st be meek,
In weakness must be stout,
Well, I will change my service, and go seek
Some other master out;
Ah, my dear God! though I am clean forgot,
Let me not love thee, if I love thee not.

G.H.

[Sidenote: Retires into Kent]

In this time of Mr. Herbert's attendance and expectation of some good
occasion to remove from Cambridge to Court, God, in whom there is an
unseen chain of causes, did in a short time put an end to the lives of
two of his most obliging and most powerful friends, Lodowick Duke of
Richmond, and James Marquis of Hamilton; and not long after him King
James died also, and with them, all Mr. Herbert's Court-hopes: so that
he presently betook himself to a retreat from London, to a friend
in Kent, where he lived very privately, and was such a lover of
solitariness, as was judged to impair his health, more than his study
had done. In this time of retirement, he had many conflicts with
himself, whether he should return to the painted pleasures of a
Court-life, or betake himself to a study of Divinity, and enter into
Sacred Orders, to which his dear mother had often persuaded him. These
were such conflicts, as they only can know, that have endured them;
for ambitious desires, and the outward glory of this world, are not
easily laid aside; but at last God inclined him to put on a resolution
to serve at his altar.

[Sidenote: Holy Orders]

He did, at his return to London, acquaint a Court-friend with his
resolution to enter into Sacred Orders, who persuaded him to alter
it, as too mean an employment, and too much below his birth, and the
excellent abilities and endowments of his mind. To whom he replied,
"It hath been formerly judged that the domestic servants of the King
of Heaven should be of the noblest families on earth. And though the
iniquity of the late times have made clergymen meanly valued, and
the sacred name of priest contemptible; yet I will labour to make it
honourable, by consecrating all my learning, and all my poor abilities
to advance the glory of that God that gave them; knowing that I can
never do too much for him, that hath done so much for me, as to make
me a Christian. And I will labour to be like my Saviour, by making
humility lovely in the eyes of all men, and by following the merciful
and meek example of my dear Jesus."

[Sidenote: Layton Ecclesia]

This was then his resolution; and the God of constancy, who intended
him for a great example of virtue, cont