increased daily by a similitude of inclinations to the same
recreations and studies; a friendship elemented in youth, and in an
university, free from self-ends, which the friendships of age usually
are not. And in this sweet, this blessed, this spiritual amity, they
went on for many years: and as the holy Prophet saith, "so they took
sweet counsel together, and walked in the house of God as friends."
By which means they improved this friendship to such a degree of holy
amity, as bordered upon heaven: a friendship so sacred, that when it
ended in this world, it began in that next, where it shall have no
end.

[Sidenote: Hooker's studies]

And, though this world cannot give any degree of pleasure equal to
such a friendship; yet obedience to parents, and a desire to know the
affairs, manners, laws, and learning of other nations, that they might
thereby become the more serviceable unto their own, made them put off
their gowns, and leave the College and Mr. Hooker to his studies,
in which he was daily more assiduous, still enriching his quiet
and capacious soul with the precious learning of the Philosophers,
Casuists, and Schoolmen; and with them the foundation and reason of
all Laws, both Sacred and Civil; and indeed with such other learning
as lay most remote from the track of common studies. And, as he was
diligent in these, so he seemed restless in searching the scope and
intention of God's Spirit revealed to mankind in the Sacred Scripture:
for the understanding of which, he seemed to be assisted by the same
Spirit with which they were written; He that regardeth truth in the
inward parts, making him to understand wisdom secretly. And the good
man would often say, that "God abhors confusion as contrary to his
nature;" and as often say, "That the Scripture was not writ to beget