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