perish; the man that loves God is still the same, God whom he loves, is still the same, with him is no variableness, nor shadow of turning; his incentives are still the same,-infinite philanthropy, loving kindness, and amiableness; his end is still the same, the glory of his beloved; he is still the same, and has a goodness essential and unchangeable; his retreat to a peaceful conscience is still the same; his assistances have still the same sweet force; his ambition the same heavenly prospect; his designs, and affections, and resolutions have still the same centre,-his very afflictions meet in the same point with his prosperity, and both work together for his good." The funeral sermon upon Lady Maynard abounds in beautiful passages, in which the praise of the eulogist is chastened by the calm reflection of the Christian. After a very ingenious exposition of his text,-" A gracious woman retaineth honour," (Prov. xi. 16,) he observes, "Nor are we by grace only made like to God, but He is also pleased actually to dwell in us, and to consecrate our souls to be his temples; and as God commanded the Jews to reverence his sanctuary, the place of his residence among them, where he sat between the cherubim, and a glorious light that shined on the propitiatory was the symbol of his presence; so, when in gracious souls, we discover all the fruits of the Spirit, a kind of glory brightening their conversation, and a sacred amiableness breathed on them from heaven, we are sure that God inhabits there, and cannot but reverence his temples." His allusion to her charity is very elegant and touching. "To corporal alms, as often as she saw occasion, she she joined spiritual, and she had a singular talent in dispensing that alms to souls. She had a masculine reason to persuade, a steady wisdom to advise, a perspicuity both of thought and language to instruct, a mildness that endeared a reproof, and could comfort the afflicted from her own manifold experience of the divine goodness, and with so condoling a tenderness that she seemed to translate their anguish upon herself." |