George Herbert.
Amidst the Civil Wars, and under the ascendancy of Presbyterianism, there could no longer be the same kind of pastoral care as that which threw such an air of saintliness over Bemerton rectory. The "country parson" could no more use the Prayer Book and keep Church festivals. Daily worship had ceased, such as George Herbert loved to attend, at the canonical hours of ten and four, when "he lifted up pure and charitable hands to God in the midst of the congregation." There could no longer assemble in public twice a day, an Anglican congregation, composed of parishioners and gentlemen of the neighbourhood. An end had also come to the usage described by Isaac Walton: "Some of the meaner sort of his parish did so love and reverence Mr. Herbert, that they would let their plough rest, when Mr. Herbert's saint's-bell rung to prayers, that they might also offer their devotions to God with him, and would then return back to their plough." Yet throughout the Commonwealth era the lofty devotion of the poet-priest—albeit touched with asceticism and other weaknesses—continued to beat in many hearts, and to inspire the concealed use of ancient formularies.
Never was anything more beautiful than Herbert's dying confession: "I now look back upon the pleasures of my life past, and see the content I have taken in beauty, in wit, in music, and pleasant conversation, are now all past by me like a dream, or as a shadow that returns not, and are now all become dead to me, or I to them; and I see, that as my father and generation hath done before me, so I also shall now suddenly (with Job) make my bed also in the dark; and I praise God I am prepared for it; and I praise Him that I am not to learn patience now I stand in such need of it; and that I have practised mortification, and endeavoured to die daily, that I might not die eternally! and my hope is that I shall shortly leave this valley of tears, and be free from all fevers and pain; and, which will be a more happy condition, I shall be free from sin, and all the temptations and anxieties that attend it; and this being past, I shall dwell in the New Jerusalem; dwell there with men made perfect; dwell where these eyes shall see my Master and Saviour Jesus; and with Him see my dear mother and all my relations and friends. But I must die, or not come to that happy place. And this is my content, that I am going daily towards it; and that every day which I have lived hath taken a part of my appointed time from me, and that I shall live the less time for having lived this and the day past."
Such words were not theatrically uttered; they simply expressed the life which the good man had really lived—a life which was in truth a continued Sunday, answering to what he played and sung in those last hours.
"The Sundays of man's life
Threaded together on time's string,
Make bracelets to adorn the wife
Of the eternal, glorious King.
On Sundays, heaven's door stands ope,
Blessings are plentiful and rife—