Pepys--who liked to see and hear everything which was going on--walked to old St. Dunstan's Church, at seven o'clock in the morning, but found the doors unopened. He took a turn in the Temple Gardens until eight, when, on coming back to the church, he saw people crowding in at a side door, and found the edifice half-filled, ere the principal entrance had been opened. Dr. Bates, minister of the church, took for his text-- "Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect." "He making a very good sermon," reports the Secretary, "and very little reflections in it to anything of the times." After dinner, the gossip went to St. Dunstan's again, to hear a second sermon from the same preacher upon the same text. Arriving at the church, about one o'clock, he found it thronged, and had to stand during the whole of the service. Not until the close of this second homily, did the preacher make any distinct allusion to his ejectment, and then it was in terms the most concise and temporate. "I know you expect I should say something as to my nonconformity. I shall only say thus much--it is neither fancy, faction, nor humour, that makes me not to comply, but merely for fear of offending God. And if after the best means used for my illumination, as prayer to God, discourse, study, I am not able to be satisfied concerning the lawfulness of what is required; if it be my unhappiness to be in error, surely men will have no reason to be angry with me in this world, and I hope God will pardon me in the next."[369] Dr. Jacomb occupied his pulpit in St. Martin's, Ludgate. It would seem, from his remarks, that he did not expect it to be the last pastoral discourse he would deliver; but I am unable to say whether the hope he had of preaching to his parishioners again, arose from an idea that the law would be mitigated. "Let me," he said, "require this of you, to pass a charitable interpretation upon our laying down the exercise of our ministry." "I censure none that differ from me, as though they displease God: but yet, as to myself, should I do thus and thus, I should certainly violate the peace of my own conscience, and offend God, which I must not do, no, not to secure my ministry; though that either is, or ought to be dearer to me than my very life; and how dear it is, God only knoweth."[370] [Sidenote: THE BARTHOLOMEW EJECTMENT.]