Often now he went to court hoping for some
great post. But James I died in 1625 and with him died George
Herbert's hope of rising to be great in the world.
For a time, then, he left court and went into the country, and
there he passed through a great struggle with himself. The
question he had to settle was "whether he should return to the
painted pleasure of a court life" or become a priest.
In the end he decided to become a priest, and when a friend tried
to dissuade him from the calling as one too much below his birth,
he answered: "It hath been judged formerly, that the domestic
servants of the King of Heaven should be one of the noblest
families on earth. And though the iniquity of late times have
made clergymen meanly valued, and the sacred name of priest
contemptible, yet I will labor to make it honorable. . . . And I
will labor 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."
But before Herbert was fully ordained a great change came into
his life.
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