'That body, which once was a temple of the Holy Ghost, is now become a
small quantity of Christian ashes. But I shall see it reanimated.'
This is the very voice of Faith. Walton was, indeed, an assured
believer, and to his mind, the world offered no insoluble problem. But
we may say of him, in the words of a poet whom he quotes:--
'Many a one
Owes to his country his religion;
And in another would as strongly grow
Had but his nurse or mother taught him so.'
In his account of Donne's early theological studies of the differences
between Rome and Anglicanism, it is manifest that Izaak thinks these
differences matters of no great moment. They are not for simple men to
solve: Donne has taken that trouble for him; besides, he is an
Englishman, and
'Owes to his country his religion.'
He will be no Covenanter, and writes with disgust of an intruded Scots
minister, whose first action was to cut down the ancient yews in the
churchyard. Izaak's religion, and all his life, were rooted in the past,
like the yew-tree. He is what he calls 'the passive peaceable
Protestant.' 'The common people in this nation,' he writes, 'think they
are not wise unless they be busy about what they understand not, and
especially about religion'; as Bunyan was busy at that very moment. In
Walton's opinion, the plain facts of religion, and of consequent
morality, are visible as the sun at noonday. The vexed questions are for
the learned, and are solved variously by them. A man must follow
authority, as he finds it established in his own country, unless he has
the learning and genius of a Donne. To these, or equivalents for these
in a special privy inspiration, 'the common people' of his day, and ever
since Elizabeth's day, were pretending. This was the inevitable result
of the translation of the Bible into English. Walton quotes with
approval a remark of a witty Italian on a populace which was universally
occupied with Free-will and Predestination. The fruits Walton saw, in
preaching Corporals, Antinomian Trusty Tompkinses, Quakers who ran about
naked, barking, Presbyterians who cut down old yew-trees, and a
Parliament of Saints. Walton took no kind of joy in the general
emancipation of the human spirit. The clergy, he confessed, were not
what he wished them to be, but they were better than Quakers, naked and
ululant. To love God and his neighbour, and to honour the king, was
Walton's unperplexed religion. Happily he was saved from the view of the
errors and the fall of James II., a king whom it was not easy to honour.
His social philosophy was one of established rank, tempered by equity and
Christian charity. If anything moves his tranquil spirit, it is the
remorseless greed of him who takes his fellow-servant by the throat and
exacts the uttermost penny. How Sanderson saved a poor farmer from the
greed of an extortionate landlord, Walton tells in his Life of the
prelate, adding this reflection:--
'It may be noted that in this age there are a sort of people so unlike
the God of mercy, so void of the bowels of pity, that they love only
themselves and their children; love them so as not to be concerned
whether the rest of mankind waste their days in sorrow or shame;
people that are cursed with riches, and a mistake that nothing but
riches can make them and theirs happy.'
Thus Walton appears, this is 'the picture of his own disposition,' in the
_Lives_. He is a kind of antithesis to John Knox. Men like Walton are
not to be approached for new 'ideas.' They will never make a new world
at a blow: they will never enable us to understand, but they can teach us
to endure, and even to enjoy, the world. Their example is alluring:--
'Even the ashes of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.'