THESE twenty five years and more, you have reaped where you sowed not, and gather'd where you never scatter'd, like that hard man in the Parable, (Matt. 25.24.) whose Example I know not by what Authority you follow; as if you purpo­sed not only to cross the Proverb (Ʋt sementem feceris, ita & metes) of mowing as you sow; but those old Ecclesiasti­cal Constitutions likewise, which no less than three years since you received a taste of in a short material Answer to a long formal Libel; tho' you have not thought fit all this while to let me know how you like them.

If you please to look intoLib. 3. Tit. 22. de Cens. & Procurat. cap. Quamvis Lex naturae. Lindwood, you will find your self obliged to a diligent, personal and effectual scrutiny of things belonging to your Ecclesiastical Cognizance and Jurisdiction; barr'd from receiving Proxies, without doing your duty in the manner there described, and bound to re­store the Wages you have taken, without doing the Work for which alone it ought to be paid. Touching a Chappel depending (which is part of the Controversie that gave oc­casion to the penning of what is here presented to your view) you will find your self (Ibid.) threaten'd with Suspension ab officio & beneficio, until you have paid double to the Mother-Church for what hath been extorted from the Daughter.

The same Author will tell you that anciently it was judged to be (Absurdum simul & iniquum ibi quenquam, ubi non seminat, metere; & ex his colligere quae non spar­git,) [Page 2] both absurd and unjust to do as (for divers years past) you have done: with a great deal more which in Otho's and Othobon's Constitutions you may meet with to rectifie your Judgment (if need be) as well as practice. In a special manner I commend to your consideration those words of Otho, in the Chapter which concerns Archdeacons: Sint autem soliciti frequenter interesse Capitulis per singulos Decanatus, in quibus diligenter instruant Sacerdotes—not omitting Othobon's Repetition of them, cap. Deus Omnipotens, &c. where he tells you thus: Praecepit etiam (praefatus Legatus, i. e. Otho) ut dicti Archidiaconi Capitulis per singulos Decana­tus frequenter intersint, in quibus diligenter instruant Sacerdotes. —For if those passages had been well observed and regard­ed, your Libel, I suppose, (by which you claim to be paid for what you never did) had been omitted. But think not to baffle and confound all this and much more (which in the places pointed at you may read at your leisure) by the bare pronunciation of Consuetudo: Besides which, these three or four years wherein the Controversie has been de­pending, I could never hear any thing pleaded in justifica­tion of your claiming Proxies and Synodies, tho' you visit not according to the Old or New Canons. This, it seems, is your Diana; but the Idol, I trust, will hereafter do you as little service, as that which was once so much extold at Ephesus. For what is Consuetudo good for, if it be not ratio­nabilis, quae nec divino juri contradicit, nec obviat Canonicis In­stitutis? As you know what Law defines a good Custom to be, which hath also told you Consuetudo sine veritate est antiquitas Erroris, that Custom which is contrary to Truth is at best but Antiquity of Error.

Some have gotten a Custom of stealing: Is it therefore no sin to be a Thief? Some have a Custom of lying: Will that excuse them for not speaking truth? It is too well known how customary it hath long been to drink without grace or measure: Doth this prove that 'tis no fault to be drunk? There are customary Swearers: Are they any thing the less and not the greater Sinners the oftner they take the Lord's Name in vain? There's a Custom of saying one thing, and doing another: Doth this make perfidious Promisers to be no Offenders? A Custom of Double-dealing: Is Hypocrisie [Page 3] therefore excusable? A Custom of Loving in word and tongue only: May we thence conclude that it is not our duty to love in deed and in truth? 1 John 3.18.

The Jews had a Custom by which they claimed the En­largement of what Prisoner they pleased to have set at liberty at their Feast of Passover, Matt. 27.15. Could this excuse their importunate Clamor to have a Murtherer ac­quitted, and the greatest Innocent (that ever suffer'd) con­demned? Have not some a Custom of putting away (or neglecting) their Wives and keeping Whores? Will this justifie Adultery? And what if others (as if Matrimony were a mere indifferent Church-Ceremony of man's Invention, and not an Ordinance of Divine Institution) are wont to be as intimate with one another before as after Marriage? Is there nothing culpable in their antedated, antenuptial Fami­liarity? Let your Brother Dr. (such a one as he is) the Rector of Leucolithia (if you know the place) prove if he can, that not long after the Death of a former Wife, he did better, and not just as I have said.

You have long (too long) had a Custom of receiving Temporals without sowing Spirituals. Is it reasonable to do it still? If you think so because it makes for your ease, and tends to your profit; Let me here urge that known Rule of the Civil Law, [Non firmatur tractu temporis quod de Jure ab initio non subsistit: Or as you your self have pro­duced it, Pag. 98. of Roma ruit: Quod ab initio fuit invali­dum, tractu temporis non convalescit.] That length of time makes nothing firm which originally was feeble or faulty. (For so it hath otherwise been worded: Quod ab initio vi­tiosum fuit, &c.) And it is not meet, as no less Man than an Emperor hath determin'd, That the Authority of Custom should prevail so far, Ʋt aut Rationem vincat, aut Legem, as to overthrow Reason or Law. Which if it be good as you hold (and none can justly deny) against the Bishop of Rome's Jurisdiction over England; is it no­thing to be regarded in the Case between you and me? Wherein you claim to be paid without doing your Duty, be­cause you have been paid. May not he Pope it over this or other Nations which belong not to his Diocess, tho' for­merly his Custom was to do it, because he ought not to

Is it so, Sir, as you say? It doth not at all trouble me. I would rather rejoyce to see your Right and Power of this kind inlarged, provided it were well used. But why is that measure which you have, be it more or less, suffer'd to lye idle? wrapt up like a Talent in a Napkin? kept so close and out of sight, that no body can tell where to find the blessed fruits and effects of it?

If you are not able to take away Iniquity, why would you seek to be a Judge? contrary to the Counsel which a wise man in­deed hath given you, Eccles. 7.6.

If you can, wherefore do you not? especially where you need not fear the person of the mighty? Ibid.

If you know not what Crimes and Offences (in this part of your Archdeaconry, which you think it beneath you to visit, or will not take the trouble of visiting) need to be pu­nish'd, corrected, and reform'd, whom can you blame but your self, for being so great a stranger at home? If you know them, whence is it, that so much Prophaneness and Ungod­liness, as is here to be met with, never meets with your Ec­clesiastical Censures, but escapes your Rod of Discipline from Year to Year? For you greatly mistake, if you think, that others observe not how Scot-free it goes, what ever you your self do. If you say, there are no Presentments made of such Crimes and Offences, as I write of, whose fault is it that they have not been questioned, by whom Presentments have been wilfully omitted? The Question is, if it needs to be question'd, Whether you your self, knowing what Crimes deserve to be censur'd, are at all to be commended for letting them pass unpunished for so many Years together, as hitherto you have done?

For if you should be interrogated upon the Articles of Inquiry exhibited to Church-wardens, what would you say to the 2d Article of your 4th Title, concerning Parishioners, (exchanging the word Parish, for Archdeaconry?)

Were you asked, according to the Questions there put, (which are grounded on Can. 109. as you set it in the Mar­gin, in A. D. 1682.) Is there any person in your Archdeaconry, that lyeth under the common fame or vehement suspicion of Adul­tery, Fornication or Incest? [What! Never a Man that hath married his Brother's Wife? Never a Woman that [Page 7] hath married two Brothers? Never a Man that hath put away his Wife to live in Whoredom?] Are there any com­mon Drunkards within your Archdeaconry? or common Swear­ers or Blasphemers of God's Name? or any that are noted to be Railers, unclean and filthy Talkers, or Sowers of Sedition, Fa­ction and Discord among their Neighbors? [Not as much as one Drunkard, Blasphemer, Swearer or lewd Liver in all this part of your Archdeaconry? Quam vellem!]

Would you say, that you know none such; never heard of any such; or believe that no such sinners are here to be found? I am far from thinking you would give such an Answer. Supposing therefore, that you know, have heard or believe, that there are such within these your Precincts, why should you, being a Man of Jurisdiction, have suffered your Power to lye dormant these many Years, without punishing and correcting any one of these sinners, in order to his Refor­mation?

Let the rest of your Archdeaconry be as free as it will, (tho' I scarce believe it to be morally better than this stormy, dirty, rainy, windy part of it is;) you need not here com­plain for want of work of that kind, would you please to come and try what good you can do, that you may not fall under the Censure and Reprehension of Rodoric Bishop of Za­mora, (in his Book, de Vita Spirituali, dedicated to Pope Paul the Second, cap. 14. de Dignitate & Praerogativa necnon de Defectibus & periculis Archidiac.) who alluding to the com­mon speech or phrase which calls an Archdeacon the Bishop's Eye, saith, The Bishop is often compelled to say, Contenebra­ti sunt Oculi mei, That his Eyes are darkned; & iterum cum alio Propheta: Nihil respiciunt Oculi mei nisi mala. Quibus a­lius Propheta ait, Dedit tibi Dominus deficientes Oculos— And again with another Prophet, That his Eyes behold nothing but what is evil: [not to correct and reform, but pass it by:] with a great many other applications of Scripture-passages to the purpose before spoken of.

If you please to examine and reform the Defects which the said Author chargeth Men of your Office with, take heed of overlooking these, among others: Propter obsequia delicta non reprimunt: Arcas non Personas visitant: nec ad lucrum Anima­rum, sed ad questum & gravamen Visitandi Officium vertunt. [Page 8] Ibid. [In which description of your too common practice, he complains of your partiality in sparing the faults of obsequi­ous friends, dependents, or acquaintance; and reproacheth your Visitations, as if you only designed them to gain Silver, and not Souls. If therefore, I say, you will set your self in earnest to correct these Abuses,] and if, for the time to come, you will visit the Persons rather than the Purses of your Peo­ple, (that their well-reform'd Manners may appear to be much more sought and desir'd, than their Mony;) you must come in Person, and not think of doing such mighty Cures as are there to be wrought, by the hands of such Men as little care to meddle with any thing, but what hath Caesar's Image and Superscription stamped on it. There was once a Prophet who sent his Staff by the hand of his Servant to work a Miracle, (2 Kings 4.29.) which however was not done till he came in person. If you mean to quicken and awaken those dead and drousie sinners which this part of your Arch­deaconry is troubled with, take heed of sending your Rod of discipline by the hand of Gehazi; but come and try what you your self can do. And if you desire to break the Pillars of Rome all to pieces, be as strict in requiring as great and high Conformity to the Laws of God, as the Churches Ceremonies and Constitutions, lest otherwise you build them up faster with one hand than you break them down with the other. For the Church of Rome, you know, is as much too loose in things per­taining to God, as too strict in observing the Commandments of Men (which they teach for Doctrins;) no less curious than the Pharisees of old about small concerns, and as careless as they in omitting the weightier matters of the Law.

Time was when Thuanus, Bodin, and other moderate Men of Rome, saw cause to commend Protestants for their sober, righteous and godly Lives; and when Dr. White's Speech [I dare be bold to say, We (meaning the Protestants of those days) may all cast our Caps at them (the Papists) for Atheism and all that naught is. Vid. his Way to the true Church, §. 38. p. 210.] could easily be justified: but those happy days are gon (tho' not irrevocable, I hope;) not al­together, if at all, because Papists are grown better, but Pro­testants worse. Should not you, being a Man of Jurisdiction, have done more than you have to prevent it? Let me therefore ask you again, If you cannot put away Iniquity, where­fore [Page 9] you sought to be a Judge? And how can you tell what you can or cannot do, without tryal? Who, in these parts, ever heard you preach the Word? Who ever found you in­stant (or urgent) in season or out of season? [Either when worldly Wisdom and human Policy have judg'd it unsea­sonable, or at other times? when danger hath attended the discharge of your Office, or when no fear hath been at hand to discourage you?] Whether of the two have you done? And according to the following part of the Charge, [Re­prove, rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and doctrin] have you tryed the force of those excellent Apostolical Remedies (Reprehension, Increpation and Persuasion, sweetned with Lenity and Instruction?)

When the Spirit of Love and Meekness could do them no good, have you taken your Rod in hand to punish, correct and reform the Crimes and Offences of notorious sinners?

I have reason to think you have rather dreamt of a Lyon in the way, than done it. [If not, tell me when and where and what faults were ever chastised with it. Is it no fault for a Man to marry his Brother's Wife? St. John the Bap­tist told Herod, it was not lawful for him to have his Brother Philip's Wife, tho' Philip, if Josephus may be credited, was at that time dead. Is it no crime for a Man to put away his Wife, who was never so much as suspected to have deserved it, (by the fault which Christ only allows her to be put away for) and live like Sardanapalus, or worse, with stranger Women than his? Is it no offence for a Man to forsake his Church (and all publick Assemblies where God is worshipt) for near twenty Years together, and yet pretend to be of the Church of England?] And altho' I believe not that any such Rod as that which is spoken of in 1 Cor. 4. ult. can be found in your keeping; (you cannot smite an Elymas with blindness, nor cause an Ananias or Saphira, much less both, to yield up the ghost;) yet such as you have, why will you suffer to rot and be worm-eaten for want of use, unless you fear of wearing it out with too much using? Is it only fit for little and not greater occasions? intended for none but feeble transgressors, and not the strongest sort of sinners, who dare strike again? If you were not a stranger to the nature or exercise of Zeal, you would not chase Harts and Hares and [Page 10] feeble Creatures only; but venture on Bears and Boors and Lyons, now and then at least.

The learned, for ought I know, have not yet determin'd whether Excommunication and Delivering up to Satan, (1 Cor. 5.5.) are the same, or different things: If you take them for the same, and observe the force and elegance of the word [...], which signifies, you know, to deliver up; what implies it, but that the Devil demands and requires scan­dalous sinners to be yielded up to him as his right and property? If that, as no vulgar Expositor will tell you, is imply'd in the sense of the term, the common same of this Country hath al­ready condemn'd you, for not having given the Devil his due: who, as bad as he is, must not be wronged or defrauded how­ever, unless your Archidiaconal power is great enough to prove the Proverb a lyar.

Archdeacons in old time were as great rarities as Lay-Elders; but if Zeal had been as rare in those days as in these, St. Laurence his Grid-iron had never been heard of; (let those who say he was Archdeacon of Rome, prove it if they can; I am confident there is reason to believe, that he never was. The Office is younger than those days;) the Book of Martyrs had been but a Manual; the noble Army (whose memory is honor'd in the Te Deum) had never been heard of; and in­stead of another such cloud of Witnesses as that, Hebr. 12.1. we had never seen a bigger than that little one like a man's hand, which we read of in 1 Kings 18.44. And if other Archdeacons have done no more than you to correct and re­form Crimes and Offences, which (to render them the more odious) have been impudently committed, obstinately con­tinued in, and loudly talked of; it is not strange, that Ini­quity should abound as it doth, nor at all to be admir'd, that the love of many (to all that is good) is grown so cold.

Did you never read or hear of a French King (another manner of Lewis than the 14th of that name) whose Motto, which he borrowed from Psal. 106.3. was, Beati qui fa­ciunt Justitiam; Blessed are they that do Justice? He was wont moreover, to say, De noxiis supplicium non sumere saevitiae magis quam Misericordiae nomen meretur Asted. Tom. 4. p. 104.; That it is not Mercy but Cruelty not to punish the guilty. Is it fit or tolerable, that your delight in doing Justice should be less than his? or that any [Page 11] of the guilty within your Jurisdiction should be handled so cruelly and unmercifully, as by reason of your negligence they have been? Your earnest affectation of a Justice-ship is no News: but to be a Justice, so called, is one thing, to do Justice, another. And what, in good earnest, is it which keeps you from exercising and exerting the right and power of punishing, correcting and reforming Crimes and Offen­ces, which you make so great a Boast of in your Libel? If the want of Zeal and Courage in the Cause of God and his Church hath hitherto hindred you, it is high time for a Man of your Place and Calling to consider, how good it is to be zea­lously affected alway, (no less when danger goes with it than at other times: Then indeed it is best; most commendable and needful;) as that eminently zealous Apostle should long since, one would think, have taught you to be, Gal. 4.18. From whence, if I should tell you, that the zealous affection which he there commends, is [Bonum honestum, jucundum, utile; Bonum per se & per accidens; Bonum communicativum sui & conservativum aliorum; Bonum perpetuum & necessarium,] so constant, permanent and needful a Good as is never out of season, like divers other good things; briefly, so very good, that little or nothing in Religion is good without it, (Charity being but cold Love, Faith but faint Persuasion, Hope but groundless Presumption, while Zeal is wanting;) I know not how great News it would seem, but is never the less true (like many other things) for being strange. If it were not more than half as good as it is, it would be but a bad bargain to exchange it for the greatest Jurisdiction in Christendom without it. Being such as it is, (and should here, but for want of room, be farther shewed to be) who that is destitute of it, can be a vigilant Visitor, and not a negligent Over-looker? a compleat Christian, and not a lukewarm Laodicean? a good Soldier of Jesus Christ, and not a timorous Tyro, or fearful Coward, whose condi­tion is as dangerous as that of an Unbeliever? Rev. 21.8. Or what good can all your other goods do you, while this is wanting? If you think your self rich and increased with it, (like those self-deceivers, Rev. 3.17.) know, that Zeal is a Talent which cannot be wrapt in a Napkin, and laid up out of sight: a Grace which can no more be hid than Fire, [Page 12] which discovers where it is by light and heat. But who­ever saw the light or felt the fervency of your zealous affe­ction? when did it shine clear enough to be seen? or burn well enough to be felt? How much old Leaven hath this good affection helped you to purge out? What root of bit­terness hath it hindred from springing up? or nipt in the bud as soon as it appeared? How unable to bear with them that are evil, hath it rendred you?

These are Questions worth the answering; but I know not what Answer worth the hearing you are able to give, who, as if your Jurisdiction were good for nothing but to be gloried in, (without putting it to better use) are so far from reforming Abuses, (too palpable to be dissembled, too shameful to be winked at,) that you will not condes­cend to come and see what's amiss. For you vainly pre­sume that you are not obliged to do it, as by proof suffi­cient hath been shewed. I must therefore renew the Que­stion (once already asked, but as yet unanswered,) what hinders that the right and power of punishing, correcting and reforming, &c. so pompously set forth in your Libel, hath been so rarely, if at all put forth in your practice? Especially when more than ordinary Crimes have called up­on you so loudly, to make it better known than by libel­ling the innocent, while the peccant are let alone? Wis­dom that is hid, and Treasure that is hoarded up, what pro­fit is in them both? Ecclus. 20.30. Is a Candle lighted to be put under a Bushel or Bed? Mark 4.21. To be co­vered with a Vessel? Luke 18.16. Or kept in a secret place? Luke 11.33. And not to be set on a Candlestick to give light round about? Was the slothful Servant's Talent delivered to be hid in the Earth? Matt. 25.25. Or his Pound to be laid up in a Napkin (Luke 19.20.) and not traded with for his Master's advantage?

Be it more or less, a Talent or Pound of Jurisdiction which these many years hath been committed to your Cu­stody, why have you suffer'd it to ly idle, as if you had no Lord to call you to a reckoning, like those other Ser­vants? Matt. 25.19.

You are loth, I believe, to speak out; and I doubt not but that as Moses, when God would have sent him into [Page 13] Egypt, made many excuses to prevent his going thither, not naming the true Cause of his backwardness, which seems, by comparing Exod. 3.15. with Exod. 4.19. to have been his fear of suffering death for killing an Egyptian forty years before; (Acts 7.30.) for which cause it is probable, God was pleased to answer that great but tacit Objection which Moses was afraid to mention, by saying Go, return to Egypt; for all the Men are dead which sought thy life. Now as he pleaded other Impediments by way of excuse than that which indeed hindred him; so I doubt not, I say, but that you will name other grounds of your negligence, while the true Cause is conceal'd: Shall I there­fore take the Candle which you keep in a dark Lanthorn, and set it on a Candlestick? Whether it will please or dislike you, time and place I am sure call upon me to tell you the Truth, take it how you list.

Among those who adhere to the Church of England there are (if not as many as some talk of, and are willing to believe; yet too many such there are) whose whole Religion consisteth in a cheap and easy Conformity to a sort of Rites and Ceremonies, which are clearly more worthy to be called Statutes that are not good (intrinsi­cally,) and Judgments whereby (without more ado be they never so strictly observ'd) we shall not live, than those which God himself, and not Moses, or any man else was Author of, Ezek. 20.25. [being openly confessed in the late Preface to the Liturgy, to be things in their own Nature indifferent and alterable, and so acknowledg'd; as also in an elder Chapter of Ceremonies, why some are abolish'd and some retain'd; they are declared to be but Man's Ordinances, which upon just Causes may be alter'd and changed, and therefore are not to be esteemed equal to God's Law:] as if this would excuse their Non-conformity to as great and weighty moral Duties, as clear and express Evangelical Precepts and Divine Mandates as any in the Bible.

These are the People who cry up the Church of England, with as much or little less Ignorance and Irreligion, than the Jews of old were guilty of; when the Temple of the Lord was as much in their Mouths, and the Lord of the [Page 14] Temple as little in their Hearts, as his greatest Enemy could desire, Jer. 7.4, 9, 10.

By these the Government of this most happy Church, that would be, but that they as much as any have hindred it, is extold to the Skies, though I verily believe that none would hate and despise it more than they, should they feel the weight of those heavy Church-Censures, which far less Sinners are many times forced to undergo.

Your fear of offending and displeasing these dissolute Peo­ple is that, I make no doubt, which hath kept you from taking up your Rod (such as 'tis) to chastise the Crimes and Offences, which you boast of having Right and Power to punish, correct and reform.

Some feeble Dissenters who could not resist you, I remem­ber, to have heard how severely you have handled: But how much Ʋngodliness, how many worldly Lusts, (which are cer­tainly as inconsistent with the Grace of God that bringeth Sal­vation, as Schism; especially such as springs from Weakness, and is not an effect of Wilfulness,) have you taught the People of your Archdeaconry to deny, or bestir'd your self to subdue?

For the Question is not how successful, but how painful you have been to bring such mighty things to pass? What have you done to heal the sin-sick, (as well as the brain-sick) tho' they would not be healed? Jer. 51.9. How much pain have you taken, tho' to no purpose? How much have you labor'd in vain? How much Strength have you spent for nought and in vain? That at least (and especially at last) you may comfort your self with saying, Surely my Judgment is with the Lord, and my Reward with my God, Esa. 49.4.

How much Rioting and Drunkenness, Chambering and Wan­tonness, cursing, swearing, or any other sort of prophaneness have you, if not actually suppressed, yet actively opposed and resisted; lest the wicked, as otherwise they will, should grow worse and worse, and not better and better? If you could not cure them, have you taken care at least to help and heal them, according to St. Bernard's distinction of cura and curatio? Who discoursing like a wise Physitian, with Eugenius Bishop of Rome, about the Diseases of his People, [Page 15] stir'd him up to ply them with the more Remedies, and to try the stronger Medicines, the more sick and distemper'd they were: In these, among many other words. En plaga! Tibi incumbit Cura. Noli diffidere etiamsi incurabilis sit. Ad Curam enim exigeris, non Curationem. Curam, inquit, illi­us habe. (Lucae 10.35.) Verum dixit quidam, ‘Non est in Medico semper relevetur ut aeger.’

Plus omnibus laboravi, ait Apostolus; non dicit plus omni­bus profui. Ʋnusquisque, inquit, propriam mercedem accipiet secundum laborem suum, non secundum proventum. Itaque quaeso fac tu quod tuum est: Nam Deus quod suum est satis abs­que tua solicitudine curabit—Scio ubi habitas. Increduli & subver­sores sunt tecum Romani; impii in Deum, temerarii in sanctos, seditiosi in invicem, aemuli in Vicinos, inhumani in extraneos— Virum circumspectum & amicum propriae Conscientiae calumnian­tur Hypocritam. Quietis amatorem & sibi interdum vacantem inutilem dicunt. Talium tamen Tu Pastor. Ʋtilis Consideratio quomodo, si fieri possit, convertas eos, ne ipsi subvertant Te.— Ad ea Te incito, quorum Te scio debitorem. Opus fac Evange­listae & Pastoris nomen implesti. Dracones, inquis, me moues pascere & Scorpiones, non Oves. Propter hoc, inquam, magis aggredere eos—Insta opportune, importune. Clama, ne cesses. Si dura fronte sunt, indura & Tu e contra tuam. Ni­hil tam durum est quod duriori non cedat. Dedi, inquit, Fron­tem tuam duriorem frontibus illorum.

What have you done like this? How many sick People (there are multitudes, I am sure, within the verge of your Jurisdiction, who are far more Soul-sick than that good Man (Psal. 41.4.) who knew his Disease, tho' these do not; how many of these) have you tried to heal? How many Le­pers (here also there are worse than those whom the Priest was formerly Judge of, Levit. 13.) have you taken care to cleanse? How many dead (in trespasses and sins) have you labor'd to raise? How many Devils and unclean Spirits (such as Fornicators, Adulterers and other Sinners are possest with) have you done your best to cast out? How close have you kept to the Tenor of that old, but not antiquated Pre­scription, [Page 16] which the best Physician that ever undertook the Cure of Souls was Author of? Matt. 10.8.

For the same Cures are now to be wrought which then were: or, if any difference there be, greater and harder. Spiritual sickness, we see by experience, is harder to be heal­ed than Corporal; Spiritual Leprosie more difficult to be cleansed than Natural: and the sinful Devil was sooner dispossest in those days than the Devil of sin can now be cast out.

He called unto him his twelve Disciples, and gave them power against unclean Spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of Sickness, and all manner of Diseases; Matth. 10.1. You tell us of your Right and Power to do the like, all the Crimes which you talk of punishing, correcting, and reforming, being Moral Sicknesses and Diseases, which as many as are troubled with are possessed by unclean Spirits; how many of these have you cast out, or attempted to dispossess? What sort of Sick­ness, what manner of Diseases have you cur'd or undertaken the cure of?

Never tell me, They will not be healed; They shall answer for that themselves, if they will not. But unless you go bet­ter about to heal them, than thus far you have done, look you to that.

If you dare try what manner of Combate it is, to fight with Beasts, you need not go as far as Ephesus, but may find enough at home to encounter:

Beasts of all sorts and sizes are indeed to be found among Men. In something or other, the whole kind of them is ex­pressed in the manners of ill People. There are Tygers, Panthers, Bears, Boars, Bulls and Goats and Wolves and Foxes and all evil Beasts to be met with among sinners.

When did your courage ever serve you to enter the Lists with any of these, or the like? And, a little to reflect on Bernard's Advice to Eugenius, how many Dragons and Scor­pions have you dared to meddle with?

Here I might tell you of an old Dragon, a red Dragon, a fiery flying Dragon, and a dry thirsty Dragon, which you ought to have waged War with no less than Michael and his Angels with that horrible Apocalyptical Dragon, (Rev. 12.7.—) but that I suspect you long to be deliver'd of a Jest; (tho' your hard labor heretofore undergon, especially with such ill success, should discourage you, methinks, from ven­turing again. When ever you do, take heed of Scripture-Jests, I beseech you: such as Pharaoh-Ale, and the like. For I little doubt but that the Devil himself hath as much to do in making and breaking such Jests, as his Instruments them­selves. But this obiter. To return:) You will tell me per­haps, that you are not of the Race of St. George, (who, they say, was a Cappadocian) to fight with Dragons. Say you so? let me then tell you (tho' I formerly thought an Eng­lishman as stout as any man) too serious a thing to be jested with; which is, That you do but delude your self with a dream of pleasing God, while your sordid fear of displeasing Men is so great and predominant, that I rather wish than hope to see you cast it off. To this I ascribe it, that your Ta­lent of punishing, correcting and reforming, &c. hath so long been hid in the earth, till of late you took it up, (what to do?) not to use, but abuse it, by boasting; not to shew, that it is not lost, wasted, or squander'd away, but to stuff out a sorry Libel.

And is this the best use which you purpose hereafter to put it to? If it be, the Church of England will have little reason to con you thanks for keeping it so long in your hands to no better purpose. Should she never call you to account take heed lest a greater than she come to reckon with you, for receiving such Right and Power as you talk of in vain.

But wherefore, I pray, should the fear of displeasing those loose livers (for whose reformation your Power was given you) so deter you from using it, that both they and you are [Page 18] the worse for not putting it forth? They, by being har­den'd in their sins, for want of restraint; You, in becoming a partaker of their guiltiness, by neglecting to restrain them. What is't you fear? The loss of their Company? Their desertion of a Churches communion which will not allow them a liberty of sinning? If that makes you timo­rous, you know who hath told you (and prov'd it too, be­yond the danger of a refutation, in his Preface to a Special Account of Wrongs, &c.) that the greatest number imagin­able of such vile people as are now spoken of, will do us more hurt than good: That the beauty, strength and safety of a Church consisteth not in a bare multitude, but in an ap­proved multitude only: That not by the number, but goodness of its Members, the well-being of a Church must be mea­sur'd: And that no protection to a Church or Nation can be derived from any such multitude, hath been there like­likewise shewed, by as sure and sad Examples as ever were heard of. We are not the safer for being many, but the more in danger for being ungodly.

The learned and judicious Author of a Treatise, called the Protestant Reconciler, (for writing and publishing which he merited a better Reward than I hear he met with) having deliver'd a Proposition which seems to favour your negli­gence, but indeed doth not; that you may not take hold of it to your hurt, I will now, before I go farther, look as far into it (without any design of contradicting so worthy an Author) as is requisite to leave you without excuse, from thence at least fetched.

The sum of the Proposition (laid down in Part II. p. 255. of the Protest. Reconc.) is this:

‘That as much the duty of Church-Officers as Excom­munication must be granted to be, it is not however a Duty necessary to be exercised at all Times, on all Offenders, in all Conjunctures, but only then when 'tis like to do more good than hurt. For all agree, that affirmative Duties do not bind ad semper— Now the harm our Church might suffer by the strict exercise of these her Censures, in this Age of general loosness, upon all Offenders, even those of [Page 19] the highest rank and quality among us, is threefold.’

‘1. That hereby they may be exasperated against the Government and Office which inflicts these Censures, and be induced to use their Power to undermine and over­throw it, and to set up her Enemies upon the ruins of it.’

‘2. They may some of them be tempted to fly off from her Government, to one of the two potent Factions now among us, and so may strengthen them and weaken us. Or,’

‘3. That being sceptically and atheistically inclin'd, they would but rally on the Execution of these Censures, and we, by executing them, should only rebuke the Scorner, which the wise Man forbids.’ If you list to see more of this mat­ter, (as doubtless you'l be glad to find any thing which is but seemingly favourable to you; and this is no more;) consult the Author himself. But I see not how this, or any thing that follows, can help you.

1. Because altho' the Reverend Author begins the Pro­position pointed at (which is his 7th) with the grand Case of Excommunication, yet you'l find, that in his 9th Propo­sition (pag. 260.) he is far from asserting, That all those whose presence with us in our Church-Assemblies doth so much offend Dissenters, deserve immediately to be secluded from Communion with us, before they have been both pri­vately and publickly admonished by the Church. For how can they be said (as he gives his reason so far in favor of them) not to hear the Church, when they have not been admonish­ed by her to reform, or threatned with her Censures if they will not?

How many of these Sinners have you admonished pub­lickly, privately, sharply, or mildly, at any time, or in any manner? I could never yet hear of any such unruly trans­gressors and disorderly walkers, as are spoken of in 1 Thess. 5.14. 2 Thess. 3.6. whom you took the pain to warn. I know too well whom you have not warned, and am sure, by what you lately told me, that you are not to seek. Your excuse, why you did it not, was so weak, that for certain I shall do you a kindness (who never did me any, but the contrary) to conceal it.

[Page 20]2. Supposing, but notFor St. Austin's Judgment is not generally subscribed to (especially for the Reasons which he grounds it on) tho' Grotius once seemed satisfied with it, That the Censures of the Church must be let alone, when the number of Offen­ders is great: (as the Author of a Special and Further Account of diverse Wrongs, &c. (you know the Man, I presume) hath sufficiently, for his purpose, shewed, before ever he saw or heard of the Protestant Reconciler, to my knowledge, who have reason to know it as well as any Man living: And if sinners of high rank and quality must alway go uncensur'd, when will the World be reform'd? or, if that is too much to hope for, the Church? Had St. Ambrose been of his opinion, so great and mighty, so prosperous and victorious an Emperor as Theo­dosius had never been forbidden to enter the Church at Millan, nor de­nyed the liberty of communicating with the Faithful there assembled, un­til his guiltiness was purged by pe­nance, and the truth of his sorrow testified by such visible signs and to­kens, as make it questionable, whether of the two (his Sin or Repentance) was greatest. Vid. Nicephor. Callist. Hist. Eccles. lib. 12. cap. 41. granting, that Church-Officers and Governors ought to forbear Church-Censures in times of general looseness, when multi­tudes deserve them, and Offenders of the highest rank and quality, as well as meaner people, are obnoxious to them: yet what is this to you who have none of those potent Enemies to terrifie you? no Right Honorable, nor it may be Right Worshipful Transgressors, to make you afraid? no such mad Earls or Noblemen as this Age hath produced, (unfit, not only for Church-Commu­nion, but Human Society) to contend with; but here and there perhaps, a debauch'd Country-Squire, (I wish there were no need to say, Now and then a Justice of the Peace but little or no­thing better) an ungodly rich Rustick, a poor but prophane Plebeian may need a Cast of your Office: yet your kindness to them and your self too is so little, that you will not shew it. You need not question their being exasperated a­gainst your Jurisdiction, or induc'd to use their power to undermine and over­throw it, that enemies may be set up on the ruines of it; They are neither so many nor mighty. And why should you trouble your self with a vain fear of tempting them to fly off from the Government of a Church, which they can­not depart from, but by running out of smoak into fire? For where will they find easier terms and conditions of commu­nion than here? If they purpose to live and die Members of any Church at all, what can be desir'd which is not here to be met with, besides the due dispensation of Discipline, which is not the thing they seek? If it is, you wrong them in withholding it. If they mind to go farther for it, they will find themselves deceived in undergoing more arbitrary and unequal Censures than are here to be feared, when matters are [Page 21] fairly carried, and not left to the conduct of such as they belong not to: which, if you and others, more ambitious of having than using Jurisdiction aright, well minded your bu­siness, would never be done. And what if some, that are sceptically and atheistically inclin'd, should rally on the Execution of Censures which their sins have made them justly subject to? They would not, I hope, make an Army as big and for­midable as that which lately besieged Vienna. It is more than I know whether more than one to a hundred of better people can be found within your limits. Therefore still I must ask you, what is it which you fear? Lest nothing but a scorner's hatred by reproving him, (contrary to the wise King's counsel, Prov. 9.8.) should be gained? You are certainly besides the Text, if you take it to be spoken of more than private increpation. For I cannot understand what reason you have or can have to think, that St. Paul's Rule, (Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear, 1 Tim. 5.20.) is contrary to King Solomon's: And I know not where to find sinners (as great plenty of them as there is) more firmly seated in the chair of scorners, than those whom Christ and his Proto-Martyr rebuked with words as sharp as swords, Matth. 23.33. Acts 7.51.

Thence I must tell you again, (and it will not perhaps be the last time) that you vainly tell me in your Libel, of your being a Man of Jurisdiction, having right and power to correct, &c. If you have, Sir, it is not like Faith in some cases, (Rom. 14.22.) to be had to your self. Publick power must be publickly shewed, that the Publick may be the bet­ter for it. Otherwise it is nothing worth. And what good Magistrate, think you, forbears to rebuke sinners because they are scorners? or for fear of their hatred?

If you say, that you must not give that which is holy to dogs, nor cast your pearls (of reprehension) before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rent you, (Mat. 7.6.) How can you tell, that the sinners now spoken of, are dogs and swine? Did they ever bite you for offering them any of those holy things which they rather desired you should keep to your self? or as much as bark at your reproofs, like those whom the Philippians were warned to beware of? Phil. 3.2. And when were your Pearls trampled under the feet of [Page 22] these swine (if you'l take them to be such on trust, before you have tryed what manner of creatures they are) to di­scourage you from casting any more before them? How much of your Counsel hath been despised? How many of your Reproofs set at nought? Prov. 1.25. What pain have you ta­ken to no purpose, that you think it but lost labor, to be far­ther concern'd about them?

To such as are desperately sick, to what end should Phy­sic be given? But who taught you to conclude, the Condition of these People to be irrecoverable, their Cure impossible, and their Case desperate, without trying whether any good could be done them or not?

You are probably more taken than is fit with those pas­sages of St. Austin, (if you are not a stranger to them, as I was not before I saw them in the Protestant Reconciler) in in which he asserts, That a Censure inflicted of, or by many (having respect, I suppose to 2 Cor. 2.6.) cannot be salutary or healing, unless the sinner who undergoes it is destitute of many partners (or brethren in iniquity.) But when the most are sick of the same disease, those few good people who are whole (having no need of a Physician) can betake them­selves to no other Remedy than Sighs and Sorrow, (if that will do them any good.) And indeed, as he goes on, The conta­gion of sin having spread it self among a multitude of people, the severe pity of divine discipline is needful (to reform and heal them) but to separate from them is vain and pernicious, impious, and sacrilegious; being that which will more disturb the good who are weak, than amend the bad who are head-strong. Vid. Aug. con. Parmen. Epist. lib. 3.

Which to me seems little better than lying still in a Ditch and crying God help! For when are Physicians busiest in applying Remedies, but when they have most Patients who need them? And if Chirurgions will be idle in a Ho­spital of maim'd and wounded Soldiers, where will they be­stir themselves?

But suppose St. Austin's Doctrin in the Case before us to be Orthodox: Here is no such Socia multitudo, or compa­ny of Consorts, as he speaks of, to hinder proceedings; no such contagio peccandi, multitudinem invadens, or spreading Contagion, as he points at, to render your Discipline useless, [Page 23] (as before was noted) the scandalous in comparison of the rest being few; and they too, no more to be feared for their power than number. Wherefore then will you leave them to the severe mercy of Divine discipline, as if you expected to have them reformed, as St. Paul was converted, by a Mi­racle, but to save your self labour, and because you are clearly overcome and overgrown with a sordid sort of fear, which becomes not a Church-warden, much less an Arch­deacon?

You have seen a little Dog, which might neerly be put in a Glove, scare a whole flock of Sheep, who running them­selves almost out of breath before they stop, at last turn a­gain, gazing and wondring what Monster it should be.

It is possible, that a single sinner here or there may scare a whole flock of Church-wardens: But who can think it tole­rable, that an Archdeacon should be as timorous? Should one or other make you run from your Duty as fast as the Sheep run away from their Pasture, when many of them to­gether can do you no more hurt than the Curr did the Sheep? You may think it enough to reform your self, let what will become of those who will not be reform'd, (Lev. 26.23.) but hate it. (Psal. 50.17.)

Is it so? This will scarce serve a private Christian's turn, unless Leviticus 19.17. hath been commonly misapplied. If that will not do, Rom. 15.14. Ephes. 5.11. Coloss. 3.16. Heb. 3.13. Hebr. 10.24, 25. will abundantly prove, that Exhortation, Admonition, and Reprehension, are common Du­ties which Christians must mutually discharge for each others benefit, as well in private as publick Stations, the Apostle putting no distinction or exception to favor the cowardly fear of any that desire to be exempted from medling with that (mostly) ungrateful Office. None but Cain, who was of that wicked one, (1 John 3.12.) whom our Savior calls a Lyer and a Murtherer from the beginning, (John 8.44.) would have dared to ask the Almighty such an odd question as that, (Gen. 4.9.) Am I my Brother's keeper? The Law of Nature, (which requires, that the stronger should defend the weaker, and the elder take care of the younger,) made him Guardian to his Brother. They are not therefore governed by the good Spirit of God, but possessed with that evil Spirit [Page 24] which moved that Proto-Murtherer to kill his Brother, who little regard what becomes of others, while they themselves, as they hope (but in vain in such a case) are safe. If an Enemies Ox or Ass, going astray, must be reduced or brought back to the Owner, or being otherwise in danger, must be helped, (Exod. 23.4, 5.) how much more a Friend's or Bro­ther's? much more his own Body, much more his Soul, which is more worth than a World, as he who best knows the worth of Souls, by the Price which he paid for their Redemption, hath told us, Matth. 16.26. What but this gave Rabanus an occasion of observing, (on Matth. 18.) that it is not a less offence not to tell an offending brother of a fault, than not to for­give him when he asketh forgiveness. For he that saith, If thy brother trespass against thee and repent, forgive him, says like­wise, If he trespass, rebuke him, (Luke 17.4.) or accord­ing to Saint Matthew, (chap. 18.15.) Go and tell him of his fault.

So it will not serve a private Christian's turn, to look to himself only. But for a Man of Jurisdiction, who magni­fies his Office at such a rate as you do in your Libel, (that a stranger to the story of Archdeacons would begin to su­spect their Office to be, if not a Jure-divino-Dignity, yet at least an Apostolical Institution; whereas in truth their thoughts never soared higher than Deacons, whom, without the concurrence or allowance of a Country-Justice, they or­dained to be Over-seers of the Poor, Acts 6.1,—6. for such a Man I say) to be persuaded, that in point of reforma­tion, he needs not look beyond himself, is so monstrous and absurd, so intolerable and abominable an Opinion, that your quondam Judgment of Lay-Elders comes not near it for strangeness or wickedness. For those new Church-Officers that in some places were, in others would or should have been, could you have been heard, (the Churches you then thought must be elder'd before the Lord's Supper could be celebrated in due form and manner) might have passed well enough, for ought I know, if they had not been obtru­ded and imposed as a necessary, Scriptural and Apostolical sort of People; at which rate, if you or any other should extol Archdeacons, I would not less oppose the one than the other sort of Pretenders.

But this vain Persuasion, or execrable Presumption rather, (viz. That Self-reformation is sufficient for a Man of your Order and Power) is so pernicious, and to all good Manners so ruinous, that it needs a better Master of words than I am, to express it.

If you say, that you are not of this mind, Wherefore is it, that you act and carry your self (or rather sit still and do no­thing) as if you thought so? If not to do good, is to do hurt, and not to save, is to destroy, (in some cases) as Beza ar­gues from Mark 3.4.Nota censeri à Christo homi­cidam eum cu­jus negligentia periit qui ser­vari potuit. Bez. ad loc. in Synops. Cri­tic. If silence gives consent, as God him­self allows: (vid. Lev. 5.1.) If, according to St. Ambrose, Men shall give account for idle silence, as well as for idle words: (Officior. lib. 1. cap. 3.) If, as Bernard somewhere hath it, Similis poena manet facientes & consentientes; He that doth no more than consent to sin by connivance, shall as surely, if not as severely suffer as he that commits it: If a man may be pas­sively as well as actively wicked, as was said of Claudius the Emperor, Non faciendo malus, sed patiendo fuit: If I cannot tell who, truly said, Qui non corripit corrumpit, That he cor­rupts who corrects not: If Tully hath righfully told us, that no temptation to sin is more effectual than the hope of esca­ping unpunisht: (Quis enim ignorat maximam illecebram esse peccandi impunitatis spem? Cicer. pro Milone.) And if Se­neca was not out in saying, Qui non prohibet peccare, cum potest, jubet, that he commands the commission of sin, who forbids it not (when he can if he will:) You say you have power, but where is your will?) If this be so, Why will you make other mens sins your own, as if you had not enough of another nature to be sorry for? Why will you burthen your self with their faults, while your own are heavy enough? And why will you need to be forgiven your other-mens-sins, (ac­cording to the plain-dealing Bishop of Worcester's new form of Praying or way of Petitioning, which he judged needful for such as are now spoken of) as if you could find no other work for repentance? For assure your self, that what ever you palliate or wink at, (especially having right and power to punish it) is truly, tho' not totally your own. You shall answer for the base Child, tho' you are not the lawful Father, but helper of it into the World only. Could you truly say what (the Savior of the World only excepted) the justest [Page 26] Man that ever was, or the best that is never could or can say truly, (Prov. 20.9. and Eccles. 7.20.) that is, that you have not sinned; or affirm, without deceiving your self, that you have no sin of any other sort to be remitted? what would it profit, tho' you suffer not a stripe for any other fault more immediately and intirely your own, while the punishment of your other-mens-sins must be born? Ille cui Verbi [mul­to magis cui Virgae] dispensatio commissa est, etiamsi sancte vi­vat, & tamen perdite viventes arguere aut erubescit aut metuit, cum omnibus qui eo tacente pereunt, perit: Et quid ei proderit non puniri suo, qui puniendus est alieno peccato? Prosp. Aquit. de Vita Contempl.

I know where to find you, Sir! You will tell me, that the faults which I speak of, were never presented by any of the Church-wardens in whose Parishes they have been and still are committed. But, I pray, talk no more of that; for I know that you know them, by what you lately told me, in excuse of your negligence; which indeed was so vain, that I should do you no small kindness (as hath once already been inti­mated) to conceal it: but you know what you deserve for your late prevarication (which must elsewhere be spoken of) which calls upon me to tell you, that what you told me (to excuse your negligence in the best manner you could) was so pitiful a shift, that a Child it self, to escape a whip­ping, seldom makes use of a weaker. That you had not power to punish Offences which by a late Act of Grace were pardon'd, was your Plea, and a pretty one, was it not? What! had you no power in more than twenty years be­fore? Hath any body taken it from you since, that the same sins repeated over and over, should escape as scot-free as be­fore? or what's the matter? Hereafter be advised to Rule with more diligence, (according to the Rule set before you, Rom. 12.8.) that you may not need such sorry shifts and evasions. An excuseless inexcusable Excuse, if I should call it, all would be little enough to set forth the weakness of that which (the matter being capable of no better, that is, of none at all) you were not asham'd to use. And if any of your Under-Officers, (Church-wardens and Side-men) whom you press so hard to get sworn, (more for love of Mony than for any better end or greater good that comes [Page 27] of it, as it seems to many; if any of these) having heard the voice of swearing (Levit. 5.1.) or after they are sworn (as ancient Interpreters, Jews, not here to be suspected, and others have understood it; tho' some, besides Junius, with no sufficient reason that I can find, differ from them. If any of these, I say, being sworn) will not utter what they have seen or known, or heard of (as your Articles of Inquiry express it) but for fear or favor, love or hatred (of being thought too busie in their places) will hold their peace when they ought to testifie the Truth to a Judge who re­quires them by Oath to tell it; and so by sinful silence be­come guilty of another's fault which they conceal, [and subject to the punishment of it too, according to the sense of bearing his Iniquity, Levit. 5.1. that is, the Iniquity of the Soul that hath sinned, whose transgression should have been detected, but was not:] If they will not, when cursing or Adjuration hath been heard (having been adjur'd or put to their Oaths) bewray what they know, but be partners with sinners, by covering their Crimes and hiding their Faults, in contempt of that parallel Place, Prov. 29.24. why will you with your Right and Power, come in for a part, by per­mitting them to go unpunisht? Know you not how great a Lord will not hold them guiltless who take his Name in vain? And will you presume to do it? You that have helped us to the Laws of England in a Nut-shell, are you to seek that whoso concealeth Treason is a Traitor? Is not he then, by parity of reason, who winks at other Men's sins, a Sinner of the same Rank and Order? Whether it be better or worse to know that a Man is perjur'd and yet let him alone, (especially when Right and Power to make him an Example, is not wan­ting,) or to see a Thief and consent with him, besides partak­ing with Adulterers, (Psal. 50.18.) is a question which with­out the help of an Oedipus may be answer'd, and needs not be reserved till the coming of Elias to be resolv'd. If you know the right answer, apply it to the business in hand, and then judge how diligent a Ruler, and how blessed a Refor­mer you have been.

I am very well satisfied that I need not much trouble my self (if at all) to find out the true Cause of your lothness to imploy your Right and Power to better purpose than hi­therto [Page 28] you have done; (insomuch that Saint George's Sword which is painted on the Table of a Sign-post, or St. Paul's on a Church Wall or Window, doth as much Execution as your Archidiaconal Sword or Dagger (Rod or Staff, Club or Cudgel, or what shall I call it?) ever did, except, as hath been noted, to draw the blood, or baste the sides of some feeble, armless, or for ought I know, much more harm­less Dissenters from the Church of England than you your self have been. But 'tis no labor I say to find out the true Cause of your lothness, &c.) That I question not is what a very good man (who sometimes lived in or near the place where you formerly bestirr'd your self to elder the Churches) on his Death-bed complained of as the greatest burthen which oppressed his Conscience; that is, his shameful back­wardness, bashfulness, and dastardliness to meddle with Sin out of the Pulpit. Vid. The Relation of Mr. Samuel Hieron's death annex­ed to the first Volume of his Works. For there he had shewn himself free enough in reproving, &c. Yet he was not a Man of Jurisdiction. Such a one if he had been, it would questionless have heighten'd his Courage, or made his Cowardise a greater burthen to him than it was. Consider in due time what your own in such different Circumstances, may hereafter prove.

This to me and others being visible enough to be read running, the most painful part of my Task is to hit the pre­tences of your negligence with so fatal a blow as may disable them from deceiving you any longer. That this may be done, I must strike at the root of that fond pretence, which however it hath hitherto been hackt and hew'd, chopt and cut, must have many more and heavier strokes laid on, before I leave it.

You are loth to disturb the Church's Peace, by putting as many Sinners to penance as may need and deserve it, lest more hurt than good should be done. Let me therefore farther ask you (repeating no more than is needful to bring me to new matter,) Have you try'd what good a gentler course and milder method (which I have not forgotten to point at in what is abovesaid) would do? If this will not help, know that the Prince of Peace came not to send (much less to settle) such a Peace on Earth, as you dream of. It was not a wicked worldly wife Peace which he labored to make, but came to break. For what kind of War, what sort of death is not [Page 29] better than such a Peace? It was not to keep the World, much less his Church, quiet on any terms whatsoever (nor on any at all which are sinful and unlawful) that he came; but to settle and establish Peace and Love with Faith (Ephes. 6.23.) and Truth (Zech. 8.9.) and to make us Followers of Peace and Holiness (Heb. 12.14.Ne imperarinobis cogite­mus pacem quamlibet, etiam cum dispendio veritatis & con­scientiae, aut cum cujuspiam in­juria, contra Rom. 12.18. vol, quia pax cum impiis ple­rumque coli non potest, nisi vi­tiis ipsoruus assentiamur, se­cundum Juniam, Jacob. Ca­pell. & Gomar. ad loc. in Sy­nops. Gritic.) as well as Friends of Righteousness and Peace, which the Scripture likewise joyns together (Ps. 85.10.) that none may presume to put them asunder. For let Peace be a Jewel of as great worth as it will, Faith and Truth, Righteous­ness and Holiness are, doubtless, Pearls of much greater Price. The Martyrs and Confessors of all Ages would not otherwise have paid as dear as they did for their preservation: Nor had any commendation been given them for being tortured not accepting deliverance (Heb. 11.35.) when Peace was offer'd them to the prejudice of Truth, &c. but on those Terms they would not have it, and are there­fore deservedly extold.

It was not a peace which makes God our Enemy (as the Friendship of the World is wont to do; James 4.4.) that he purposed to introduce, nor such as the World gives (a false, feigned, self-ended, pernicious peace) which generally makes People worse, and not better than without it they would be (for when is God more fogotten or forsaken, and when doth iniquity more abound, than when worldly peace is most firm and flourishing?) that he promised to bestow, and which was actually given and left for a Legacy to his Disci­ples, in some of his last words, John 14.17. Internal peace which is Armour of proof against a world of Troubles and Adversities, Tribulations and Persecutions for Righteousness sake; not external, to save us the labor of undergoing such Troubles as ever have been and ever will be incident to the Righteous (Psal. 34.19.) while the World lieth in Wickedness, is the peace that he bequeathed in that rich and inestimable Legacy. This he assured them of; This they were never destitute of: The other he never promised, but predicted the contrary (John 16.33.) that they might not expect it. [Page 30] Why then should you fear of disturbing such a peace as the Author of peace and lover of Concord never did nor ever will approve? A Peace which is little if any thing better than the confederacy of Gebal, Ammon and Amalek (Psal. 83.7.) with a multitude of other Enemies, against the People of God in King David's days. A Peace like Herod's and Pilate's Friendship; too near of kin to the Peace of Thieves and Rob­bers, which must not be consented to, (Prov. 1.10.) as well as too true and lively a picture of the Concord which Christ and his Apostles found among the Scribes and Pharises with the Saddu­ces; who as much as they differ'd in other matters, concurr'd as unanimously in crucifying the Lord of Glory and perse­cuting his Church, as their Father the Devil could desire.

If you fear the disturbance of such peace as this, the pru­dent Apostle who set the Council at variance (Acts 23.6.) hath taught you, by so doing, that 'tis better broken than kept. It was not to create, but annihilate such peace as this that the God of Peace sent his Son from Heaven, and he his Apostles into the World. Who indeed went abroad preach­ing peace by Jesus Christ, (Acts 10.36.) as St. John the Baptist his forerunner was sent to guide the Feet of his Auditors into the way of peace, (Luke 1.79.) but that, as hath been pro­ved, was another sort of peace than what you fondly affect. Yours (which is not his, but the World's) he came not to plant but pluck up; not to preserve but destroy, as judging a Sword (Matt. 10.34.) and division (Luke 12.51.) to be much more desirable. He foresaw what Quarrels and Contentions would be raised by the Gospel of Peace it self, faithfully preached, (quia mundus ingratus mavult bella quam Evangelium. Aret. ad Apoc. 6.5.) the wicked World at that time, as well as now and ever since, rather choosing to con­tinue in sin whatever Stirs and Wars it caused, than desiring such Peace as he himself loves and approves, which is only such as hath briefly been described, but deserves to be much more treated of, would the place and occasion give leave: He knew (what St. Jerom. on Matt. 10.34. hath noted) that as soon as the Word of Faith, which teacheth how true Peace may be attain'd, was published, the whole World would be divided; that in every House there would be cre­dentes [Page 31] & infideles, Believers and Infidels, and that thence it would come to pass that a Man should be set at variance against his Father, the Daughter against her Mother, and the Daughter-in-Law against her Mother-in-Law, Matt. 10.34. and, accor­ding to St. Luke's Relation, that five in one House should be divided; three against two, and two against three, Chap. 12.52. yet he would not however hide his Gospel from the World, because the faithful hearers of it were, directly and designed­ly, the better, whatever hurt was by accident occasioned a­mong Unbelievers. For what if some were harden'd? the rest who hearkened to the voice of his Messengers that came preaching peace by Jesus Christ, were no losers. The damage which the one receiv'd, was countervail'd at least, if not out­weigh'd by the others advantage. If a sinful, temporal, transi­tory Peace was disturb'd, destroy'd and lost, the peace of God, which passeth all understanding was gained. And it seems not meet that the Prince of Peace himself, or the Gospel of Peace, (which at first he preached with his own Mouth, and after­ward by his Messengers sent abroad into all the World) should be complain'd of as a sower of discord, or disturber of peace, any more than the fruit of the Vine can be blamed, because drunkenness is so common; or than Beauty can be condemned, because chambering and wantonness are no ra­rities. Who in his right wits would therefore say, let there be no Wine or Women, and not rather, let there be no sinful Lusts and Affections? Otherwise he may say as well, let there be no Sun, Moon, or Stars, because divers Nations have worshipt them, and some do still. As little reason there is to say, let the Prince of Peace call home his Ambassadors, and send abroad no more Heraulds to publish the Gospel of Peace; let them all keep silence and treat no more with the People of the World about the grand concerns of it, since they frequently make the better side the worse, and instead of creating peace where it was not, destroy that little of it which they find. Let it rather be said, let none love the peace of the World more than the Peace of God; and then if all be not well, here below, it will yet be much better than otherwise; and the Gospel of Christ will at last be confessed to be what we find it called, Rom. 10.15. the Gospel of Peace.

If you list to know twenty things more of this matter than here there is time or room to tell you, be pleas'd to consult Chrysostom, and others on that famous passage of St. Matthew's Evangelical History, chap. 10.34; especially that golden-mouth'd-man, whose Praises are higher than my humble phrase and shallow invention can reach. To him I suspect you to be little more than as great a Stranger as I was when first I began to look upon him; (for you name him, I find in your Preface to the Grand Case, about a Fish that hath but one Back-bone, and cannot turn except it turn all at once, (if the Crocodile is a Fish, that perhaps is the Crea­ture that he speaks of,) but you tell us not where he hath said it;) You must needs have learned somewhat more of his Zeal and fortitude than I find you to be owner of, had you been as familiar with him as a man of your age and place in the Church of England, one would think should have been. From him and others (take all the help you can in so grand a Case; as much bigger than what you have written of, as an Elephant is bigger than a Mouse,) you may learn that the Peace which Christ came to make and promote, is not such a Peace as the World which lieth in wickedness rejoy­ceth in and seeks after; not a terrene Tranquility which gives liberty of buying, selling and getting gain; or administers opportunity of eating, drinking, and being merry, while the Follies and Vanities of the World are as freely injoy'd, as if nothing better were needful to be minded: But a Peace which the World neither doth nor can give, is that which he de­signed to advance. And will you, as if the Peace of the World were the Peace of Christ and his Church, neglect such a Peace as the World cannot give, for that which he will not give, but came to destroy?

The Apostles themselves were strongly perswaded for a while, that their Master should reign at the rate of an earthly Monarch, and be able by external Power to force his Ene­mies to a peaceable compliance with him. That they them­selves who had faithfully adhered to him in his low Estate should enjoy no less than the Prosperity of Princes under him, was their hope, or presumption rather. To remove so great a mistake he said, Think not that I am come to send peace on Earth: I came not to send Peace but a Sword.

Which to me (whatever it doth to you and others who live at ease) sounds no less than thus: You are greatly mi­staken to think, as you do, that the End of my coming is to settle you in a firm possession of temporal Peace and Prospe­rity. For what hope of this can you have when the Rage of Men and Devils will be stirred up against you, as already it is against me, for nothing else but preaching the Gospel of Peace to the World? Let no such vain thought as this lodge with­in you, but prepare your selves for Persecution, Tribula­tion, Bonds, Imprisonment and the Sword it self, rather than dream of such a Peace.

That they might not be troubled when such things hap­pened, he foretold them before they came to pass; and as Chrysostom notes, he said not War but a Sword, that the sharpness of his words might the better excite their Attenti­on, and that none might say he prophesied to them smooth things only, but concealed what was rough and troublesome, for fear of losing their Company.

Are you better than the Apostles, that you look to be bet­ter treated? Or for what other reason should you hope to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven on other terms than St. Paul and Barnabas spake of, (Acts 14.22.) that is, through much Tribulation?

Call him Simeon or Le­vi, which you will, so you take and divide the Names of these two Brethren in ini­quity, between you. I know by experience that instru­ments of cruelty are in both your habitations; and have found your anger as cruel and your wrath as fierce as theirs, (Genes. 49.5, 7.) as far as you durst discover it. Your treachery too hath been little less, as before we part must be shewed.One of your Brethren discoursing (in an Auditory which I cannot yet hear he was ever thanked for intruding himself into, or for being obtruded upon it) about the Reward of the Righteous (Psal. 58. ult.) in the World that now is as well as in the next; when he came to the common Objection about the Righteous Man's Troubles and Adversities which before and since the coming of Christ have been undergon; told the People (I say not, in terminis, but in sense) that Righteousness indeed was persecuted in the Days of the Apostles, and af­terward for some Ages: but that since those days and ages the case hath been so alter'd, that the Prophet's proposition, Verily there is a Reward for the Righteous, may truly be ex­tended to their prosperous condition in this present Life.

He thought, belike, that there's no Persecution but that [Page 34] of the hand; no Tribulation without Fire and Faggot, or another such fiery trial as St. Peter speaks of: But to me it is strange, if in Europe he could find no righteous People per­secuted, that he should not know how they fare in Asia and other parts of the World; and I wonder, altho' it were granted that no such trial as that of a general persecution by the hands of professed Enemies to Christ and his Cause could then be found in any part of the Catholick Church, how he came to be ignorant of that never to be avoided, tho' more special persecution which the seriously religious suffer under such as are but seemingly so (who are commonly the greater part and stronger side.) For let any one strive to be righ­teous indeed, and not in shew only; let him take more care to please God than his Neighbors, Familiars, and natural Re­lations; let his Conscience be tenderer, his conversation more circumspect, his care to keep a Conscience void of offence greater; let him scruple what they swallow, and boggle at what they make light of; let his life be unlike other mens, and his ways of another fashion, tho' he differs in nothing from them but what is matter of duty; let him rather choose to reprove the unfruitful works of darkness than have fellowship with them, and carry himself as one that thinks it better to be saved with few than damned in much company: If such a one looks not like a wonder, or monster, to many (Psal. 71.7.) if he is not a reproach among his Neighbors as well as Enemies, and a fear to his acquaintance; (Psal. 31.11.) if he is not despised, derided and hated; if they speak not mischievous things, and imagine deceits against him all the day long; (Psal. 38.12.) if they count him not as the filth of the World, and the off-scouring of all things; (1 Cor. 4.13.) if they call him not hypocrite and worse, if worse can be; if they say not, he is mad What won­der is it that a shameless Surrogate, better known than trusted, should abuse me with the same language, as often he hath done? The Disciple is not above his Master — Matt. 10.24. Yet to stop his mouth, for the future, let him learn from St. Jerom ad Nepotian. de vit. Cleric. how Sophocles was absolved by his Judges from the charge of madness, which his own Children accused him of, Cum propter nimiam senectutem & rei familiaris negligentiam a filiis accusaretur a­mentiae, Oedipi fabulam quam, nuper scripserat, recitavit Judicibus, & tantum sapientiae in aetate jam facta specimen dedit, ut severitatem Tribunalium in Theatri favorem verteret. VVhich to tell him somewhat more of than what has already been said, in an Account that he knows of, (pag. 118.) let him write for himself an Answer to what I have written against him, and then the VVorld will see who the Mad-man is. and beside himself; (John 10.20. Mark 3.2.) [Page 35] if they persecute him not with their Tongues and Hands as far as they can or dare, I am utterly a Stranger to the course of the World, and as ignorant as a Child; how the Man born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, Galat. 4.29. So it was then, said the Apostle of A­braham's days; so it is now, as he farther spake of his own time; so it is still may truly be said (being no more than what experience daily teacheth,) of our own days: and so, I fear, it will be while the World stands. It is likelier, for ought I perceive, to grow worse than better. And what­ever recompence Christ hath promised to such as have lost or left Houses, or Brethren or Sisters, or Father or Mother, or Wife or Children, or Lands, for his sake and the Gospel's, it is not exempted from, but joyned with Persecutions, (Mark 10.29. Ne faelicitatem temporariam nobis promissam imaginemur, Solatia promittuntur, non deliciae. Grotius ad loc.) that we may not dream of such temporal felicity as this dignified D— talked of. And this I should wonder how he came to be ig­norant of, but that a second Benefice coming in his way, (who before had enough, and too much for a far more de­serving man,) the love of mony so blinded his Eyes that he could not see what to say, nor how to speak better to the purpose.

Are you Sir of his mind? If you are, I must send both your Doctorships to school to a Doctor indeed, who seri­ously deprecates (take his own words) ‘such bewitching thoughts as are apt to surprise Souls much addicted to their ease, and make them dream that the first professors of Christianity were so long to wrestle with Flesh and Blood, and indure a War so lingring and terrible with Principa­lities and Powers, that we their Successors might injoy such Peace and Ease as their Persecutors did; or be able to hold such a hard hand over Christ's Enemies as these held over his Friends: As if the former contention had only been for earthly Sovereignty secure from danger, or im­munity from vexation. Christ came not to send such a Peace into the World; but rather to continue the War then kindled to the World's End. And every faithful Soul must in one kind of service or other make account to abide her fiery Trial, and approve her self a true consort [Page 36] to the Bridegroom her head in the Afflictions he sustained here on Earth, e'er her nuptial Triumphs be celebrated in Heaven. The exil'd Poet's words to his trusty Wife (commutatis commatandis) may be a fit Poesie for the Spou­se's Wedding-Ring:’

Which he thus translates:

If you are not yet satisfied how vain the fear of disturbing the Church's Peace (by opposing all manner of sin and wicked­ness) is, read farther on in the same Author, (it may, probably, provoke you to get acquaintance with the rest of his Works, as I hoped e'er now to have done, but that you and some others prevented it; you and they, I say, who should rather have helped than hindred a lover of the best learning;) and then tell me how his Doctrin (which is too clear and evident, too sound and solid to be spoken against; and is certainly according to godliness, tho' none of the likeliest to be gainful,) and your practice (which is much too sordid, servile and shameful, too cowardly and fearful to be con­tinued,) agree with each other.

Before I take leave of this subject (which can never be too much inculcated, there is daily such need of it; and some besides your self, who ought to be Teachers of others having [Page 37] need to be taught it themselves,) I will add but this one thing more: Which, if nothing else had been or could have been said, would have served to awaken any one but you, or ano­ther such whom the love of worldly Peace and Prosperity hath lull'd so fast asleep, that if greater noise is not made and stir kept, than is common, you are never like, for ought I perceive, to come to your selves.

That which remains to be added is this: That the Prince of Peace being the sole Judge and Arbiter of Peace, at whose will and pleasure alone it stands to give or take it away, (Pacis imponere morem, as the Prince of Latin Poets reckons, is a princely Prerogative;) you must not presume to seek, keep, or make peace without his approbation, or on any terms whatsoever which he allows not. For what peace is worth the having, which he denies to be had?

If the famous Athanasius with the rest of the Orthodox, in his days, or after them, would have dared to deny the Lord that bought them, the Arians would have granted them peace: But they would not accept it on such a condition, nor yeild their adversaries as much as one Iota (in the word [...]) to obtain it. Let Mahomet be held a Prophet, neither Turks nor Moors will trouble us. Let us look for another Christ, and the Jews will be our friends. Let the Church which pretends to be the Mother of us all (as unlike as she is to Jeru­salem which is above,) be submitted to, and she will not mo­lest us. Let the Dreams and Dotages of Hereticks be im­braced for Doctrins, and they will not disquiet us. Let us do and say like the rest of our Neighbors, they will find no fault with us. Let ungodly People, who conform to Rites and Ceremonies of Man's Institution, but make light of unaltera­ble Rules and Duties of Religion, which clearly carry a Divine stamp and impression upon them, have their way, we may still be sure of having their company (and communion in Church-Offices) such as 'tis: On this condition they will never forsake our Assemblies for any other fellowship whatso­ever.

But whatever Peace is offer'd which the Prince of Peace a­grees not to, is rather to be contemned than concluded, and as oft as you make it without his leave, it is better broken than kept, being bought at too dear a rate.

If it be possible, and as much as lieth in you, saith, his holy Apostle (Rom. 12.18.) live peaceably with all men. But it lies not alway nor altogether in us: And it is not possible many times (seldom indeed is it) to attain or maintain it by any but sinful means, which must never be chosen or sub­mitted to, if we would not do evil that good may come. Id possumus quod jure possumus. That in this case, as in others of a like nature, is possible which is lawful, and that only. If we cannot have Peace with Truth and Holiness, Peace and Pu­rity (James 3.17.) Grace and Peace in conjunction; (Rom. 1.7.) Peace within as well as without; Peace with God and Man together, it is better to have those Christian and Christ-like qualities without Peace, than Peace without them. For it is not the Peace of God or of Christ, but of the World, which excludes them.

The Church of Ephesus indeed, is commended for her pati­ence; (Revel. 2.2.) but her suffering Sinners to go uncen­sur'd and unreprov'd for love of ease and quietness, is no part of the Grace which Christ commends her for, but the contrary. Her patience in suffering the Reproaches, and induring the Contradictions of evil Doers whom she could not bear, is the thing that he praiseth her for. This patience if you had, you would reckon the Reproach of Christ to be grea­ter Riches than the Treasures of Egypt (Heb. 11.26.) how much more than those of your Archdeaconry, &c. which would not however be diminisht, unless you take or permit your Officers to take what is not due, for over-looking the faults which you boast of having Right and Power to punish;) and not be so loth to bear it. Heb. 13.13.

What shall I more say? Or what can you say more (which hath not hitherto been weighed in the ballance and found too light,) to justifie the Reception of such Right and Power, as you talk of, to no better purpose than hitherto you have had it?

Is the Noble Army of Martyrs already so great that it needs not be increased? Never fear; The King of Glory hath Crowns enough for ten thousand times as many more: And it is but folly to think of being saved on much easier, if at all more easie terms now than formerly.

The Danger of Martyrdom, if St. Chrysostom Tom. 4. Hom. 25. ad Popul. Bern. Brix. inter­prete. may be cre­dited, is alway present to good People: ‘And that any Age since Christian Religion was first propagated hath wanted store of Martyrs, is more to be attributed to Negligence, Ignorance and Hypocrisie, or want of Courage in Christ's Embassadors, or appointed Pastors, than to the sincerity, mildness or fidelity of the flock; especially of the Bell-weathers or Ring-leaders. Or if Satan had not abated the Edge of primitive Zeal and Resolution, by that dishono­rable Peace concluded between Christianity and Gentilism, after the setling of Goths and Vandals in these parts of Christendom; had he not utterly benumb'd Mankind by locking up their spiritual Senses in a Midnight Darkness, and fettering their Souls in superstition since the time that he himself was let loose: Rome Christian had seen more Martyrs (even of those who did not much dissent from her in most Opinions held within six hundred Years after Christ,) in one year, than Rome heathen had known in ten. Even in Churches best reform'd it would be much easier, I think to find store of just matter for Martyrdom, than of Men fit to make Martyrs. And he that hath lived any long time in these quiet Mansions and SeatsThose which belong to Oxford University are the Man­sions, &c. which he means. hath great cause either to magnifie the tender Mercies of his gracious God, or suspect himself for an Hypocrite, if he have not suffered some Degree of Martyrdom.’

Thus that Eminent Dr. lately prais'd, hath in terminis, deliver'd his Thoughts of the Case under consideration, §. 2. Chap. 4. p. 185, 186, of justifying Faith. To which I will add the Judgment of another, no less pious, considering and considerable Author: A Man no less famous for profun­dity of Judgment than sharpness of Wit; and so far from hiding his Talent, (tho' but few of his Works are extant) that his Chamber was a Church and his Chair a Pulpit, as one that well knew him hath told the World, in a short account of his Life.

What said this great and good Man? Take his own words, (in his Sermon of St. Peter's Fall, &c. bound up with some other Discourses, and called his Golden Remains: Pag. 119, 120.) ‘We usually distinguish the Times of the Church, into Times of Peace and Times of Persecution: [Page 40] The truth is, to a true Christian Man the Times are alway the same. Habet etiam pax suos Martyres, saith one. There is a Martyrdom even in time of peace. For the practice of a Christian Man in the calmest times, in readiness and re­solution, must nothing differ from times of rage and fire. —Mark, I beseech you, what I say. I will not affirm; I will only leave it to your Christian discretion. A tem­porary Faith—a Faith that fails as soon as it feels the heat of Persecution, can save no Man. May we not with some reason think that the Faith of many a one who in time of peace seems to us, yea and to himself too peradventure to die possest of it, is yet notwithstanding no better than a temporary Faith, and therefore comes not so far as to save him that hath it? —If God, to try who are his, should bring on us those Temptations which would make a Man of temporary Faith to shrink, think we that all those who in these times of peace have born the Name of Christ to their Graves, would have born it to the Rack, the Sword, the Fire? Indeed to Man, who knows not the thoughts of his Friend, some Trials are sometimes very necessary: But he that knew and foretold David what the resolution of the men of Keilah would be, if Saul came to them; knows likewise what the resolution of every one of us would be if a fiery Trial should appear. Who knows therefore whether God hath not numbred out the Crowns of Life according to the number of their Souls who he foreknew would in the midst of all Temptations and Tri­als continue unto the End? For what difference is there be­twixt the Faith that fails upon occasion, or that would fail if occasion were offer'd? —Deceive not your selves: Heaven never was, nor ever will be gotten without Martyrdom.’ (Pag. 121.) in resolution, at least, as before and after these passages he explains his meaning, every one that intends to be saved must be a Martyr.

If this be sound Doctrin, which you cannot disprove, let your present purpose, if you think your self resolv'd, be examin'd by what you have formerly done (or omitted shall I say?) You that have feared the Reproach of men whom the Moth shall eat up like a Garment, and been afraid of their Revilings whom the worm shall eat like wool (Isa. 51.7, 8.) for [Page 41] what else hath kept you from putting forth your Right and Power of correcting and reforming, &c. to bring Sinners to repentance? or what more than this could they do to deter you?) You that have loved the Praise of Men more than the Praise of God, (John 12.43.) and have rather chosen to be honour'd among the ungodly (for letting them alone in their sins) than to seek the Honour that cometh from God only, (John 5.44.) You that have sought the world's Peace that profits as little as Wealth in the day of wrath, more than the Peace of God, which is greater Wealth than words can ex­press; and have suffered evil Doers to grow worse and worse, for fear of suffering (I know not what) by doing your best to make them better: You (to conclude) who have been so far from taking up a Cross, of your own accord (as a learned manDr. Hide in his Christian Legacy. pag. 109. hath observed the proper sense of our Saviour's word [...], Matt. 10.38. to be: Whereas [...] properly signifies to take a thing from another's hand;) that you have not accepted or submitted to it when offered, but according to the Prophet's Phrase, pulled away the shoulder, and run away from it as fast as a Coward from his Enemy: Can you being thus (I cannot say zealously) affected, think your self prepared to witness a good Confession whatever it cost or lost you?

Can you reckon your self to be one of those who reckon that the Sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be com­pared with the Glory which shall be revealed? Or can any one else (who judgeth righteously and not rashly) think you qualifi'd to undergo Persecution for Righteousness sake? sitted to be reviled, persecuted and evil-spoken of for a Saviour's sake? (Matt. 5.10, 11.) content to indure all things for the Elects sake? (2 Tim. 2.10.) ready, not only to be bound, but to die for the Name of the Lord Jesus? Acts 21.13.

Who, I say, can think so well of you while your sordid, servile fear hath been such as deserves to be beaten with many more stripes than my weak hand can give it? For it was not a Lyon in the way, but an Ape or Ass only, which hath hi­therto made you afraid.

So much for your Libel.

But another Account must be ballanc'd before we part, that you may not be wronged by one who can hardly tell whe­ther he receives or pays a just Debt most willingly; tho' you have not been just to a special and further Account for­merly drawn up for the sake of some People too deeply indebted (to a Creditor who had never abus'd them) to be let alone without any attempt of extorting Satisfaction from them, while it was not like to come freely. Those Ac­counts, but that a Gentleman-thief prevented it, had been fairly put into their hands; but were never the less true for being brought, as they were, by stealth. Of those Accounts what is more to be said, shall be spoken hereafter. There's another, I say, which claims to be first adjusted.

Your cowardly fear hath been brought to the Bar, and found guilty of all those sins which you have not done what you could to suppress. But I know as well, who shall be King of Poland or Emperor of Germany in the year 1788, as I know what you your self (or any man for you) can say in defence of your odious, egregious and intolerable Hypo­crisie, (for which you have once already smarted in another place; but you will not be quiet, I see, until you are beaten with more stripes: Your Hypocrisie I say) in taking such pain to make a man an Offender for a word, (Isa. 29.21.) to say nothing in this place of your laying a snare for him who was bold enough to reprove you in the Gate. Ibid.) that I think it as hard a Task to reconcile your formerly printed Crudities and Dotages about Church-Government with your Grand Case, as to find an Example to match it, unless that of a greaterArchbishop Bauer. Churchman than I hope you will ever become (it were pity else,) who threatned to lay Mr. Paul Bayn by the heels for wearing cuffs a little beautifi'd (according to the fashion of those days) with black-work, will do the Business.

Give me any Plague but the Plague of the Heart, said Ben-Sirach: Ecclus. 25.13. Give me any Persecution but the Per­secution of Church-men, say I. They so commonly overdo it (tho' they ruine themselves no less than others in the end) that an ordinary patience cannot suffer it.

Well Sir! Since you'll have the Poet's words,

(Which you kept such a stir to make me guilty of I know not what Crime for making use of; forgetting or not know­ing that Cicero had or might have taught you, tho' you knew it not otherwise, Male olere omne Coenum: At non semper. Commove, senties. Tuscul. 4. since you'l have them I say) further descanted on (as if I had not already said more concerning them, than you or any of your Confederates can answer by other than Club-law, as I learn by your si­lence;) so be it. What iniquity was it (tell me, if you can,) to say after Catullus (not as the puny Deacon, a fit fel­low to make a Priest of the Post, falsely swore, Venito, but) Venite ad ignem, &c. Against what Law of the twelve Ta­bles, or any beside, was it written by the Author? Against what elder and better Law of the two Tables was it spoken by me? What sort of Sin was it? Or what Law, temporal or spiritual, sacred or civil, divine or human, general or special made it criminal? What Name will you give it? Was it scelus, facinus, flagitium, delictum, peccatum, erratum, impietas, improbitas or any other Crime, if none of these words will fit it?

Before the 21st. of King James, Chap. 20. Blasphemy, Swearing and Cursing were not punishable in a temporal Court here in England. Was there any Statute before or since his Reign forbidding the use of those words, Venite ad ignem, &c. Had it really been a fault to pronounce them, (which is more than Cato's gravity would have judg'd it to be) are all Sins equal? Is there no distinction to be made between a Mote and a Beam? A Gnat and a Camel? No diffe­rence to be put between robbing a Church and a Garden? Or between a grand Sacrilegious Church-robber, and a poor pi­tiful Pilferer? No Rule to be regarded

[Page 44] in the Exercise of distributive Justice? Must every peccadil­lo (which is more than this was) be nail'd to a Cross? Or Hercules called to come and knock down a Flea or Fly with his Club, for biting or buzzing about us?

Was it fit that you who have so much offended with your Tongue, in preaching Doctrin which you dare not now own; and with your Pen, in printing what the World knows you have cause to be asham'd of, should be as forward as you were to find fault where none was? Or that you who have been such a careless overlooker of hainous Offences, as before-said, should contend so earnestly as you did to make a trespass of a trifle? This was, doubtless, so strange and surprizing a piece of Hipocrisie as deserves to be reproved with as sharp words, as those false hollow-hearted Cretians (Tit. 1.13.) needed to make them sounder in the Faith, than it seems you have hitherto been. For what but Hypocrisie was it, I say not to behold, but to pretend to see a Mote in another's Eye, not considering the Beam in your own? What but this made you say, Let me pull the Mote out of thine Eye, when behold, a Beam was in your own? Thou hypocrite! first cast the Beam out of thine own Eye, and then thou shalt clearly see to cast the Mote out of thy Brother's Eye, Matt. 7.5.

Josephus witnesseth that the Sadduces were [...] (lib. 20. cap. 8.) the cru­dest and cruellest, the most rigid and unmerciful Judges of all the Jews. Of that Sect was Ananus the High Priest, under whom St. James the just, lost his Life.

If you hate their Principles, why should their Practices please you? What! were you never told that summum jus is summa crux? Did you never hear it called Remedium morbo pejus? And filum nimis tensum quod rumpitur? Was no body able to inform you, that when Chrysippus had described Ju­stice too sourly or severely, some of his own faculty were heard to say, that it was not Justitiae, but Saevitiae Imago? Gellius lib. 14. 4.

If none of these farther-fetcht Thoughts could occur or come in to relieve you, was there never a Counseller nearer [Page 45] at hand to tell you, That to condemn the just, is no less abo­mination than to justifie the wicked? Prov. 17.15.

Is not this to call good evil, to put light for darkness, and sweet for bitter? Which whoso doth, is no less subject to the sad sense of the Prophet's Wo (Isa. 5.20.) than he that calls evil good, puts darkness for light, and bitter for sweet.

In the same Chapter (ver. 23.) you might have found that to take away the Righteousness of the Righteous from him, (whe­ther love of gain, hatred of his Cause or Person, or hope of getting into the favour of his Enemies, or any thing else be the Cause of it,) is as woful a Sin as to justifie the wicked for a Reward. Now that nothing of all this nor any thing else should have restrained you from running into that shameful extreme of being righteous over-much, and that which is worse, from doing wrong under Colour of Justice, is strange: Stranger than the story of a man and no man, &c. for­merly told on this occasion: Stranger than that a Dunce should think himself a Doctor, because the People call him so: Stranger than that ( [...]) the pam­per'd Mule in the Fable, should boast that his Sire was a Race-horse, and he himself altogether like him; tho' at last he confessed his true Sire to have been an Ass, when he could not perform the part of a Courser: Stranger (to say no more on this occasion) than that a Teacher of other Peo­ple good manners, should take his own or another man's Whore for a Wife, [which no legal Priest might do; (Le­vit. 21.7.) And Grotius not only tells us, that most of the Learned think, that not only the High Priest was obliged to take a Wife in her Virginity (Levit. 21.13.) but that all other Priests were subject to the same Law: Which he doth not barely affirm, but also prove by Ezek. 44.22.] Or which seems, but is not stranger than either, should first make himself a Cuckcold, and afterward marry his own Widow. Which if none of your confederacy had ever done, what made some bodie's man observe within these seven Years, That the Child was pretty, wanting neither Nails nor any thing else (belonging to a Babe not abortive, but born in due time, tho' begotten out of season?)

N. B. What's contain'd in this last Parenthesis, was not his Speech, but is my Explication of his words, who spake [Page 46] of the Child's not wanting Nails, &c. to no other end than to signifie that it was not abortive.

By this time I hope the Cacata Charta is pretty well cleans'd, and better canvas'd than when you and your fellow Censors had it in hand. Wise men wonder'd, and still do, that you were not asham'd to take it up and foul your Fin­gers with it as you did. If you have not your belly full, you'l never be satisfied. Yet I cannot desist without asking you farther, what is Hypocrisie, if to scruple small, and swallow great sins (or to boggle at trifles and not scruple real tres­passes) deserves not the Name? What is double iniquity, if Hypocrisie is not? What is Irreligion if Injustice be not? And what is Injustice, if over-much Righteousness, tho' accor­ding to Law (much more a pretence of being righteous in calling any thing a fault which is not the transgression of any Law,) is another and not the same thing? And what is evil, if to have respect of Persons in judgment is good? What indeed is abominable, if this be tolerable? For tho' the Text (Prov. 24.23.) only tells you it is not good— Yet your Rhetoric-Rules have told you, I presume, of a Figure, frequent in Scripture (call it Liptote, Litote, Tapinosis, Meiosis, or how you will, if neither of those old Names will please you,) which expresseth hard things many times by soft words; weighty and lofty matters in low, diminutive terms and hum­ble phrases; leaving more to be understood than is spoken, the Language being milder than the full sense of the matter. [So the meaning of not holding guiltless, in the Third Com­mandment, is to punish severely: Not to leave comfortless (John 14.18.) is to give the richest Cordial that a faint and languishing Spirit can have to revive it. Not to quench, is to quicken and inflame; not to bruise or break, (Isa. 42.3.) to bind up: Not to be asham'd (Rom. 1.16.) to confess with boldness: Not to be weak in Faith (Rom. 4.19.) to be firm and stedfast without staggering through unbelief: Not to work evil (Rom. 13.10.) is to do as much good as the fulfilling of the whole Law amounts to. In 1 Cor. 13.4, 5, 6. within the compass of three Verses, no less than eight Examples of this kind are met with. Tali sermonis figura totus Decalogus constat, saith a manFlac. Illyr. de Trop. & Schemat. S. S. tract. 4. pag. 222. well skill'd in those Affairs.] Thus the Phrase of not being good signifies very bad, extremely [Page 47] evil, or stark naught. As bad, if you will, as the Figs which the Prophet saw in a Vision, (Jer. 24.2.) which could not be eaten, they were so very bad. To render it as bad as bad can be, we meet with the same phrase many times over, in the Book of Proverbs; sometimes indeed it is applied to different mat­ter, (Prov. 19.2. Prov. 25.27.) but oftner to the Case in hand, than any other. Prov. 17.26.18.5.28.21. And why is it spoken so often against in this single Book of Scrip­ture, notwithstanding those many prohibitions by which it is elsewhere forbidden, but for one or other, or rather for both these reasons:

1. That people are so prone to offend in this manner.

2. To render them the more watchful against a sin which so easily besets them. To which this may be added,

3. That these frequent, reiterated prohibitions are used to shew how much the Most High hates it.

In the place last pointed at, (Prov. 28.21.) it is said, That a sinner of this sort will transgress for a piece of Bread, i. e. munere vilissimo, minima lucrandi occasione data. For the smallest reward, he will justifie the wicked; the least tempta­tion which can come in his way, will turn him aside from judging righteously, who gives place to partiality and is sub­ject to the sin of respecting persons in Judgment. Tho' he loves not Mony; needs not Gold or Silver, regards not Gifts or Presents, he hath Friends or Passions to be gratified, hath Love or Hatred, Fear or Anger, or some other exor­bitant Affection to over-rule him. Let the merit of the Cause be what it will, his main care is to please his Superiors (whose favor he more values than God's) in passing sentence. The rich and potent he will not offend, for fear of losing their favor, who may help him at a dead-lift another time. The poor, who can do him no hurt, (as he vainly presumes, many times) he despiseth and oppresseth, as if Justice and Judgment and Equity were too good for them. And when matters are thus carried (as alway they are where Respect of Persons bears sway; when Dives is honor'd and favor'd for the sake of his purple and fine linnen; Lazarus abus'd and con­temn'd because of his rags and sores (whatever right he hath on his side, or whatever good qualities are in him which his wealthier Adversary wants,) is not this to value Gold more [Page 48] than Grace? perishing things, above permanent? temporal, more than spiritual and eternal riches?

If it is not so, shew the contrary. If it is, cast up your Ac­counts, (comparing them with a Special Account, &c. former­ly given) and see what you have gotten by your palpable partiality in favoring the furious (I could justly say worse) Man, who hath stirred up all this strife.

I am not fond or ambitious (much less proud) of your company, Sir! nor at all delighted in it on this occasion, tho' I tarry so long with you; (longer by far than at first set­ting forth to give you this Visit, was purposed. You may live to repay it by visiting this remote part of your Arch­deaconry, which hitherto you have been such a stranger to;) but necessity must be serv'd and will be obey'd. Short reckon­ings, they say, make long friends: Let me therefore in the next place reckon with you about your late prevarication and breach of promise, bearing date from December 15th, 87; on the Morning of which Day, with many fair words (smoother than Butter, and softer than Oyl, tho' since they have prov'd drawn Swords, like those of that egregious Hypocrite, Psal. 55.21.) you discoursed me about a Book, not long before printed, exhibiting divers Wrongs and Abuses done you know to whom and by whose instigation; which however, you were told (by one whose manner is not to say one thing sit­ting and another standing) should be supprest, if the persons concern'd in the Contents of it, would make the Author sa­tisfaction: Which as soon as you heard, you promised of your own accord, without any request to that purpose in­terpos'd, to be instrumental in procuring it; next, to give me notice by your self Tho' I na­med another, then present, by whom the intelligence might be transmitted, to save you the labor of writing: yet again and a­gain you un­dertook it., immediately, of what should be offer'd, or might be expected: Then, like a man overjoy'd, you posted away to Philargyrus (that man of metal, whose inordinate love of Mony hath been the root of all this and much more evil than can here be exprest;) to tell him, that an opportuni­ty of commuting, to save him the shame of doing publick Pe­nance for his Avarice and Ambition, was discover'd: (which made you both, no less glad than Hunters use to be when they find a Hare sitting.) After this, if you know not, I can tell you who was treated and complemented at an higher rate than is common (considering his station) while the business was [Page 49] agitating, the Work fervent, and the Iron hot, in hope of striking up a Bargain; and who were imploy'd to help ham­mer it out, till at last a bungling Ignoramus, who neither knew how to hold or use his hand or tongue, came in and spoil'd all. Yet you gave me no intelligence, as was promi­sed; but I had it from another hand, (as appears by a Letter, dated Decemb. 21. —87.) that you might not write to me, as was expected.

What! not altho' you had promis'd it over and over? Was it lawful to say again and again, that you would, and sinful to do as you had said?

The old fashion was to make Promises and keep them too; Prove, if you can, that the new Mode of making and not keep­ing them is the better of the two. A great Minister of State indeed thought it folly, and not policy, to be a slave (as his word was) to his Word: must you needs become his disciple, that fidelity may be slavery in your opinion likewise? If the Case be so, take heed of the Mark which the People of Na­ples have long been known by; who for promising much, and doing little, are said to have wide mouths and narrow hands. What will it profit you to be like them? Change as oft as you list, oftner if you can than the Moon changeth her figure, or the French their fashions; Vice and Vertue, Good and Evil will still be the same. You cannot turn Darkness into light, or make bitterness to be sweet, tho' you put or mistake one for the other oftner than the Weather alters, or the Wind turns. And because it is much more pardonable to speak hard words than to do such hard things, as in this Af­fair you have acted, (tho' with more malice than might or success,) let me, Sir! (who as little fear your frowns as hereafter I will trust your smiles) tell you, That to pro­mise and not perform, is to DO a Lye; which is not a less, but greater fault than to speak one: as much worse as to kill or steal, cheat or defraud, tho' you never said you would do it, is worse than to say you will do so, and yet not be as bad as your word.

Tom. 4. Hom. 14. Ber. Brix. inter­prete.I remember St. Chrysostom's* Apology to the People of Antioch, for departing (as his manner often was, tho' ne­ver without need) from the matter which at first he began to speak of; (which in our Language would be called, Leaving his Text:) ‘We may seem, said he, to have fallen from the matter at first taken in hand:’ ‘But this (to speak at large of Scripture Examples and Histories, tho' named occasionally for proof of the principal thing propounded to be spoken of,) is not to go from it. For we will not barely read Scripture-Histo­ries to you, but heal all sinful Distempers and Diseases (if we can) to which you are subject. Therefore it is that we take such pain to make you ashamed of your faults, using divers methods and forms of Speech, seeing much sickness is probably found among much people; and it is not our purpose to cure this or that single Patient only, but many and various sin-sick Souls. Thence it is needful that va­rious Remedies of Doctrin should be used and applied. Now therefore to return to the place from whence we set forth, &c.’

The like Excuse (if any be needful) may be made for my keeping no closer to the Relation of your late (I wish it may be your last) prevarication. However, it seems, I am not gon from it (tho' you wish me farther off, I believe.) For it is not my purpose, nor was it when first I began, to discover your Disease only, but to bleed and purge and bring down your proud flesh, as low as a tertian Ague can lay it, for your better recovery. Not barely to relate your double-dealing, but to descant upon it in such sort as may make you to see the more clearly how hateful it is, (not despairing but that in time you may be reconciled to Plain-Dealing,) was and is my design. To this I have kept, and from this I will no more depart than you have kept your Word. You never made a greater digression from any Text, I am confident, than this your turning back or starting aside from your promise, was. Your starting aside like a broken or deceitful Bow, (Psal. 78.57.) which seems sound and true to the Eye, but in tryal breaks or proves false. Had your heart been right, you had doubtless been more stedfast. (Ibid. v. 37.)

You desir'd to know, whether any part of the Book before-mention'd, concern'd you? All the Answer given to that que­stion, [Page 51] was, That if you had sooner been discours'd, something had been otherwise written than it was. (Which was spoken upon a wrong supposition, as since it hath appeared, of your being in earnest.) You replied, However it was you could pass it by. What your manner of passing by real Abuses is, I am pretty well satisfied by what you have done to revenge a pretended wrong; tho' you fail'd of your purpose and have done your self much more hurt than me, whom you cannot judge to be your Enemy for any thing but telling you the Truth. Which however, is another sort of Truth, than that which you need not be asham'd of.

Well! The last thing named (before this Excursion, Digression or Animadversion, without which a bare Relation of what has been done or spoken would be too flat and insipid to be read,) was a Treaty for Pacification; which seemed ro some (tho' to me it looked otherwise,) to go pretty well on till an ignorant Bungler or bungling Ignoramus interposed to interrupt it.

So far I went till I took you aside to talk a little seriously of it. But in that, I confess, I was somewhat too nimble for the story. Before it came to that pass, a Proposition (and a pretty one, tho' not as pretty as the Babe above-men­tion'd which was born with Nails on its Toee and Fingers) was made. Of what nature and to what effect, I beseech you? Why, no less than this: That if the Books printed were supprest and not reprinted (see how wary the guilty are!) They would do a wonder of kindness (as to narrow-sould Folk it seem'd) in bestowing at least a whole Son of mine on the Muses, and providing him a Station within the Province of Learning; which he chiefly desires to be imploy'd in, and seems naturally fit for.

Goodly! Must my head be broken, in more places than one, (especially by a Man forbidden to be a Striker, nor as much as permitted to be soon angry, Titus 1.7.) and a Plai­ster applied to my Son's, being whole and unbroken? Or if he has been wounded through my sides (as in such cases it commonly happens,) there are seven Brothers and Sisters more whom the blows which in a cowardly, clancular manner (with as little fair play as a man not accustom'd to foul dealing would have look'd for among Infidels, if not with less,) were gi­ven [Page 52] me, have no less affected and injur'd than him, who de­serv'd to be consider'd, had that been the Case. Make the best you can of it, The salve agreed not with the sore; If it did, The plaister was too narrow to cover it. Nothing, in my thoughts more mean or uncertain could be offer'd, or thought of. Much less did it need or deserve to be talked of with such pomp and ostentation as it was. For what if he lived not to be fit for the University, where they promised to take care of him? What if they liv'd not to make good their In­tentions, if they purposed what they proposed? What assu­rance could their bare Word be to me, who had formerly been too much deceiv'd to trust them again without better secu­rity than their naked Say-so? I can truly say that their double-dealing (with whom you concur'd, to make a bad matter as much worse as you could,) hath cost and lost me (tho' the Cost is not worthy to be named in comparison of the Loss,) more than a thousand pounds twice told, besides ten thousand temptations which their never to-be-justified Pra­ctices have expos'd me to, (hitherto by the Grace of God resisted, as hereafter I hope they shall be:) And was this a Compensation? Yet it was not profit, but something of an­other nature which I stood for, tho' the Agent whom I trusted to treat for me never nam'd it, but instead of pro­pounding what I told him should satisfie and nothing else, went about to put me off with a-stale, mouldy Proverb of Half a Loaf, which is said to be better than no Bread: Where­as this, in truth, was neither half, nor a quarter, nor half a quarter, nor any thing else certain. Not as much as the Crumbs which Dogs find under their Masters Tables.

When this would not do, what next? Have you need to be told Sir! As if you had not enough feign'd your selves to be just men, like those Hypocrites, Luke 20.20. nor suffici­ently profan'd the sacred Seat of Justice before, in preten­ding to spy out a fault which as clear-ey'd, quick-sighted, and tender conscienc'd People as your selves could not see: Your next method (that you might not either first or last be un­like your selves,) was to treat me with Stones instead of Bread, (for not offering, it seems, as much as once to smell at your Barley-cake,) and to heap as much new wrong as you could upon me, for calling you to account for Old Injuries. This [Page 53] you did, by putting your heads together, and plotting to frame an abusive Bill of Information or Indictment against me, wherein you set forth,Tho' your travel was very hard, they say, before you could bring it forth. That I, devi­sing and maliciously What becomes of [fal­sly] which in Forms and Pre­cedents of this kind is wont to be inserted. intending as much Not in the least; I must then have been as great a hypocrite as your self; as wicked and profane as some whose intolerable sins I have elsewhere reckon'd with you for overlooking; or as bad as one or other of those 500 Instances for ignorance and loosness, which the Author of Good Advice to the Church of England, faith he could produce. Pag. 41. Marg. as in me lay, to scandalize and bring into hatred and contempt (among the liege People and Subjects of our Lord the King) the Christian Religion, and Church of England, as by Law establisht, Pretty! Was there never any but a true Church, by Law establisht? or doth this prove a Church to be true, that so it is establisht? and the Government and Governors of the Church, State and Common-wealth of this Kingdom of England; and also the Reverend Father in Christ, Thomas by divine permission Bishop What have you done with his Lordship? Why have you left it out? You design it seems to bring him into contempt your selves while you take it upon you to vindicate his Honor. of Exon, Nicholas Hall Professor Of which it would better become him to be a Practiser. Which if he purposeth to be, let him take the Remedies prescribed in the Book complained of, to purge out the filthy Avarice and other ill Humors with which he abounds. of Sacred Theology, &c. with more than half a dozen more, till at last you come down to Simon Crymes Armiger Anglicè Armor-bearer. He bore and wore Arms indeed, in the Reign of King Charles the First; which was all the good or hurt that ever I heard he did with them. But who can possibly make him more odious or contemptible than he himself has made himself?, to make up a number less by two than a Baker's dozen.

All those you say, that I maliciously designed to bring into ha­tred and contempt, And as a disturber of the Peace of our said Lord the King, by Force and Arms Vi & Ar­mis being pro­per to some Cases, (vid. Stat. of 37 H. 8. 8.) you thought it fit for this and all others, it seems. at M. D. in the County of Devon, unlawfully and maliciously made, brought in, published and caused a Book, Libel or Pamphlet (intitl'd, Parresiaspis: Or, A Defence of Plain-Dealing, &c.) to be imprinted and af­terward to be dispersed at M. D. and elsewhere (Vi & Armis again) among the said liege People and Subjects of our said Lord the King.

All this, you say, was done on the 5th of January, in the third Year of King James the Second's Reign.— But who can imagin, had it ever been done, it could all be dispatcht in a day? Or who will believe it, tho' you say it? That [Page 54] the Book was dispers'd at M. D. is as true as that it was printed there. You affirm both: But could never prove ei­ther. And as if it had been too little to bring so false an accusation but once, you repeat it again in the conclusion of the Bill, That what you wrongfully accuse me of, was done to the great Scandal of the Christian Religion &c. and to the bad Example of all the liege People and Subjects of our said Lord the King, against the form of a Statute in such a Case published and provided: Which I do not wonder that you name not, since you know not where to find any such: There are Statutes indeed which prohibit the printing and publishing of scandalous, seditious, heretical and schismatical Books: but which of those hard words doth this deserve? You have had time enough to shew it, and would not have fail'd to discover it had any such thing been. And also against the Peace, Crown and Dignity of our said Lord the King—

What shall be given or done unto thee, thou false tongue? (Psal. 120.3.) Is it no sin to bring a false malicious Accu­sation against another sort of Elder than what your fingers formerly so itch'd after, that nothing but the application of an Archdeaconry to the distemper, could cure it?

Know you not how hateful Accusers have formerly been held, as well among Heathen-people as Chri­stians? Did you never read, that suchViz. Calumniatores, qui mendaciis & confictis crimini­bus aliorum innocentiam vex­ant; (Estius ad 2 Tim. 3.3.) & Criminatores qui Viris bonis sese opponune, praesertint calum­niando. Grotius Ibid. are called [...] by Satan's name in the Old Testa­ment, and [...], Devils, in the New? 2 Tim. 3.3. Are you ignorant that their very Speech hath been called Vox funesta, a filthy, detestable and deadly Voice? That their Names and Per­sons have been reputed infamous among the Ene­mies of true Religion, or strangersVid. Aristot. Polit. lib. 6. cap. 5. Cicer. Offic. l. 2. & O­rat. pro Muraena. Tacit. An­nal. lib. 3. to it? That more hurt, in time of peace, while Tibe­rius reigned, was done among the Romans by the rage of p [...]ick Accusations than by civil War in time past, as Seneca wit [...]esseth? Lib. 3. de Benefic. That divers Laws have been made to restrain them? And that by Divine as well as Human Laws, if they prove not the Crime which they charge the accused with, they themselves are subject to the same punishment which the other should have undergon had his Judges found him guilty? Deut. 19.16, — 21. — Nec Lex est justior ulla.

If you want an Example of this Lex or poena Talionis, look into the History of Susanna, (if it is not grown nauseous to you for treating of Elders, as good perhaps as some that were or had been here and there set up, but that your hard labor to effect it, prov'd vain;) and there you will find an Instance so notable as needs not a second; or rather a pair of Examples so notorious (v. 62.) as may well serve the turn without a third.

But to come to the special matter of your Bill, the Con­tents of which would indeed be scandalous with a witness to the really religious, should those false accusers who fram'd and promoted it, escape unpunisht. I who have more reason to know the sense and meaning of the Book complain'd of, than any body else, can no more find a word from the first to the last letter of it, tending to the Scandal of the Christian Religion or Church of England, (especially to the disparage­ment of the Government and Governors of the Church, State and Common-wealth of the Kingdom of England,) than I know where to find a solid Argument for Lay-Elders in any of your Writings; or in what place or upon what occasion it was that Saint Paul ever said, Hast thou but one blessing, O my Fa­ther! as somebody, within these 500 Years, too apt to find fault where none is, many times, as at other times, to let no small offences go unpunishht, is notoriously known to have mistaken.

For what? Is the Christian Religion scandaliz'd by re­proving sin, as I have done, or by letting it alone, like you? If to bring hypocrisie, double-dealing, oppression, pretended Justice, Avarice, Ambition, Ungodliness and Wrong into hatred and contempt, is to make this only true Religion odious, I have reason to cry Peccavi: If not, there are many more besides your self to whom it better belongs. Which, unless your Will had been more in fault than your Eyes, you must needs have seen. For what iniquity is more crying or provoking, more frequently blamed or prohibited than that wrong-dealing which I have not spared to represent (as much as you hate to hear of it,) because you spared not to give so great and provoking an occasion? Which when you had done, how could you think me stupid enough to sit down and say nothing? Where could you imagin I should find [Page 56] patience enough to forbear speaking? Or how can you be­lieve that any mortal man who knows what to say, is — tam ferreus ut teneat se, so made of iron that he can possibly hold, when so great violence is used to break his meekness of spi­rit, lowliness of heart, humbleness of mind and all, into pieces?

Was it not for Men of your Rank and Order to know Judgment? Mic. 3.1. If you knew it, was it tolerable to turn aside from it to the right hand or the left? How much worse was it to turn judgment into wormwood (Amos 5.7.) and gall, and the fruit of righteousness into hemlock, (Amos 6.12.) by making it bitter and distastful, and as much as in you lay, destructive and deadly, without and against reason? And that which is yet more odious, to make judgment spring up as hemlock, in the furrows of the field, (Hos. 10.4.) where nothing, one would think, but the purest and finest Corn should have grown, when the ground had been drest and prepar'd with so much care and cost, in hope of its bringing forth better fruit? If you know not that the want of Judg­ment and Justice is so great irreligion, that when the one runs not down like waters and the other as a mighty stream, being clear and clean and free in their passage as running water useth to be; (clear and clean without hypocrisie, par­tiality or any other filthiness intermingl'd; free by the ab­sence of delay to hinder their course, as well as of might, malice and violence, or any other cursed cause to turn them aside;) all Sacrifices and ServicesBe they Legal or Evan­gelical; or if any odds there be, the case is now worse than formerly, more being given to us, and more requi­red of us, than of legal Wor­shippers under the Old Te­stament. Mat. 5.20. are but lost labor, and not only so, but provocations too, (turning Songs and Melody, vocal and in­strumental Church-Musick into harsh and un­grateful Noises; Amos 5.23, 24. If you know not this) with a hundred other things by which the Prophets of old stirred up the false, hypo­critical Jews to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God, (Mic. 6.8.) that their whole Reli­gion might not be confin'd to the cheap and easie observa­tion of empty Ceremonies, while the great things of the moral Law were neglected: If you know not these things, I say, search the Scriptures and study them better, (as, unless your violent persecuting hands and tongues had hindred me, I [Page 57] had certainly done,) and then, I hope, you'l be convinced how great hypocrisie you were guilty of, in stumbling at a straw (as once already I have told you, but must say it again, your heed having been so little,) and straining so hard at a gnat; or rather at the dream and shadow of so small an Animal. Not to punish real Vice and Wickedness by the true and indifferent Pray mark that pas­sage; It was borrowed from a Prayer appointed to be u­sed after Sermon, and not be­fore; as once, with more confidence than evidence you asserted, in opposition to a graver Divine than your self. If this be your way of in­structing the Clergy of your Archdeaconry, there's no great matter lost, I see, by not having your company. ministra­tion of Justice, is greater ungodliness than one body's Pen or Tongue can easily express: but to feign and pretend, that Justice weighs in her Scale, or strikes with her Sword, what her Gra­vity scorns to meddle with, (as being too light and ridiculous for her sacred hand to touch:) This, which none can deny to be hypocrisie, hath long since been confessed to be double ini­quity; which whoso dares own, I would not give a brass farthing to be told what metal his brow is made of. Yet the mischief is, that few or no people hate reproof as much as hypocrites. Being desirous of vain-glory, and making a shew of greater sanctity than they have or care to be owners of, they abhor to be evil-spoken of, tho' they never so much deserve it. The most sacred things they will abuse to the vilest purposes; (like those Brethren in iniquity, Gen. 34. who obtruded an Ordinance of Divine institution on the Sichemites, to make it an instrument of sa­tisfying their blood-thirsty rage.) how much bolder will they make with the names of sacred things? insomuch as that Justice it self cannot, many times, secure her name from being imposed upon what is no more like her, than Heaven and Hell are like each other. The most upright, faithful and true-hearted people they hate most of all, as being most unlike them. Witness the Scribes and Phari­sees, who as much leaven'd with hypocrisie as they were, would not suffer a mouth in which there was no guile to re­prehend them. Judge then how weak your Cause was, in defence of which you had not a word to say, but what hy­pocrisie helped you to.

I could tarry much longer with you, on this occasion, but that you have made such a foul House, that there is not a Room or corner of a Room belonging to it but what needs [Page 58] to be cleansed; tho' I shall not need such a Scavenger, I hope, as the King of Elis procur'd to make clean his fa­mous, or rather, fabulous Stall, which was able, as the story goes, to hold no less than three thousand Bullocks. For my thoughts, tell me, that by this time, at least, you begin to wish your Bill (and Libel too) had been a Fable, Stall, Stable, or any thing, but what it is; and that no body but Augeas, Hercules, and the like poetical people, had been con­cern'd in it. But (sero sapiunt Phryges) there's another sort of People (I wish they were only to be found among hea­then Poets, like the two Gentlemen last named,) who will not learn without beating. If your caution hath been for­merly too little, take better heed hereafter of being like them. And whatever you do, (let your Pen as soon be ta­ken in hand to write of presbyterated and unpresbyterated Churches yet again, as be guilty of what next follows,) be sure that from this day forward you never concur to de­vise a malicious, scandalous, abusive Bill of Indictment against any man for reproving the Sins and Vices by which the Christian Religion is really disgraced, as if he, and not you, were in such a Case worthy to be made an Example.

This you have done by me; and for this I challenge you, to shew me a man of this or any Function, by whom that only true Religion has been less disgraced than by me, or who by Life and Doctrin hath more labor'd to honor and bring it into credit.

There are at this time, no doubt, (as in all Ages of the Church there have been) too many of those qui vitia sub obtentu nominis (Christiani) Lactant. de Opific. Dei. c. 1. celant, who cover as foul in­sides as the Scribes and Pharisees (those hypocrites) had, with as fair an outside as they did or could make shew of to the World. Mat. 23.25, 26, 27. Hypocrisie was never yet a rarity. It is not a new, but old sin. (If you think me not too great a lover of Plain-dealing, to be one of those whited Walls and Sepulchres, what will serve to convince you that I am not?) But who can count how many the scandalous are? or number the fourth part of the profane, who declare their sin as Sodom, and hide it not? Isa. 3.9. Twelve hundred years since, Salvian, in his Books de Gubernatione, &c. com­plained, That the People of Christ (so called) were in his [Page 59] days become so unlike the Christians of former Ages; That few or none of them were innocent; Non convenit ut per unum cunctos periclitari putem, cum per se cuncti periclitentur. Omnes enim admodum in per­ditionem ruunt; aut certe, ut aliud dicam levius, pene om­nes. Lib. 6. pag. (mihi) 169. That the Number of the good was so far from being equal to that of the bad, that all, or very near all were lamentably corrupted; Superflue dudum de uno malo locuti sumus; superflue unius scelera defle­vimus: aut omnes enim, aut omnes pene flendi atque lu­gendi sunt. Nam aut plurimi tales sunt, aut certe, quod non minus criminosum est, cupiunt tales esse. Lib. 6. p. 170. That Franks, Hunns, Goths and Vandals, as bad as they were, were not worse Lib. 5. pag. 155. but better; Lib. 7. pag. 228, 222, 223 That as God punisht them in their own kind Lib. 6. p. 160. so they provoked him to do it and would not permit him to spare them; Vim Deo facimus ini­quitatibus nostris; ipsi in nos iram Divinitatis armaemu [...]. Cogimus ad ulciscendas Crimi­num nostrorum immanitates no­lentem Deum. Prope est ut eum non permittamus ut parcat, lib. 6. pag. 161. That their wickedness was not lessen'd but increased by their Calamities: (as prosperity, in time past had not made them better but worse; Lib. 6. pag. 195. which he proves and ex­emplifies by describing the cursed and corrupt manners of the People of Africa, Spain, France and Italy, Ibid. pag. 197. — whose horrible security and sen­suality (while the Judgments of God were hanging over their heads, and as ready to drop down upon them, as a Cloud full of Rain is prepar'd to pour down Floods of Water on the Earth,) as he sets it forth, can seem no less than that of the old World, when the Flood was at hand to sweep them all away.

Not to insist on these and the like complaints: That as bad as they were, they thought themselves good; Hec enim ad crimina nostra addimus, ut cum in om­nibus rei simus, etiam bonos nos & sanctos esse credamus, ut sic in nobis cumulentur iniqui­tatis offensae, etiam praesumptio­ne justitiae. Lib. 3. pag. 65. That they made but a sport or mock of sin; Lib. 6. pag. 181 — That they loved and frequented the Playhouse more than the Church; Ibid. pag. 184. That more of them were guilty of Perjury, than free from the Sin of Common-swearing; Lib. 3. pag. 75. And, to make what was otherwise too bad, much worse, That the old were no better than the young, nor the honorable than the vulgar, but as scurrilous, vain, luxurious, sottish, gluttonous, drunken and lascivious as any a­mong the younger or baser sort were. Lib. 6. pag. 200. Such as were near too infirm to live, would encounter wine [Page 60] with as great valor as any. They that could scarce go, by reason of Age and weakness were strong to drink; and tho' they could hardly or not at all go without halting and stumbling, would not desist from dancing and whoring. Lud [...]bant, ebriabantur, lasciviebant in Conviviis vetu­li & honorati; ad vivendum jam prope imbecilles, ad vinum praevalidissimi. Infirmi ad ambu­landum, robusti ad bibendum: ad gressum nutabundi, ad saltandum expediti. — Bibunt, ludunt, moechantur, insaniunt. — Ibid. pag. 200, 201.

To pass by these Complaints, I say, with as much brevity as is possible, and to speak not a word of ten times more, no less grievous, which in those Books may be met with; if you will not give, I will not fear or spare to take the liberty of transcribing this oneLib. 3. p. 81, 82. Gra­ve & Luctuo­sum est quod dicturus sum. Ipsa Dei Eccle­sia quae in om­nibus debet esse Dei Placatrix, quid est aliud quam Exacer­batrix Dei? —: That which I purpose to say next is heavy and doleful. The Church of God it self, which ought to please him in all things, what doth it but exasperate and provoke him? Or, besides a very few who depart from evil, what is the whole Company almost of Christians, but a sink or heap of Vi­ces? For how many can be found in the Church, who are not ei­ther Drunkards, or Gluttons, or Adulterers, or Fornicators, Rob­bers, or Extortioners, or Riotous Ruffians, or Thieves, or Mur­therers? And that which is worse than all this, There is almost no end of their Faults. For I appeal to the Consciences of all Christians, how many of them are not guilty of one or other of these hainous Offences and Villanies which have been named? or how many have not sinned in all these respects? For 'tis easier to find a sinner that is guilty of all, than none of these crimes. And where­as I said none, tho' it seems a too grievous censure, I will say much more: It is easier not only to find those that are guilty of all than guiltless of any; but easier to find examples of the greater than the less offences; that is, easier to find those that have committed the greater crimes without the less, than the less only, without the greater. For the whole Common-people belonging to the Church are well-nigh come to that shameful degree of debaucht manners, that it generally seems a sort of sanctity to be less vicious than the worst.

How much better is it in these days than in those it was? Very little, I fear; if not in all respects before-mention'd, yet in others at least. If some capital Crimes are now more feared, because the danger of committing them is greater, the Punishment severer, are not other no less damnable Sins [Page 61] (tho' less punishable by human Laws) as much or more lov'd and liv'd in? If any sort of disgraceful or dishonorable Wickedness is left, are not other more gentile and creditable Sins (according to the common account,) taken up? If some are grown out of fashion, are not others as bad come into their places?

If the swinish dirty Sins (which in Salvian's days were so generally delighted in) are at this Time forsaken by more than adhere to them and take pleasure in them, (which is questionable,) are not the dryer Sins of oppressi­on, Extortion, Injustice and Wrong; the unnatural Sin of Avarice (which no Bodies constitution can be blamed for inclining him to; the Sin which makes Mony to be better lov'd than Vertue, and Grace to be less esteem'd than Gold;) the provoking Sin of Perjury, the defenceless Sin of Common-swearing, which no Apology worth the hearing can be made for, the more spiritual and refined Wickedness of Pride, Ambi­tion, Hatred, Envy, Malice, Hypocrisie, Partiality and Flattery; are not these, I pray, as common as ever? With respect to these, we may truly say,

He can see but little, if at all, who sees not that the whole World (the Christian part of it not excepted) lieth in wick­edness, as surely now as in elder Times; little, if any thing less than in Salvian's Age, or St. John's Days, when his words last recited were penn'd, 1 John 5.19. It is nothing more than what Protestant as well as Popish, and Popish as well as Protestant Writers and Preachers have often com­plain'd of, as might here be shewed, but that you cannot more desire to hear, than I do to see the Conclusion of this whole matter. Which is, briefly, this. The remembrance of these things (which I somewhat suspect have been seldo­mer consider'd by you than me,) hath cost me very many both sad and great thoughts of heart: And must you needs go about to make me one of those by whom the Christian [Page 62] World is made worse, when as nothing in the World would rejoyce me more, than to see it as good as it needs and ought to be?

Who can be to seek what mettle such a brow is made of? Hereafter, I hope, the pain that I have taken to make you a better Archdeacon than thus far you have been, will be better requited.

From the Christian Religion you descend to the Church of England, as by Law establisht, and the Government and Gover­nors of the Church, State and Commonwealth, &c. as if I had likewise devised and maliciously intended to scandalize and bring into hatred and contempt no fewer than all these, among the Lieg-People and Subjects of our Soveraign Lord, &c.

Where, O deceitful Tongue! Who lovest all devouring words and lying rather than to speak Righteousness, (Psal. 52.) where, I say, have I written, printed or caused any Word to be prin­ted, which the greatest Malice (if greater than that by which this Bill was framed, can be found,) is able to wrest and interpret to so vile and wretched a sense and purpose?

Shew me the place, if thou canst, unless thou hadst rather be indicted, denounc'd and proclaim'd for the most malig­nant, mischievous, false, deceitful and devouring Tongue that ever I heard speak. I have spoken indeed against those lewd, profane, superstitious and ungodly People, who worship the Name of Jesus with their Knees but profane it with their Tongues; have Gloria Patri, &c. very often in their mouths, but dishonour the most blessed Trinity much oft­ner in their Lives, being abominable and disobedient, if not also to every good Work reprobate. They who make light of God's Laws while they are, or would seem, very strict in observing the Commandments of men, having little or no Re­ligion but what consisteth in Conformity to Church-Rites and Ceremonies, as if this would excuse their Non-conformity to those elder and nobler Laws which God himself was Author of: These, I say, I have not spared (as you with your Right and Power of punishing, correcting and reforming, have done;) as appears by the Preface to a Special Account of Wrongs, &c. to which you are no stranger, pag. 2, 3. If in any thing, on that occasion, I have given offence, it could only be by saylng too little and not too much against them. [Page 63] For who deserve to be blam'd if these are worthy to be past by? Who but these ulcerous, rotten Members of our Com­munion (unless they are timely cur'd, or otherwise handl'd, if that cannot be,) threaten the whole Body with infection and worse? What worse Enemies, whatever kindness they pretend, can the Church of England have? Who but they, or who more than they, hinder it from being one of the happiest National Churches in Christendom? It is strange blindness which sees not, stranger impudence which knows and yet denies that these are the People who have turn'd her glory into shame, deform'd her beauty, and kept her from growing as the Lilly, and casting forth her roots as Lebanon, Hos. 14.5. Who then can think it brought into contempt by declaiming against the Vices of ungodly People (altho' it were done with a Voice as loud as Thunder, were it possible) and not rather by letting them alone in their Sins, until, like a true generation of Vipers, they eat out the Bowels of the Church which bred them, as once already they have done.

Sir! Be sure to repent of this horrible Hypocrisie (for which you must shortly give account to Him that is ready to judge both the quick and dead,) as much as ever you repented of any thing that ever you preached or printed in all your life hitherto; or expect to be paid what you cannot but know your self to have deserved.

One would think you had pretty well fed and feasted your malicious hungry appetite of taking revenge, by char­ing me with a malicious design of bringing the Christian Reli­gion and Church of England into hatred and contempt; but you stop not there: but as greedy gluttons know not when to leave eating, (or like wretched people who are subject to perpetual hunger, that sad Disease which Physicians call Bulimia,) and as Cowards are implacable and insatiably cruel when they find opportunity; so you go on, adding (drun­kenness to thirst, Deut. 29.19.) slander to slander, a third and fourth Calumny to the first and second, (whether with greater malice or falshood is not easily told,) as if you ve­rily thought that Machiavel's Maxim, [Calumniare fortiter, adhaerebit aliquid: which I know not what practitioner of his Politicks hath thus Englished, Give him an ill Name, some­body will believe it,] because it hath often been effectual, would [Page 64] never fail. For next you accuse me of devising and design­ing to scandalize and bring into contempt and hatred the Govern­ment and Governors of the Church and State of the Common­wealth of the Kingdom of England.

But how impotent this part of your Bill is (to say no worse) the Book it self shews to your shame. For in what Line or Leaf, Page or Paragraph can you meet with any passage which but seems to look that way? Clear thine eyes, Zoilus! and look as narrowly as thou canst; muster thy forces, Mo­mus! and call in all the aid thou canst get to find it out; Whet thy tongue, Doeg! if it is not yet sharp enough, and speak the worst thou canst truly say of the worst Word or Sentence in the whole composure. But think not that grave and indifferent Judges will take malice and impudence for sufficient proof and evidence.

If you and they with whom you acted in heaping upon me the Wrongs and Abuses complain'd of in the Book, are the Governors, and your manner of dealing (in the Instances given) is the Government of the Church of England; I have not omitted, indeed, to relate your Proceedings, not to bring you into hatred and contempt however, but to let you see somewhat better, I hope, than otherwise you had seen, how much reason you have to hate the like Courses hereafter, as well as to make amends for what is past. What's this to the Government of the Church (by Archbishops, Bishops, Deans, Archdeacons, &c. according to the Sixth of the Ca­nons and Constitutions set forth in 1640, or what do you mean?) or how are the Governors of the Church concern'd in it otherwise than to call you to account for your scan­dalous Partiality and Hypocrisie, which as many as are lovers of the Wisdom that comes from above must needs be offended at?

One or other that should see the Bill and not the Book upon which it is pretended to be grounded, would be ready to think that I had written an Appendix to Martin-Mar-Pre­late, or called the Governement and Governors whom you speak of, Antichristian, intolerable and abominable to ren­der them as odious and contemptible as I could: but when both are compar'd, a judicious Reader will quickly be convinc'd on which side the fault lies. For as soon may Oyl be squeez'd [Page 65] out of a Flint, or I know not what rare Spirit by Chymical ex­traction fetcht out of a Pumice-stone, as a word of that na­ture found in the Book, though you rack and force, strain and sublimate every Sentence and Syllable in it with your utmost skill.

You may think, for ought I know, that whatever a Bishop or Archdeacon saith, must pass for an Oracle; or that all which the one or other doth, is fit to be made a Precedent for the present and future Ages, lest the Government and Go­vernors of the Church should be scandaliz'd, &c. But if such ima­ginations please you (who can help it?) you must e'en be content to sit down and think by your self alone, few or none having either so much time to spare, or so little wit to guide them, as in such a case would be requisite to make them fit companions for you.

As occasion served, I reflected indeed on the time when the Church of England was under water, tho' not drowned, — pag. 39th of the Spec. Account. (Consider by the way, who brought her so low, and excuse the Members of her own Communion if you can.) To that Passage this was added, in the Margent: [If another Storm, like that which we read of in St. Matth. 8.24. should arise and cover the ship with waves, (which God forbid, tho' the sins of too many Mariners and Passengers are many and great enough to justi­fie such a fear;) yet that still it may truly be said, ‘Fluctuat at nunquam mergitur illa ratis,’ the Ship is tossed but not sunk, shall be mine as, it ought to be every one's Prayer.]

Was it there that the Government and Governors of the Church were spoken against? If it was, make it out. [...]. If not, I believe you will find the Phi­losopher's stone in the same place where you meet with any thing of that nature in the former or following part of the Book, look as long and as near as you can.

The Chymists (with whom you would sometimes seem to be somewhat inward) use to lock up their meaning in my­stical words which abundance of Readers cannot tell what to make of; (some think the Authors themselves understood [Page 66] not themselves.) Have I done the like and not kept as close to the terms of Plain-dealing, as the Title oblig'd me? Dis­cover it if I have. If not, I must give you another Call to repentance, for travelling with iniquity, conceiving mischief, and bringing forth falshood, Psal. 7.14. Is this to be mindful of whatsoever things are true, just, honest, pure, lovely, vertuous, and of good report? (Phil. 4.8.) and not rather to cast them behind your back and tread them under your feet as unwor­thy of your company? And if this be to walk according to that golden Rule, (Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, Matth. 7.12.) what is it to walk as directly contrary to it as your feet can carry you? The Rule, you know, was made by the best and greatest Law-giver that ever lived on Earth, and was publickly deliver'd in the best Sermon that ever was preached. The Justice, Equity and Truth of it has been confessed by all that ever heard it. Severus the Emperor was so greatly pleas'd with it that on all occasions to which it is proper (which are not a few) he had it in his mouth. On the Walls of his Palaces and Publick Buildings he caus'd it to be written; chose it for the Motto of his Banners, and gave order to have it pro­claim'd by his Heraulds when any of his Soldiers or other Subjects were condemned to be punished with death or o­therwise (according to the nature of the Crime) for doing Wrong. This Sentence, had you heeded it (in hope that you'l better remember it hereafter, I have said and will say the more of it,) would have made you less active in find­ing fault without Cause (as above-said) and a great deal more willing to be passive in hearing your own real faults related, without studying and seeking Revenge, as both City and Country can tell you have done, whatever (to make it the worse) you promised to the contrary.

Will you hear what a late Author has discoursed in his application of the Golden Rule before prais'd to several pur­poses and occurrences of Life? Like or leave it, thus it isPage 74, 75. of a little Treatise, call'd, The Gol­den Rule, &c. explain'd.: ‘No Man that consults this Oracle, will find in his heart to oppress his Neighbor by Power and Interest, or vex him with Law-Suits— or make use of Summum Jus [much less of Nullum Jus, as the case with you was.] and the ri­gour of Laws to ruin his very Enemy. If he does, He tells [Page 67] you farther of a Chancery or Court of Equity within him to reverse the Proceedings and revenge the Contempt of its Authority.’ Shortly; That the Nature of the Rule right­ly applied, ‘Is to determin us to just and righteous, to fair and candid and ingenuous dealings.’ And to press the ob­servation of it the better, among other advantages to be reaped by keeping close to it, names this for one, (pag. 76.) That (tho' this single Precept, of doing as we would be done unto, is far from being the sum of all Religion, as some (whom he calls) conceited Moralists would have it esteem'd: (pag. 18.) whereas in truth it only comprehends in few words what the Law and the Prophets have more large­ly deliver'd in setting forth the duty of man towards man, and not toward God and man both; yet however) ‘it gives the publick stamp and value to piety and devotion towards God, forasmuch as without conspicuous regard to this Rule in our intercourse with men, the most glo­rious pretences of piety towards God signifie nothing ei­ther with God or men. To be wonderfully devout in a peculiar form or mode of worship, without honesty and ingenuity in our dealings with men, will be lookt upon as the hypocritical acting of a part, or at best as being bigot­ted to a certain mode, without any true notion or sense of Religion. In a word, to make the most glorious profes­sion, and to espouse the precisest Sect and Party, without an equal regard to this, will at least be looked upon as an effect of pride and singularity, and be more than suspected as a cloak for knavery, (pag. 77.) For of all Religions in the World, Christianity is that of all other, which he can make the least pretence to— Which an Heathen, but ingenious observer of the genius of the Christian Religion, gives this account of: Nil nisi justum suadet & & lene, pag. 78.’ [Wherein he confesseth, that the Na­ture of it is to stir up to Justice and Mildness, not to Wrong and Violence.]

If this be too little, take that which follows (at no great distance, pag. 80, 81.) to supply the defect. Which is this: ‘Certainly there is nothing like down-right honesty, to give reputation to Religion; insomuch, that it is not only the most popular Argument to recommend it by, but is able [Page 68] to perswade a man to the most improbable Doctrin could he be convinced, that this would be the fruit of it. But on the other side, when men shall highly pretend to De­votion, and yet appear not only disingenuous and unjust, but unmerciful, cruel and sanguinary too, [This last Ad­jective, Sir! being ten thousand times worse than that of Catullus which you know of, is nothing too hard for the case under consideration.’ If you doubt it, look into 1 John 3.15. where you'l find, that hatred is murther, dispositive & in affectu, si non executive & in effectu: and remember the threatnings which have many times been breathed out by one of your Confederates, approved, no doubt, by you and the rest; about which there are many things to be said before I leave you.] ‘an indifferent man will be tempted to be of that poor Indian's mind, [the Prince of Cuba, if I mistake not,] who would not go to Heaven when he was told, that such a sort of men were there.’ If the Spa­niards, whose Pride, Cruelty and Covetousness, he and his Country-men had suffered so much by, went to Heaven, as they boasted, he thought it better to be any where else than there.

You perceive Sir! I hope, (if not, your skil in Morals, or Opticks, if you will, is small and it is but lost labor to send you any more Eye-salve,) how much you have erred and strayed from that golden Rule which forbids you to do that to another which you would not suffer from him, in laying to my charge things which I never knew nor thought of, while you your self would not hear from me things which the World, you know, knows of. Take heed for the future of departing from it. Being short, it is easily remembred; be­ing plain it is soon understood; being just and equitable why should it not be observ'd?

But I may not talk longer with you of these matters.

In the last place, (for it happens in scanning your Bill as in reading an Anatomy Lecture on a dead Corps, where the Body begins to smell before the head has been sufficiently discourst of;) if you could not hinder the common Enemy of Mankind from putting it into your heart, (or if without his help, you were bad enough of your self) to imagine that I maliciously devised and intended to bring into hatred and [Page 69] contempt not only the Government and Governors of the Church of England, but the Government and Governors of the State and Commonwealth, &c. likewise, as you farther calumniate: why should you suffer such vain thoughts (as the Scripture some­times calls as bad as bad may be,) to lodge within you, and not wash your heart as clean of them, as the Pharisees of old washed their hands before they thought it lawful to eat? Know you not that the thought of foolishness is sin (Prov. 24.9.) which needs to be forgiven (Acts 8.22.) and from which (being, as it is, a Branch of that Filthiness of the Spirit which is spoken of 2 Cor. 7.1.) you must be purged, before holiness in the fear of the Lord can be perfected? Have you need to be taught that some of those secret faults which the Prophet prayed to be cleansed from (Psal. 19.12.) are evil thoughts? That by them, as well as by wicked words and deeds, a man is defiled? Matt. 15.19, 20. that they ought to be hated (Psal. 119.113.) expell'd and cast out of the heart? Must not be nourished, cherished and consen­ted to, if you mean to be saved? Jer. 4.14. If you know these things, I cannot imagine wherefore you should think I maliciously devised and intended to do what your Bill speaks of, in the place last mention'd, if it was not for want of Cha­rity which thinketh no evil (without sufficient ground to su­spect it,) 1 Cor. 13.5. But here, I am sure there is none, and I make no question but that you thought and think so too. Which if you did and do, what Apology can be made or found for your hateful Hypocrisie in thinking one thing and say­ing another in so grand and weighty a Case? To have thought and not said it had been bad enough, being contra­ry to Charity, which is not light of belief, or apt, without good reason to be suspitious; but to say and not think it is worse, being a Sin of Wilfulness, whereas wrong Suspition hath somewhat of weakness to excuse it a little.

Whatever some think (how can I tell that you are not one of that number?) You have seen that thoughts are no­thing so free as they take them to be. The searcher of all hearts, from whom no secret can be hid. will severely judge those who judge not themselves for thinking amiss. Let me next shew (having no reason to think you will otherwise consider and apply it to the case in hand,) that words, (espe­cially [Page 70] such groundless, causeless, malicious, scandalous and slanderous words as I find in your Bill,) are somewhat more than Wind, whatever they commonly say, or how favoura­ble soever you may be to those, because your own.

Here you have given me occasion to ask you farther whether your Tongue is your own, to speak what you please and of whom you list, especially of one who so little, so not at all deserves it? Is no body Lord over you by whom, no Law above you, by which you may be called to account for this lawless Liberty of accusing the Innocent? Should you never be question'd for it while you live, did you never hear of a Time when hard Speeches shall as surely be judg'd and sen­tenc'd as ungodly deeds? (Jude 15.) and when idle words shall no less be accounted for than evil works? (as the Judge himself hath told you) Matt. 12.36. Where the idle word spoken of being interpreted by that Branch of Hyperbole which sometimes expresseth a thing in lefs (as at other times in greater) words than the matter strictly requires, [as hath once already, on another occasion, been noted, and is useful, if not needful to be farther observed in this place. So the vilest Sinners are called but vain People or idle Fellows. Psal. 26.4. Judg. 9.4. and the greatest sins (as Perjury and Idolatry) but vanity. Exod. 20.7. Jer. 2.5, 8. The most damnable deeds, but unfruitful works. Ephes. 5.11. and as wicked words as can be spoken; such as the greatest Seducers have used to draw their hearers into sins of the deepest Colour and Tincture, have no worse name than vain words imposed on them. Ephes. 5.6, compared with 3, 4, 5th. Verses of the sams Chapter,] it will signifie such hateful and, at least, designedly hurtful Speech as you have used in your Bill. If you take it in the common sense, as Jerom (ad loc.) who expounds it to be Verbum quod nequaquam aedificat audi­entes, an unedifying word; such as betters not the hearers of it in a spiritual manner: Or as Gregory the great, as they call him, somewhat more mildly resolvesApud. A­quin. ad loc. it to be, Verbum quod sine loquentis utilitate dicitur & audientis, A word which neither profits the Speaker nor Hearer of it; (under­standing it thus, I say,) it makes not your Case the better but worse. For if idle, frivolous, fruitless words (which, if they do no good, do no hurt however, in the sense now [Page 71] spoken of,) are sufficient to provoke the displeasure of a righteous Judge, how much more will such dangerous ca­lumnies as your Bill consisteth of, incense him?

To speak but this once more, on this occasion: To talk much and do little, to object a great deal and prove nothing (like the Pharisees, whom Christ in this place had to do with, v. 24.) is unquestionably included in the sense of [...], idle, as derived from [...]. And what hinders (for here it is modest to doubt, where I follow no Guide) that this idle word ( [...] quasi [...]) should be verbum ineffi­cax vel effectu carens) therefore called idle, because it was vain and ineffectual to the purpose which the Pharisees intended it for? Which was, to perswade the multitude, that He act­ed by the Devil's assistance in casting out Devils, and not by the Spirit of God, v. 24. This they said, but could not prove, and therefore talked idly. And because the people were so far from believing what they objected, that on the contrary they magnified the power of God by which that and the rest of his Miracles were wrought, therefore the word which his enemies had spoken, was idle. Now saith Christ, in effect, to those cursed Objecters, Tho' the word which you have spoken against me, is but vain, idle and in­effectual talk (sufficiently malicious indeed, but not mis­chievous enough to make the multitude think as ill of me as your wicked design was to perswade them,) yet I say unto you, That every such idle word which men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of Judgment. Tho' your words have done me no such hurt as you purposed, yet you must not think you are guilty of no sin in speaking them: but because your design was ill, and the naughtiness of your hearts hath been discover'd by the nature of your words (which are not the less blasphemous for being idle, v. 31.) you shall surely be accountable for them.

May not I likewise say to you, Tho' your words are vain and idle, (the Book which you accuse me for, being able to confute them,) yet because they were written with a wicked design of making the World believe that I was guilty of what I never as much as thought of: be sure you shall render an account of them in the day of Judgment? This, perhaps, some of you dread not much, but would think your selves [Page 72] pretty safe (like I know not who, that desir'd to be try'd by the twelve Apostles, till whose coming, because he was told it would be long first, he said he could tarry well enough,) should you never be brought to another reckoning. But if you know not the penalty of promoting a false suggestion which you cannot make good by sufficient proof, there are in England who can teach you, tho' 'tis now too late to learn it gratis, as in time you might have done: vid. 38 Edw. 3.9. You resolved, it seems, to cast at least a Cart-load of Dung upon a Frog for hopping too near you; But your wis­dom had been shewn in considering before-hand how much more noysom the smell was like to prove, than the little Ani­mal could be troublesom.

That dangerous Book which you helped to give the Au­thor an occasion of composing (and has partly been the cause of all this farther talk) you say that I published and dispersed, whereas divers people that sought far and near for it, had never seen it to this day, had not you your selves (by promises never worthy in my opinion to be trusted, had they otherwise deserved regard,) gotten several Copies into your hands without my knowledge or allowance, and then helped such as you thought would be irritated to do me a mischief, if they could, to the sight and perusal of it.

Now you have it, be pleas'd to take the pain of looking on the 53 Page of the Special Account, &c. which tells you of an angry man who objected against a Book of St. Jerom's (de Virgin. conserv.) that in it he had aspersed every Order, De­gree and Profession of Christian People; in a word, the whole Church all the World over (if that is the English of Ʋniversa Ecclesia,) in the filthiest manner he could; tho' Sulpitius Severus (a better Judge than Ruffinus) confessed he had spoken but truth, and St. Jerom himself after thirty Years space saw no cause to repent his writing it. Just ano­ther such Accusation (as like it as one Egg or Fig is like another,) is this which you bring against me; and as much reason after so many Years past, (could I hope to live so long) I should have to repent of what I have written. I dare say (unless you love Mony as much as your brother-Doctor, never before prais'd, nor ever like to be, for ought I can see, as deeply concern'd in the Contents of it as he is,) you would glad­ly [Page 73] pay the Cost of printing it ten times over, had you no more cause to repent of what you have printed, published and exposed (Books, Author and all) to Publick View and Censure.

Know you not, Sir! whose work it is to accuse the Bre­thren? and wherefore he is called their Accuser? Rev. 12.10. Is it fit for you to be like him, and worse? For they are not his Brethren whom he accuseth: But if the Church of Eng­land is your Mother, you have clearly been guilty of sitting and speaking against your Brother, and slandering your own Mo­ther's Son, like that wilful sinner, Psal. 50.20. who is therefore forbidden to preach God's Laws, declare his Statutes, or speak of his Covenants, Ver. 16. Have not you likewise given your mouth to evil, as he did? and hath not your tongue framed deceit, like his? Ver. 19. (or, according to the for­mer translation, set it forth?) Yes, that you have to some pur­pose, tho' to no good end.

Let me therefore ask you, Was not I likewise Author of all the hard Words, Strange Sentences, odd Speeches and Passages in Prynn's Soveraign Power of Parliaments, Ruther­ford's Rex Lex, Milton's Iconoclastes, (written in oppo­sition to King Charles the First's Eicon Basilice) and Good­win's Defence of the High Court of Justice, (so called) which he names [...] [...] he should have said, to make a true and pro­per composi­tion of two Greek words into one. For by what authority or reason comes the little Greek [...] into that hysteron-proteron-term? Was not the Genitive Case fit to stand before the Sub­stantive that govern'd it? But the man's mind was so intent on the Vindication of what he had undertaken, to justifie, that he forgot his Grammar-Rules. Were not you likewise, when this wretchedly-wicked-Bill was drawn, so bent to render me odious (had it been in your power) by as base, unchristian, ungodly, unpriestly an Accusation as you could, (Did you think that this would diminish and not increase your hateful hypocrisie, too far discover'd before?) that you never minded how it could be proved; as if your bare word had been enough to make the innocent guilty. What! have you ever a little ly­ing Levite, Knight or Priest of the Post more at hand? Or on what else was your hope fixed? The Naked Truth I know you are no friend to.; And did I not stand at their Elbows, while those rare Pieces were writing, and dictate the worst part especially to them; being then but five or seven Years old, or thereabout?

This you may say as truly, as, that I devis'd and design'd to bring into hatred and contempt the Government and Governors of the State and Common-wealth of this Kingdom, when there was not the least occasion in my way to write of either.

These things consider'd, I shall not wonder hereafter, that Virgilius, a German Bishop, was thought and pronounced guilty of Heresie, for holding the terrestrial Globe to be inhabited by Antipodes, or that Roger Bacon, that learned Fryer, was mistaken for a Conjurer by such as were no well-wishers to the Mathematicks: nor that C. Furius Cresinus, in Pliny Nat. Hist. l. 18. c. 6. was accused of Witchcraft, because his little field yielded him more fruit and greater increase than many greater and larger pieces of ground, belonging to his neigh­bors, produced; (The true cause of the difference was not, that he witched away other folks fruits into his own field, as was objected, but that he took more pain in helping the earth to be fruitful, than any of the neighborhood were willing to undergo, as he shewed, atque omnium sententiis absolutus est.) At these things, I say, I shall not hereafter wonder: Igno­rance, in many cases, can do much; But what will not envy and malice offer at? How can ill-will speak well? or who can hope that so restless a spirit as that of revenge is, should be quiet? Yet remember, I pray, to whom Vengeance-belongeth, and whose work it is to repay, Rom. 12.19. For why should poor feeble mortals meddle with what they cannot master? Their wrath and rage is too great, their wisdom and goodness too little to keep Vengeance within due bounds, should the liberty of avenging themselves be granted them. You will say, that it is not Revenge, but Justice, to prosecute Offenders by due course of Law. Which I grant. But then let me tell you, (what will hinder this Saying from doing you service;)

1. ‘That he who resolves to use all advantage of human Laws, which in such matters against his brother he can take, might as well forswear the Gospel, as a famous man (whose words I beseech you to read again and again, before you presume to dissent) hath deliver'd his judgmentDr. Jack­son of Justif. Faith, §. 2. c. 2. p. 154. 4to..’ The matters which he speaks of are indeed somewhat different from this; but not so unlike as can hinder his words from being applied to both cases.

2. That nothing but the Spirit of Revenge could move you to object what you cannot prove against me, whom you know to be no less a friend to the Christian Religion, &c. than the best of you all, (and more than the most of you,) [Page 75] as well as you know the difference between a Bill which you cannot justifie, and a Book which you dare not undertake to answer. For who hath most reason to be judged the best friend to any Cause? he that hath gained much or nothing at all by faithful adherence to it? And what but this evil Spirit of Revenge hath made you breath out such a company of threatnings as again and again I am told of, like that young Pharisee (Acts 9.1.) whose example one would think you should now be too old and too wise to follow? I wish you no more hurt however than that you may prove as good Saints as he afterwards became and continued to his dying day. Such if you purpose to be, let it please you to consider a little, that he was not pleased to permit Christian Masters the liberty of threatning their servants, Who in those days were but slaves for the most part, if not alway: And if A [...]e­tius mistook not (as appears by Horace, Sermon. lib. 1. Sat. 3. Si quis eum servum, &c. In cruce Suffigat — that he did not,) were punishable at their Masters discretion with death it self, before the clemency, of he names not what Emperor, (Con­stantine, it is like, who abo­lished the death of the Cross, proper to slaves,) restrain­ed their power; which how­ever remained great enough afterward, reaching to stripes, bonds, imprisonments, and other severities. And if people, in such a case, might not be threaten'd by their Masters, what manner of people are you who pour out threatnings in gross and by whole-sale, against one who no more owes the debt of servile submission to any Master on earth, than any of you all; nor ever did? Ephes. 6.9. and withal to remember, that Women, Children, Witches and weak People (who can do least hurt) are most accustom'd to threaten; taking this too along with you, That as much as Virgil makes the famous Trojan afraid, when the furious Queen of Carthage threaten'd to haunt and persecute him after her death,

just as much and not a mite more I fear this tur­bulent, but impotent ebullition of that vindictive Spirit which over-rules you.

If you say, that you your self have not used such mena­cing Speeches as I write of, there is one of your Company (with whom I have yet a Crow to pull before we part,) who has done it with a witness (as by witnesses enough I am as­sur'd,) and I doubt not but 'tis Milk and Hony to the rest of you to hear the report of what he has said. Ten times worse, [Page 76] I believe that wordy thing has spoken in your hearing than ever I heard of. Did you ever reprimand him, and not ra­ther incourage and help him to vomit up the worst words in his Belly?

3. To your objection, which I have not yet forgotten or ended with, I say farther, That to proceed by due Course of Law, is that which you have not sought, but declined. Wherefore else when I brought a Certiorari in order to a fair and legal Trial of the whole business in debate before equal and indifferent Judges, did you get a Procedendo to bring it back again to your own Bar? You'd doubtless be Par­ties, Witnesses, Judges, Jurors and all, if you could. Little if any thing less than that, you designed, if I had not been helped afterward with a Certiorari, non obstante the Procedendo. Had not one of you the confidence (it is no new thing to hear him speak greater absurdities than that,) to tell me that I fled the Justice of the Court by taking that method? As tho' the truest Bills of Information or Indictment that are brought against the vilest Fellows that can be, were not wont to be tried by appealing from a lower to an higher Court? (when the Party accused thinks it best.)

Hereafter be advised to please Children with trifles (such trifling Promises as you made to get Plain-dealing supprest) and fright them with bug-Bears and Tales of Goblins; But think not that elder People will be so serv'd.

It would now be time to take leave and be gon, but that your aukward way of working with such odd Tools as have been your Instruments in this whole business, must by no means be omitted. One of 'em as flat, insipid and dull a Railer as ever presumed to put on a Gown (to disgrace the long Robe,) ‘Introrsum turpis, speciosus pelle decora;’ witness his proud, insolent, supercilious, outragious, scorn­ful, inhuman and worse than brutish Behavior (the poor Ani­mals alas! cannot help it; Their rage is natural; His was voluntary, studied, premeditated, and therefore inexcusable,) on the 26th. of April 88, in the Castle of Exon, where I met him in the way (he placed himself there for the nonce, I [Page 77] sugpose) as I went to remove the Trial of your Bill from that to another Court by a Certiorari: There, in a rude, abrupt manner, as soon as I came within hearing, in the presence of I know not how many Spectators and Auditors (like a right Scold [...] and as bawling Fellows and brawling People use to do, in Trivio, not regarding time, place, company, or any thing else of Decorum,) he assaulted me so furiously with such coarse, fustian Language and dirty, dunstable Speech, made up of Contumelies and opprobrious TermsScoundrel Pitiful Fel­low! and the like, as if he had been talking to a Tinker's or Tanner's Son, &c. that if Shimei, Doeg, Rabshakeh or such like Fellows had been living, no competent Judge that heard him would have thought that he needed their help. Thersites himself as great a Babler and Railer as Homer makes him, seems in my opinion somewhat modest and civil in comparison of this Blatero (locutelius, linguax, loquax, or how shall I call himCompophacelorremon, Pro­petopicroglossus, or some such new Name must be devised to fit him; ordinary words will not serve the turn.?) as his words were more weighty.That one line [...] (supposing him and not the Poet to have been the Author of it,) being more worth than all that this perpetual Talker ever did or will speak of his own. Was Homer's man [...]; i. e. an over-grown wordy Fellow without wit? a loud Talker? obstreperous like a Jay? Quid enim est aliud [...]; Aul. Gell. lib. 1. cap. 15. and the worst of all the company that came against Troy? Let this clamarous Concionator shew me a worse than himself, if he can, that ever came to the Bar; or another, in this re­spect, more like Thersites than himself is. It is not long since, after all the noise he could make (which was not little) in a Trial at the Guild-Hall in Exon, that the Judge then sitting was told, That not a word of all that he had said was true. At the same time, or not long be­fore, an unquestionably skilful Lawyer, in open Court, told him to his Face, That he never met with a fouler Practiser than he was.

To return to what I was saying about his manner of ac­costing me, in the place before-mention'd. When words failed him, he discover'd the rage and madness of his mind by grinning and making a noise like a Dog (not for want of better Examples than those, Psal. 59.6, 14, but for lack of a will to follow them, or of wit to do better,) and by gnashing upon me with his Teeth, like those cursed Hypocrites, [Page 78] Psal. 35.16; those cruel Persecuters; Lament. 2.16; those desperate and blood-thirsty Villains, Acts 7.54. And as if he had purposed to shew himself another such Enemy as poor Job complains of, Chap. 16.9, 10, by sharpning his Eyes, (in Homer's phrase [...]) and gaping upon me with his mouth, as well as by gnashing with his Teeth, he shewed what man­ner of man (or what other Creature shall I say?) he is.

Divers distracted People I have seen in Bedlam and else­where, whose looks were never more wild, nor their words more odd and senseless than his at that time were. For as soon as I had spoken to one of those many Spectators and Auditors who saw and heard him, to mark what he said and how he behav'd himself; his next words were That such a one (cal­ling the Person by name) had more wit than to be a witness for so pitiful a Fellow (as here again he said I was.)

Quae quibus anteferam? What shall I now set down first of those many things which his ill Behavior, his Rage, Wrath, Malice, and more than short madnesi hath given me cause to write? Whether he was purposely sent, or came of his own accord, to urge me as vehemently and provoke me as rudely as he could, laying wait for me and seeking to catch something out of my mouth that he might accuse me, (like those captious Opponents, Luke 11.53, 54.) I cannot tell: However it was, That I might not by answering a Fool accor­ding to his folly, be like him; (Prov. 26.4.) or by casting Stones at a Dog for barking, (as Children use to do,) make him twice more troublesome than before: And because there's a better way to tame and hamper an Ass that kicks, than by recalcitration; shortly, because it is better to suffer than offer wrong; and he that is second in such kind of talk is as bad at least as the beginner, if not worse: On these Principles I gave him not as bad as he brought, nor rendred evil for evil, or railing for railing (1 Pet. 3.9.) as easie as it was to retaliate, (a more obnoxious Adversary being hard to be found;) but chose rather to follow the best and grea­test Example of Meekness that ever was or will be heard of, who when he was reviled, reviled not again, 1 Pet. 2.23.

The contrary course (that of giving two, or if it be possible, ten words of this kind, for one,) is esteemed cou­ragious. As great madness as it is, there are who think it [Page 79] to be manliness: And altho' it is Dog-hood (to bark and bite, to snarl and fly in the Faces of those that have anger'd us; or at best is no better than the weakest sort of Woman-hood, being that which every Scold understands, and is most pra­ctised by the worst of that wretched Crew;) yet they call it Man-hood; as if that Royal Fugitive, whose courage was unquestionable and undaunted when a worthy Cause needed or called for it, had been ever the less stout for not answering that shameless, rascally Railer (2 Sam. 16.5, 6, 7, 8,) a word, but permitting him rather to say what he pleased without interruption— ver. 10. And who can imagin that one of his worthy Successors neglected to answer that blas­phemous, black-mouth'd Fellow (whom the King of Assyria sent to tire his patience and not to try it only) for lack of matter or words, or for fear of incurring his farther displea­sure, and not to avoid the giving him an occasion of blas­pheming the more? 2 Kings 18.36.

Had I judg'd it lawful to treat him in his own Languge, yet it seemed not expedient for a double reason, which a wi­ser man than I believe he loves to be familiar with, hath gi­ven his Reader. Ecclus. 8.3, 11. Fire is not quench'd but in­creased by laying on more Fuel; and it is not culpable but com­mendable to cut off occasion from those who desire occasion of do­ing harm, or being mischievous. 2 Cor. 11.12. When malice, which knows too well how to work deceitfully, would undermine by contumely, it is but prudence to coun­termine it by silence. There is one, saith the Wiseman before prais'd (Ecclus. 20.5, 6, 7.) that keepeth silence and is found wise: And another by much babling becometh hateful. Some man holdeth his Tongue because he hath not to answer; and some keepeth silence knowing his time. A Wiseman will hold his Tongue till he seeth opportunity: But a Babler and a Fool will re­gard no time. A wiser than he told us, There's a Time to keep silence as well as a Time to speak; (Eccles. 3.7. where hisWhich I will not arro­gate to my self, tho' I know not from whence I had it. observation, whoever first made it, That a time of silence goes before that of speaking; with Jerom's short infe­rence, Discamus itaque— prius non loqui, ut postea ad loquen­dum ora reseremus, Let us first learn not to speak that silence may teach us how to speak, is worth the remembring.) In another Scripture we read of an evil time wherein the pru­dent [Page 80] shall keep silence; (Vid. Amos 5.13.) And experience teacheth that in the matter of reprehension (which few care to meddle with, and many, if not the most spoil in handling,) the Circumstance of Time as well as of Place is greatly to be heeded. For who that understands himself will or can think a reproof well bestow'd and not cast away on a drunken Beast when he reels, or a proud, passionate fool while he rails? In that evil time, the prudent without question, will hold their Peace, and wait for a better opportunity, like that rich Churl's discreet Wife (no less commended for her good understanding than her beautiful Countenance, 1 Sam. 25.3.) whose sottish foolish Husband was so shamefully overflown with Wine and overcome with passion, that in­stead of relieving David and his Men, he railed on them in as ill and unworthy a manner as a hot-headed-fool could do. Ver. 10, 14, 15, 16: Yet the good Woman said nothing to him, less or more till the morning light appeared—ver. 36. It had been but lost labor to tell him of his danger till his drunken fit was over: But as soon the Wine was gone out (v. 37.) and the Sot was come again to himself, she took him to task and made him so sensible of his Folly that the cowardly, covetous Fool neither knew what to do or say, but suffered his Heart to sink into his Heels.

The proud is as he that transgresseth by wine, (Vid. Habak. 2.5.) is as prone to quarrel and contend, as apt to rail and revile as the veriest Sot that ever opened his mouth to take in more drink than his Belly could hold, or his Brains master. I say therefore, let what will be the Cause of rail­ing; Pride or Drink, Wine or Wrath stirred up by Pride, the Case is the same to a wise Reprover. While passion swag­gers and bears sway, rants and rages like a tameless Panther or masterless Tyger, reason can no more be heard than the humming of a Bee in Clap of Thunder. He must therefore ad­journ his Work to some other time, who intends not to lose his Labor.

It is much more charitable to believe that the Scum of the Pot which boiled so fast some Months since, is pretty well wasted by this time (I wish there were reason to hope it hath put out the Fire; to believe it hath done so, is more charitable, I say) than to seek out the Truth of it is easie: [Page 81] Supposing however, because I cannot be sure it is so, that this little soon-heated Pot is grown cooler and made cleaner than of late it was; let me venture to draw near and touch it without danger of scalding or fouling my Fingers, if I can. If I err and am deceived in thinking better than the business will bear, let me find you favourable in granting me this one request who am not like to trouble you with another.

Can you tell me whether he who hath lately stumbled so shamefully (into greater Sins than he thinks of, as before I leave him, now I am in his company as little as I like it, he must be convinc'd,) for want of love, which like light would direct him to go more safely and surely, (1 John 2.10, 11.) is so much in love with darkness that he never intends to walk in the light? As lunatick, frantick or phrenetick as but little while since he was, hath he not some lucid Intervals however, wherein he may be talked with? If he hath, be pleased to ask him whether he knows the meaning of Racha (the sense of which word he so frequently used in railing at me, on the day and in the year before-specifi'd?) If he is not a stranger to the signification of the Term, who gave him leave to make so bold with it? (Especially being mis­applied; which renders him a Lyar and Slanderer no less than a Railer?) Hath he gotten a Procedendo to continue the same evil Course? Or a non obstante to save him harmless from the fear of that Judgment which belongs to the Trans­gressors of that Noble, Evangelical Exposition of the sixth Commandment, which Christ himself was Author of? Mat. 5.22. If he cannot tell what to make of the word (which is not of Kin to his own Barragown) and hath sinned out of ignorance (to extenuate his Fault a little,) in using the sense of it so familiarly; let him know that it signifies a vain, empty, worthless, silly, shallow, pitiful Fellow: But admonish him withall hereafter to keep his Church a a littleA great deal I should have said; For I never yet heard but that he was, if not a Contemner, yet a neglecter of publick Worship: Nor could hitherto learn to what Congregation he belongs, or with whom he communicates in Sacris. better, and to take it for a warning [Page 82] that he boast no more of his Scripture-knowledge, as if he needed no Teacher. Wiser men by many degrees than ever he will be, I am confident, think otherwise.

If he hath not learned how great and dangerous a sin Rail­ing is, direct him to 1 Cor. 5.11. where hee'l find that a Railer is no less to be rejected from the Sacred Supper (which some take to be the sense of Eating, in that place,) or accor­ding to others, is no more to be accepted as a fit companion for modester and better Christians to be familiar with, in common Conversation) than a Fornicator, a te­nacious, or rather rapacious, covetous Villain As [...] is there judged by the learnedst In­terpreters to signifie. Vid. Dr. Ham. ad loc., an Idolater, Drunkard or Extortioner. With such, (no less with a Railer than any of the rest) the Apostle forbids, as Grotius Cum talibus, id est, a­deo vitiosis & Christianorum nomen usurpantibus, ne epulas quidem habete communes: quod minimum est inter amicitiae Signa. Grot. ad loc. there notes, to make as much as a common Meal: And Estius gathers how grievous a sin Railing is, from the Apostle's condemning it to the same pu­nishment with those other Vices there spe­cified. [...] est qui facilis est ad convitia & maledicta— Criminis hujus gravitatem disce, quod communem cum reliquis poenam mereatur. Estius ad loc.

In the next Chapter (1 Cor. 6.9, 10.) the same fault is again found in as ill company as the Devil himself can de­sire; Fornicators, Idolaters, Adulterers, Effeminate, Sodomites, Thieves, Covetous, Drunkards, Revilers and Extortioners being coupled together and excluded, one and all, from the King­dom of God, which none that are unrighteous must hope to in­herit. Of all that cursed Catalogue which soever is the most unrighteous, Revilers help to fill up the black Bedrol. The same Apostle, being his own Interpreter, takes reproach to be as great an abuse as smiting on the face, 2 Cor. 11.20. Where he speaks not (de alapis, sed contumeliis) of smiting with the hand or Fist of Wickedness, like that false Prophet, 1 Kings 22.24; but of smiting with the Tongue (Jer. 18.18.) as more Expositors than one have observ'd out of Chrysostom, And so the Apostle himself expounds it, in telling them that he spake of reproach, a soon as smiting on the face had been mention'd, as as appears by the next words, Ver. 21.Statim ex­plicat qua rati­one fieret (ut quis Corinthios. in faciem caederet) cum subjicit secundum ignobilitatem dico; id est cum quis vos contemnit & despicit velut ignobiles. Pineda ad Job. 16.11. num. 3. If [Page 83] he likes it the better for this, and would mightily be plea­sed with Pineda's descant, (Ne{que} vero minus gravis est contu­melid quam colaphus,) which implies, that contumely is no small degree of revenge; call upon him to look back upon those other places of Scripture before pointed at, and tell me how he likes to render himself unworthy of Christian com­pany, and unfit to inherit the Kingdom of God. If, because it looks big and imperious, he loves to be handling the Rod of pride, as exprobration, reproach and railing are called, by the common consent of Interpreters who have opened the sense of that Scripture-phrase; let him know moreover, That this Rod is not wont to be found in a Wiseman's hand, but a Fool's mouth, as a Wiseman indeed hath told us, Prov. 14.3. And if Michael the Archangel durst not bring a railing accusation against the Devil himself in contending with him; (Jude 9.) which of those two Angels he hath shewed himself most like, it is strange if he sees not, stran­ger if he regards not.

If it is not more than needs, it is more than leisure per­mits, to describe the one half of those evil effects which this cursed Cause hath been guilty of. To name but one or two more, before I come to assault him on another side, and beat him out of his strongest hold, which I doubt not but that he most confides in: make him sensible, if you can, That rail­ing is commonly seen to put friendship so out of tune as can hardly, if at all be helped or brought in again. And is worse, in the judgment of Ben-Sirach, than to draw a sword at a friend. Which altho' it should be done, he forbids to despair of re­turning to favor: but whatever hope of a reconciliation after other fallings out, is left; there is no friend so fast or sure, whom upbraiding, or pride, or disclosing of secrets, or a treache­rous wound will not cause to depart, Ecclus 22.20, 21, 22. Is upbraiding so intolerable among friends? How much less will others indure it?

If none of these Remedies will remove his distemper, let him take a Pagan Doctor's advice, (which is not to be despi­sed, because such a one gives it, but the rather to be re­garded because suitable to his case. (St. Paul himself, as much skill as he had, now and then made use of Heathen Phy­sicians [Page 84] to help recover his Patients.) His advice, if he may be heard, is this: ‘Loripedem rectus derideat, Aethiopem albus. Juven. Sat. 2.’

It is not good, they say, to halt before a Cripple: But to hear a Cripple find fault with another's lameness, and fall out with him for not walking upright, is intolerable.

That a despicable Adversary, who himself is exposed to more exceptions than a Friend can, or an Enemy will hide, should insult; is his own, and not another's shame. And he doth but reproach himself who rails at a silent hearer, if an old Comedian said right.

In the next place, That his strong City (Prov. 10.15.) may be besieg'd and taken; his high Wall (Prov. 18.11.) scal'd or batter'd and broken down: If his Wealth (for 'tis said he has gotten Mony,) hath been the cause of his insolent, imperious and impudent carriage towards me; be not grie­ved to ask him these (not idle but material) Questions, nor to tell him these plain Truths, or give him these needful Cau­tions which hereafter follow. To which a special Direction (for a Conclusion) may be added. The Questions to be put, are these:

1. How much Wealth makes a rich man? To pass by Marcus Crassus, P. Clodius, Lentulus, Seneca and other Ro­mans, whose vast Incoms and Expences are famously spoken of in History; was Pythius the Son of Atys the Lydian, rich, whoHerodot. l. 7. could quarter Xerxes and all his Army (the greatest that ever was heard of) and assist him with 2000 Talents of silver, besides thirty three hundred thousand golden Da­ricks to help maintain the charges of the War; was he rich? The truth is, That as poverty consisteth not [...], in possessing but little Mony or Goods but [...] in a greedy or rather insatiable desire of more: so it is not one's having much, but his not coveting more that makes rich. A [Page 85] covetous, proud fool may have much, and yet be poor enough still, while he thinks it too little.

2. How much of this store (whatever it is,) he brought into the World with him, or hopes to carry out? Eccles. 5.15, 16.

3. Whether he thinks it as lawful to be proud and high-minded, as it is to be rich? Some (whom St. Austin calls Apo­stolicks, from a groundless imitation of what was practis'd at Jerusalem in the days of the Apostles, (Acts 4.32—) as Epi­phanius names them Apotacticks, [...], from their custom (and supposed duty) of renouncing the World, and disclaiming all right to the things of it;) have held it a damnable sin to call any worldly thing their own: But who ever thought it no sin to be proud of having any thing which the giver of all things denies us not the liberty of pos­sessing? 1 Tim. 6.17.

4. Whether he knows no difference between having and setting his heart upon riches? Psal. 62.10.

5. Whether he thinks it as tolerable to boast of them and trust in them, as to have them? Psal. 49.6.52.7. Mark 10.24.

6. Whether Clowns and Churls may not have as much and more of the World, than better bred and disposed People?

Did not Nabal, that rich Rustic, live prosperously In the He­brew Text no more is said, than Thus shall ye say to him that liveth: As if it were death and not life to be in want, as Da­vid then was. (1 Sam. 25.6.) while David was pinched with penury? Had not Doeg superfluities (what else means the multitude or abun­dance of his riches which we read of, Psal. 52.7?) while that worthy man whom he persecuted, was destitute of ne­cessaries?

7. Whether Thieves, Robbers, Murtherers and other Sin­ners may not be as rich or richer than honest People? Thence Chrysostom reasoned with the proud wealthy sinners of his Auditory, as followeth: ‘Thou thinkest highly of thy self, O man! because thou art rich. Wherefore, I be­seech thee, or for what reason? For Thieves, Robbers, Murtherers, Effeminate and Unclean Sinners, or any other indeed, may be wealthy.’ Why then art thou proud? Hom. 2. in cap. 1. ad Hebr.

It is not strange indeed, that bad peopleQuaestu & ob­tentu faciliores sunt (opes) ma­lis quam bonis. Lactant. l. 6. de ver. cultu. c. 6. should grow sooner and faster rich than good, as Lactantius hath observed that they do. The one care not how they get wealth, so they want it not: the other will rather go without it, than not come honestly by it.

8. Whether to have much Wealth and but little or no Wit, a great deal of Mony without a grain of Grace, or store of Grace and but little Mony, is rather to be desir'd? or most to be commended? Prov. 16.16.

9. Whether Gold and Silver, Mony and Goods, Houses and Lands, &c. are true and durable riches? Prov. 8.18. Luke 16.11. What he thinks, I know not, but the Scripture clearly puts a difference between these and another sort of lasting and real riches. In conformity to which Clemens of Alexandria doubted not to say, [...]. Strom. 6. p. 664. i. e. True riches [a conside­rable part, at least, of them] are abundance of good works, and poverty is the want of decent and becoming affections.

The things of the World, in common speech are called goods, as every one knows. But how little they deserve the name, the hurt which they frequently do, may teach us.Ego vero ne­go illud esse bo­num quod noceat habenti. Atqui divitiae possidentibus persaepe nocuerunt. Boeth. de Con­sol. lib. 2. Prosa. 5.

10. Whether he that hath most Mony or Vertue, Grace, or Gold, is richest?

11. Whether to have much other Coin, but none of that Gold tryed in the fire, which is spoken of, Rev. 3.18. is not pitiful poverty?

12. Whether to be rich in faith (James 2.5.) and good works (1 Tim. 6.18.) or in worldly goods, as they call them, is most praise-worthy?

13. Whether it is not easier to grow rich than good? and less labor to get mony than grace?

14. Whether more good people are not to be found a­mong the poor than the rich, as the World calls and distin­guisheth them? 1 Cor. 1.26. For too much experience hath taught us, that riches (in the common sense of the word) are irritamenta malorum & impedimenta bonorum, the [Page 87] helpers on of much sin and wickedness, and the hinderers of no little vertue and goodness. Eo fit ut pauperes & humiles Deo credant facilius, qui sunt expediti, quam divites qui sunt im­pedimentis plurimis implicati, imo catenati & compediti. Lactant. lib. 7. cap. 1. de Divin. praem.

15. Whether any but half witted People, or less, are wont to extol, admire and almost adore the Rich for no other reason but because they are rich? Hath not God placed the Earth under our Feet, that by treading upon it we may learn to Id circo pe­dibus nostris subjecta est (terra) ut calcanda nobis, non adoranda sit. Lactan. lib. 2. cap. 18. despise it? And wherefore was it that those zealous Christians who sold their Houses and Lands in the Apostles days, brought and laid down the Price paid them, at their Feet (Acts 4.35, 37.) but to shew that they valued Mony no more than the dust of their Feet? Recte ad pedes, quo deponi solent neglecta. Aret. ad loc.

16. What difference is there between a Fool and the wealthiest Man living, who hath nothing but Wealth to boast of, nor any thing but Riches to glory in? Jer. 9.23.

17. Wherefore should any Man think to justifie his Pride and Passion, Rage and Wrath by that which cannot profit in the day of wrath? Prov. 11.4. Not to speak of Craesus, were his Riches comparable to those of Crassus, whose Wealth was so great that he used to say, No man was rich who could not maintain an Army; would this make it lawful for him to say or do what he pleaseth?

18. Why should he be proud (like a Groom of his Ma­ster's Horse, or a Steward of his Lord's Lands and Mannors,) of that which is not his own, but another's? For who but an Ignoramus can think himself more than a Steward of any thing which the great Landlord of the World hath put or permit­ted to come into his hand? 1 Pet. 4.10. Quid de divitiis gloriamini nec veris nec vestris? Bernard. What strange Deafness is it which hears him not call it his Corn, his Wine, his Wool and his Flax which the wanton Woman (degene­rate Israel's true Type) abused? Hos. 2.9. Is it not like­wise his Silver and Gold, his Mony and Goods which other proud People have in their hands, look they never so big?

Because all that can be said will be too little, I fear, for him and little enough for better People whom I purposed if I could to profit by the Qustions propounded, (because of [Page 88] this I say,) many more of like moment might be added to these without fear of being or seeming tedious to a prudent Reader:

But remembring what remains to be done, I must cease to put more Questions, and proceed to some plain and un­questionable Truths, which I pray be pleas'd to tell him how­ever he takes them, who to my knowledge is a greater Ene­my to Plain-dealing than has been for his Credit.

The Truths to be told him are these:

1. That not to have much Wealth, but to get and use it well is praise-worthy. Omnia quae extra nos bona sunt—non ideo laudantur quod habuerit quis ea, sed quod iis honeste sit usus. Nam divitiae & potentia & gratia cum plurimum virium dent in utram­que partem, certissimum faciunt morum experimentum: Aut enim meliores propter haec aut pejores sumus. Quintil. Institut. Orat. lib. 3. cap. 7.

2. That Gold is a thing which every Fool is taken with, if Si­racides erred not. Ecclus. 31.7.

3. That a sound Body is as good as all Riches, Ecclus. 30.16. much better is mens sana in corpore sano, a sound mind which rules and governs such a Body.

4. That he who lays up Treasure for himself (on Earth) and is not rich towards God, is but ill provided for, Luke 12.21.

5. That worldly Wealth is none of the best Substance. We read of better, Heb. 10.34.

6. That as none of the Caesars (if Vespasian was not) were the better for being Emperors; so if one is the better for growing rich, more than ten to one are the worse. For di­vers pretended reasons whichTom. 5. Hom. 30. Quod nemo laeditur nisi à semet ipso. Chrysostom discourseth of, Riches are generally said to be desir'd. For divers purposes which cannot be had or attain'd without them they are ser­viceable. For the sake of one's Countrey, Kindred, Friends, Acquaintance, Strangers and all (to whom they may ren­der [Page 89] us useful and helpful) they are also desirable. This is the commonly pretended opinion which prevails both by Sea and Land, and is every where extold to the Skies. But I know, saith he, that it rather deserves to be called a flame than an opinion: A Flame which sets the whole World on fire, while no body labors to quench, but every one rather strives to increase it, by bringing more and more Fuel, day after day, to the Fire. For the Rich, who have most of the World, as earnestly desire more, as if they had nothing; the Poor are daily striving (and raging like People stark mad) to get as much Wealth as the Rich are possest of: and in all places, among all People the love of mony is so prevalent, that Friendship is trodden under Foot, the Bonds of Nature it self are broken, the greatest and nearest Kindred is despised, forsaken and forgotten for the sake of it. Like a wild, untamed Beast it rageth. Like a cruel imperious Mi­stress, it possesseth all hearts. No Barbarian is fiercer, no Tyrant crueller, nor any Whore more impudent. Every where it shews how void of Mercy and Pity, how rigid, terrible, turbulent, boisterous, impious and truculent it is. And tho' Bears, Lyons and Wolves are not savager, yet no­thing seems sweeter. As many Swords, Snares, Pits, Preci­pices, Rocks, Shipwracks and other dangers as it exposeth them to, they imbrace it not the less. For they love, like Swine, to wallow in Mire, and as Beetles and other filthy Flies, are much delighted in Dunghils; which the worse they smell the more they love. Thus, and otherwise more at large, he shews the reasons before-mention'd (by which the most would justifie their desire of Riches,) to be but pretended. After which he proceeds to discover the true Causes why the generality of People would be wealthy. And wherefore is it, but that the purposes of Pride, Luxury, Delicacy and Vo­luptuousness (which would otherwise fall to the ground and perish) may be served? And why do the Fingers of most Folk itch to be treasuring up Mony and Goods as fast as they can, but that they may be serv'd and honor'd, (ad­mir'd and almost ador'd,) and in hope of being fear'd by look­ing big and formidable to their Enemies, and by having Power at Will to be avenged of such as dare oppose them tho' never so justly? Setting aside these true and real reasons, there are not many, [Page 90] if any better, which can be given for that insatiable Thirst of growing rich which the most are subject to. For Riches make no man the wiser or soberer, the more meek or merciful, the more placid, gentle, continent, modest, virtuous or less vo­luptuous than he was without them; but on the contrary are of­ten seen to dispossess many good and commendable Qualities, that worse may take place. For what but Luxury, Fury, Wrath, Rage, Intemperance, Arrogance, Injustice, Pride and all bruitish Affections are the common Companions of Wealth? But these are reasons why it should not be desir'd, and not why it should, as after­ward he shews. That most are the worse and but few the better for it, hath been so often exemplified in all Ages, as makes it a plainer Truth than is fit to be wished it were.

7. That the richer a man is, the greater temptations he hath to grapple with, the more Enemies to encounter, the more sins and snares to beware of, the more thorns to take heed of that they hurt not his hands, feet, face, or whole body and soul too. For the cares, riches and pleasures of this mortal life are compared to Thorns; (Luke 8.7, 14.) whence a better Homilist than a hundred of 'em hath admonisht the rich to take heed of handling these Thorns to their hurt, as com­monly they do. For who, in times of peace are as proud, imperious, supercilious and voluptuous as they? who more for­getful of God? more apt to despise and oppress the poor, at such a time? When persecution ariseth who more timorous? or in greater danger of denying the Truth for fear of losing their Wealth? When their care of getting more is past, if ever it be while they live, their fear of sustaining the loss of what they have gotten, never leaves them. O praeclara opum mortalium beatitudo, quam cum adeptus fueris, securus esse desi­isti! Boeth. de cons. Philos. l. 2. cap. 5.

8. That an upstart rich Fellow is commonly the worst of his kind; the wickedest of all wealthy People, and in grea­test danger of doing himself hurt by medling with these Thorns. He hath all the Vices which other rich Folk have, and many more, as no mean Moralist hath observed, in descri­bing the difference between him and them.

9. That none is the nearer true happiness for being rich, nor the farther from it for being poor. Witness the rich Glutton, whose purple and fine Linnen with his daily delicious Fare, [Page 91] could not keep him from a place of Torments; and the poor Begger, whose Sores and Sickness added to his Poverty could not hinder him from resting in Abraham's Bosom (Luke 16.23) And that Pusillanimity, or weakness of mind and not Poverty makes the Poor so miserably bad and wicked as too often they are, Chrysostom shews, at large, in his last-prais'd Homily, Quod nemo laeditur, &c. where, expatiating according to his manner, he thought fit to tell his hearers, That Lazarus was not only very poor, but greatly afflicted with Sores and Diseases likewise, which made his Poverty the more bit­ter and hard to be born, his ulcerous Body requiring much help and many Remedies to heal it, which his indigency permitted him not to procure. So that Pain as well as Poverty molested and afflicted him. Either of the two alone is hard to be born; but when both meet together the Burthen seems intolerable. Yet to make it heavier divers other Considerations concurr'd. What the Eye never sees the Heart never rues. But he saw the rich man's Plenty, beheld the Fulness of his Tables, the frequen­cy of his Guests, and the Multitude of his Waiters, with his ge­nerous Wines, numerous Cooks, Troops of Parasites, Sets and Con­sorts of Musick, or whatever preparation can be made for Lux­ury. All this he beheld while he himself was pained with Sores, pinch'd and pin'd with Hunger, without a Crumb of Bread or Drop of Comfort administred to relieve him, tho' his weakness was such as disabled him to drive away the Dogs which licked his ulce­rous Legs Ita enim erat aegritudine re­solutus, ut ne­ipsos quidem canes valeret abigere. Chry­sost. ibid. (when at any time they troubl'd him:) Yet all this he suffered with such admirable patience, that he neither cur­sed nor railed; Not a bitter Speech, nor blasphemous or unlawful Word came out of his Mouth: But as Gold comes out of the fiery Furnace more bright and pure than the Refiner cast it in; So his pains and sufferings made his patience the more splendid and ex­emplary. Thence, whatever he indured in his Life-time, he was happy after Death. His sickness, pain, poverty and all could not render him miserable; as the rich Man's Wealth was unable to make him happy. The one was never the more remote from mise­ry by being rich, nor the other the farther off from happiness for being poor.

10. That a little which a righteous Man hath is better than the Riches of many wicked (proud, insolent, arrogant, self-con­ceited Fools.) Psal. 37.16.

[Page 92]11. That a good name (as little as they regard it who make haste to be rich) is rather to be chosen than great Riches, (Prov. 22.1.) which can be but for term of life, at most; whereas the other (a good name) is propia defunctorum pos­sessio, inherited after death.

12. That the rich have more reason to be humble than high-minded, more cause to be afraid than proud, as know­ing that the more hath been given them, the more is requir'd of them. The greater their Estaees are, the greater accounts they have to make how the Lord hath been honor'd with their substance; how much the better the poor have been for it, and how much good they have done with their Goods, Prov. 3.9.

13. That all the wealth in the World, all the Silver and Gold above or under ground, is unworthy to enter the Lists of comparison with Vertue. Which Heathens themselves (Pla­to, Plutarch and Julian too) having freely confessed, [...]. Plutarch. de cap. ex host ib. utilit. From one or other of those Authors Ju­lian, it is like, transcribed those words which are found in his third Oration. Pag. 384. [...]. what Christian will presume to deny it? That Apostate Pagan Emperor who should love and admire Mony, one would think, more than Christians, laughed at those who call such People rich as have [...]. ibid. store of Gold: And whereas Antiquity of Riches hath by some been made the ground of Honor and Nobility, he swore by Jupiter it was absurd that a Cook, Tanner, Shoe-maker, or Potter, should be held ig­noble still, whatever Mony he had gotten by his Trade or otherwise; and yet his Children after him nobilitated and honor'd for the sake of nothing else but the wealth which their Father left them. [...]; ibid.

14. That as none, in God's account, are excellent but such as excel in vertue; so none are rich but those who lay up Treasure in Heaven: Which none but they who are rich in Faith and good works, do. Nemo Deo pauper est, nisi [Page 93] qui justitia indiget; nemo dives nisi qui virtutibus plenus est. Lactan. 5.15.

15. That much, if not most of the World's wealth is a Treasure of Ʋnrighteousness. Mic. 6.10. For he who can best tell what it is, calls it the Mammon (or wealth) of Ʋn­righteousness, Luke 16.9; being that which is generally most possessed as well as most esteemed by unrighteous People: Unrighteously gotten, (their Houses are full of deceit; there­fore they are become great and waxen rich, Jer. 5.27.) or held and kept in Unrighteousness, as also the Cause of much more Unrighteousness than many without it would or could be guilty of. For thus I find, since this was written, the reason of the Phrase [...], expounded by Vata­blus, Beza and Grotius (on Luke 16.9.) The first of which reasons hath made me ambitious of being inform'd by such as know the Course of the World better than my self, what wrong or abuse it would be to say, That if the Course of Justice were not obstructed by wealthy People (who have com­monly the Conduct of her Affairs in their own hands,) Pri­sons would be fuller of rich than poor Malefactors? If it is not now true, I make no question but that in Chrysostom's days it was; when the rich were not worse, without question, than at present they are. He would not otherwise have said (in the Conclusion of his second Homily on Heb. 1.) ‘That if it were possible for human Laws to take as fast hold of rich sinners as of others, all Prisons would be filled with them: But this (he adds) besides many more, is a mischief which still waits on Wealth, that they who offend of malicious Wickedness, ab ultionibus contutentur, by the Mammon of Unrighteousness can make friends to protect them from deserved Punishment. Thence their Conscien­ces are daily wounded without any Remedy applied, while by being secure against the fear of temporal Punish­ment they sin without measure, having none to recal or restrain them.’

If the Case be now better, let some body for love or pity shew what store of rich oppressors (who in several respects are worse than common Thieves; which, were this a fit place, I would not omit to prove;) wealthy Common-Swear­ers, opulent Whoremongers, monyed Murtherers; or other scan­dalous [Page 94] Sinners who have store of unrighteous Mammon (to purchase them another sort of friends than the greatest friend of mankind that ever was spoke of, Luke 16.9.) have been made Examples in this or any other Age (I may al­most say) since Chrysostom's days.

In Cicero's time the Speech was in every one'sOmnium ser­mone pererebu­it, pecuniosum hominem, quam­vis sit nocens, neminem dam­nare posse. Pro­aem. Act. 1. in Verrem. mouth, That a monyed man, tho' guilty, could hardly, or not at all, be condemned. How much hath this bad matter been mended in Christian Courts of Judicature? I fear there is neerly, if not altogether, as much Cause to complain, That Might is too hard for Right, as ever.

16. That no measure of Wealth whatsoever can pull out the sting of Death, or put away the fear of Death, much less bribe and perswade Death it self to be gon;

But on the contrary, sharpens the one, heightens the other, and hastens the third (death it self) to come sooner, many times than otherwise it would or might. And when Death comes, not how much of this World's goods we have had in our Life-time, nor how great a quantity we shall leave behind us, but how much good we did with them while we had them, will be comfortable to consider of. Not how many Fees a Lawyer hath taken, but how many poor he hath fed, clothed, cared for, and if need were (to relieve the oppressed) pleaded for, will be his best Cordial.

17. That a man may abound in Riches; may have much goods laid up for many years, greater increase than his Barns can hold; and yet be an Ignoramus or Fool, like him, Luke 12.20. a Glutton, Sot, Beast, and at best but a golden Ass or Calf, (whom none but Calves and Asses will idolize,) like that other monster of folly, tho' clothed in purple and fine Linnen, Luke 16.19. A rich and a wise man are not terms convertible. He's no more the wiser for being rich, than the richer for being wise, as is commonly seen, Eccles. 9.11.

[Page 95]18. That there's no Fool to a rich Fool; (As for other rea­sons, so) because, if no body will do it gratis, he can hire those that are able to teach him more wit. Which if he doth not, whom can he thank but himself for his folly?

19. That in spight of the greek Proverb, which so loud­ly cryes, Mony, Mony, [...], It is not Mony, but Manners which makes the man: unless the famous Wil­liam Wickham was mistaken. But the common use of the Speech by others, since the frequency of it in his own mouth, confesseth that he was not out.

If these plain Truths, with the Questions preceding, will not serve to render him as vile in his own eyes, as he needs not be told in whose he is; if he doth, it is pity: let these few Cautions be subjoyn'd.

1. Let him take heed of swallowing down Riches which must be vomited up again, Job 20.15, 18.

2. If they wrong him not, who report him to be rich, let him beware of believing, that he shall not give account for his manner of using as well as of getting Wealth, Luke 16.2. If they err and are mistaken, let him take heed of making hast to be rich, for reasons, which if he knows not, he may meet with, in Prov. 28.20. 1 Tim. 6.9.

3. Let him take heed of not distinguishing between the lawfulness of having and the sinfulness of loving Mony. This if he doth not, there is no sin from which he can be safe, (the love of Mony being the root of all evil,) nor will any mea­sure seem sufficient for him, Eccles. 5.10.

4. Be his Wealth more or less, let him beware of think­ing, that the better sort of People (who have commonly more Vertue than Mony,) will weigh him by the pound, or measure him by the acre. For if this were just weight and mea­sure, how many vain people would take themselves to be more worth than that excellent Man, who was not asham'd to say, silver and gold have I none? Acts 3.6.

5. Should he live long enough and find ways enough to lay up gold as dust, (which is plentiful enough in some Months of the Year,) and fine gold as the stones of the brooks, (which are not very hard to come at) Job 22.24. if he would not be deceived, let him not believe that nothing is more valuable or desirable, more precious or profitable [Page 96] than this red or yellow earth, tho' never so well purifi'd and refin'd, Psal. 19.10.119.127. Prov. 3.13, 14.8.10, 19.20.15. Job 28.15,—19.

6. Could he really turn all that he toucheth into Gold, as is fabled of Midas; let him never be perswaded how­ever that all the Pieces and Wedges, Tuns and Mines of Gold in the World, are sufficient to make such a golden Age as the Poets talk of. They were golden manners properties and qualities (as precious as the purest Gold that Art is able to refine, and as rarely found in this iron Age, as Gold in an Alms-house,) which gave that happy Age the name it is known by.

7. Were he owner of as much Gold and Silver as King David prepared for the House of the Lord, 1 Chron. 22.14. (an incredible Sum, unless Talents be there taken for pieces, and those but small ones;) let him never believe, however, but that Gold may be bought too dear, Matth. 16.26.

8. If nothing of all this will restrain him from making Gold his hope, and from saying to fine gold, Thou art my confi­dence, (Job 31.24.) let him then beware, lest his Mony pe­rish with him; if not rather conclude that needs it must. And once for all, to take leave (unless his more than ordi­nary dulness must have more spurring or lashing,) let this single direction be given him: If his Wealth is so great, and his Wit, or Grace, or both, so little, that he knows not how to bestow it better, than in making provision for Pride, Arrogance, Self-conceit and Confidence; let him take his ex­ample who built a Hospital for Fools, with the Mony which his silly Clients had made him Master of: Of Fools he said he had gotten it, and to Fools he resolved to leave it.

What use he will make of this Example, is more than I can tell: but if still (after all the pain that hath now been taken to make him wiser,) his Pride is incorrigible, and his Arrogance incurable, as well as intolerable; Who can deny, that his Title to a Place in such an Hospital is too clear to be disputed?

How much better was your other Instrument, That Om­nium horarum homo? unless you chuse rather to call him Am­photerus, Hecaterus, or Ʋdeterus; he that can be Pro and Con [Page 97] so quickly, whatever Question comes in his way, being nei­ther Pro nor Con in earnest.

You know the time when his fierceness against Dissenters, (whether Papists So he worded it in a printed Paper, called, An Order made at the General Ses­sions for the Peace, held at the Castle of Exon, in and for the County of Devon, Jan. 10. 81. or Sectaries,) was like that of a Bear robb'd of Whelps. None, in those days, could be more industrious in seeking, more sagacious in smelling out their Meeting-places, more violent in disturbing their prohi­bited Assemblies, or more eager in prosecuting both Speakers and Hearers to get them fin'd, according to the Penal Statutes: Nor was any one freer (not only liberal but prodigal) of his Language, in declaiming against the People of that way (one and all) than he. When­soever they met, wheresoever they were congregated, The Devil (I have heard he hath said,) might as surely be concluded to be among them, as if his cloven foot had been seen.

The wild Boars of Rome, and the Foxes of Geneva, were then his Metaphors: the Church of England the Vineyard, for which he seemed hugely concern'd, lest the Boar of the Fo­rest should break forth and waste it, or the Beast of the field devour it, Ps. 80.13. To preserve it from being annoy'd, much more to keep it from being destroy'd by Foxes creep­ing out of their holes, or by worse enemies from other quar­ters, how zealous was he in diebus illis!

When, by double diligence, in doing the work of an In­former, Discoverer and Disturber of Conventicles, he had got­ten himself into better Office, what a mighty Church-of-Eng­land-man he desir'd to be taken for; who but a stranger to the County of Devon needs to be told?

Then his Opinion was, (as by divers Printed Papers and Orders of Sessions, from 81 till 85 (inclusively) ap­pears:)

1. That no Peace or Quietness in the State can be expected, while Faction is allowed, and Schism permitted in the Church.

2. That they who dissent from us in our established Religion, of what Perswasion soever, tho' at seeming Rarely worded! Is there none but seeming variance among them? What! no more than so between Papists and Sectaries of what Perswasion soever? variance among themselves, yet agree in their wicked attempts upon the Govern­ment, and traiterous designs against the King's sacred person.

[Page 98]3. That the Laws were effectually to be put in Execution against all Dissenters, whether Papists or Sectaries.

4. That a Twelve-penny-Penalty was needful to be impos'd upon all Absenters from their Parish-Church (not under the age of sixteen) according to the Statutes of the first of Q. Elizabeth, and the third of K. James.

5. That all who refused by this gentler Discipline to be reform­ed, ought to be prosecuted as Recusants, according to the Statute made in the third Year of K. James; and if this was too little, it seemed (to this profound Politician, and as great Statist as Conscientious Man) needful that the more incorrigible should be proceeded against, as is directed in the Penal Statute of the 35th of Q. Elizabeth. Any Statute, tho' made against Po­pish Recusants only, was at that time as good (in this Hic & Ʋbique's opinion) against other Dissenters from the Church of England, as the best Hay in Crediton.

6. That Corporations and Burroughs are the Nests and Se­minaries of Faction and Disloyalty. The Nurseries of Faction, (and some of them) the great and publick Nusances of the Kingdom, in his next-Year's-Order he thought fit to call them.

7. That the Act against Conventicles, made in the 22d Year of King Charles the Second was carefully to be executed. And that Faction might have no incouragement, it seemed reasonable, [over and above, and besides all Law] that no Relief should be given to the Poor, who could, but would not resort to their Parish Churches.

8. That all this, and a great deal more (contained in the Pa­per before pointed at, called, An Order, &c.) was to be pub­lished by Parsons, Vicars and Curates in their Parish Churches within the County of Devon. Which at first indeed they were only desir'd, but afterward peremptorily order'd and requir'd to do. Quo Warranto non constat.

9. That the whole put together, was worthy to be called, a mild and easie Prosecution of the Penal Laws, and the gentle breath of those Laws reviv'd, by which those Clouds of Faction, which threatned us with a fatal Storm, were overblown As in his next Year's Order, &c. da­ted Jan. 9. 82. it was ex­prest.: As if it had not partly made way for that black and fearful, and, once, seemingly fatal storm, which not long after followed.

[Page 99]10. That the same method is still to be used while any remains of faction are left, ibid.

11. That the publick Peace cannot be secur'd as long as those old seditious, vagrant Preachers are permitted among us, to whom by long use, Treason is become natural. From whose Practices he thought it reasonable to conclude, that they were ingag'd in a hellish confederacy still to disturb the Peace and promote Rebel­lion, ibid.

12. That in pursuance of a Statute made in the seventeenth Year of King Charles the Second, it was needful to grant War­rants for the apprehending of all Non-conformist Preachers that should be found within five Miles of any Corporation, &c. or other place where they have formerly served as Preachers, &c. ibid.

13. That it was not to be hoped that Corporations and Bur­roughs which Non-conformists have poyson'd and debauch'd, would ever dislodge them or discountenance their seditious Practices: And that therefore it was needful for Justices of Peace (who lived elsewhere) to send Warrants into Burroughs as well as other places, to find out and apprehend all such Preachers; threatning all that neglected or dared to hinder the Execution of those War­rants with severe Prosecution according to Law. [Not minding or regarding that these new fashion'd-Warrants were illegal.]

14. That to make a thorough Reformation [which indeed is a blessed Work, but unlikely to prosper in the hand and un­der the Conduct of this feeble Projector, who never minded more than an outside Change, nor as much as that but when it was for his turn] the Bishop must be intreated to order his Archdeacons and their Officials to take care that none but honest men might be sworn Church-wardens, lest otherwise the Warrants granted forth should fail of being duly executed, ibid. I never heard before, that the Execution of Warrants is any part of a Church-warden's Office. If it is, 'tis pity that Arch­deacons and their Officials had not sooner been warn'd (if they wanted a Monitor) to keep Knaves out of Office. But an honest man indeed will be apt to question what this man's Notion of an honest man, is. And if none but such as are re­ally so should be admitted, how many a Fee would be lost?

15. That his duty was to endeavor the rooting out of that pe­stilent Faction from whence the late Rebellion sprang, as far as by Law could be done. Vid. Order, &c. of Octob. 6.—85.

[Page 100]16. That impenitent, hardned Sectaries and Rebels are con­vertible Terms, ibid.

17. That such are no more to be trusted in any Civil Society without the utmost Caution and Security of the Law, than Beasts of Prey without Chains and Fetters, ibid.

18. That the severest Laws in force, were vigorously to be put in Execution against them, ibid.

19. That all who have been reputed phanatical or disaffected to the Government ought to be strictly inquired after, ibid.

20. That Non-Conformist Ministers and Conventicle-Preach­ers have been mischievous Factors to seduce unwary People from their Allegiance under pretence of Religion, ibid.

21. That whereas formerly forty shillings was ordered as a Reward to any that should apprehend or secure them, it was afterwards thought fit to be And accordingly it was resolved, as appears by the same— 85. Order. resolved that no less than the sum of three Pounds By what Law, People that are loth to let go their Money without knowing why, have been willing to learn; but could never yet be taught. as a farther incouragement should be given to any Person by whom any one of them was apprehended or secur'd.

22. That the mischievous and fatal Effects of too much lenity and indulgence meeting with the incorrigible ill Nature of Sectaries and Phanaticks, did certainly beget the late impudent Rebellion. [Tho' as competent Judges as this Pretender to Politicks, I trow, have said and printed it over and over, that too much Rigor and Violence hath rather deserved to be named for the right Father.]

23. That the Sword of Justice must necessarily be kept un­sheath'd in the Execution of the Laws till (that which he calls) This generation of impenitent and desperate Rebels, be cut off: [This hasty Operator, it seems, knew not that Cuncta pri­us tentanda goes before immedicabile vulnus Ense rescindendum est. More reason there is to think he was unacquainted with that weighty passage of another Poet, which lies a little farther out of his way, (but in that year especially was needful to be observ'd:) ‘Nulla unquam de vita hominis cunctatio longa est.]’

[Page 101]24. That if this be not done, neither Religion, nor the King's sacred Person, nor the Government can be secur'd, ibid.

Here, at last, he begins to prophecy. But the Num­ber of false Prophets hath often, if not alway been greater than that of the true. Time was when 450 of Baal's could sooner be found than one Elias, 1 Kings 18.

It was not my purpose to give the Reader a view of his late Worship's late thoughts (whatever his present Senti­ments are,) in a double dozen of Articles; but to this num­ber they casually grew, in reading the Papers out of which they were extracted. Now, the Premisses consider'd, Was not this a Church-of-England-man all over? from top to toe? and as over-grown a Conformist as any of 'em all? A true Son of the Church, no doubt, he then seemed to be. But how much he hath honor'd his Mother, since those days, her genuine Children can tell. For this she hath reason to look on as a Changeling and no better. If any hath need to be inform'd, let him only remember how little while since (no longer ago than July the 9th. or 10th. 88.) he charged some who make a great figure The Bishops, no doubt, who were sent to the Tow­er: Those if he meant, (as whom else could he?) both great and small who ad­her'd to them, must come in for a part of the Charge. (in the Church of England) with refractory Carri­age and feigned Zeal: whom he likewise, at the same time, in the next part of his Talkment, pronounced guilty of contradicting their own Do­ctrin in point of obedience to their Superiors, while they censure other Churches for absurdity in their Doctrines. [Transubstantiation it self, it seems, in this Timist's opini­on, was not a greater sign of absurdity, than humbly to desire that the Declaration might not be imposed on the Clergy to be read in their respective Churches, was a token of disobedience to Superiors.] Next he represented them as a People possest with Passion and Folly, by which the Peace of the Kingdom and the Honour of our Religion greatly suffer: [Is this less than to call them Disturbers of the Peace, and Disgracers of Religi­on?] And as if it sufficed to say,

But now it is modest to banter the one, and baffle the other, by those few words, of I know not what Ballad, dropt into the ears of his Auditors, went about to perswade them, that his lately extoll'd Church-of-England-men were departed from their Principles of honoring the King for Conscience-sake, and of hold­ing his Person sacred.

In the same Harangue he accused them of being no less than fill'd with disloyal and undutiful apprehensions of his Ma­jestie's Government, and of cruel Rudeness, cover'd with a pretence of Zeal—

His bold but bare Assertion is, no doubt, as good proof as ever drew Sword, or trod Shooe of Iron.

Anatomists are sometimes forced to dissect and read on those parts of the Carkass before them, first of all, which are apt to putrifie soonest; lest their noysom smell should grow too offensive to be indur'd, while the dryer and solider substance of the body is discours'd of. But this man's talk is so full of filth and ordure, guts and garbage, (fit for none but Bears and such foul-feeding Beasts to live on, or tast of,) that it will not seem strange to those who can smell, to see me draw back like a Bear from the stake, to get out of that pesti­lent Air which is commonly caused when this Man's mouth is opened. Yet, before I part, tho' I stop my breath or hold my nose while I pen it, something must needs be added about those little Holders-forth It is no rid­dle to tell whom he cal­led so, in his Speech of Ju­ly 9th or 10th —88. who (to use his very termsIbid.) make it their business to explain hard words (not far hence to be mention'd) by unintelligible notions— Which, in my ap­prehension, is as wonderful a way of Explication as ever was heard of, and as hard an Operation as it is to inlighten with darkness, fatten with leanness, make sober with drunkenness, sound of mind with madness, or healthy with sickness: as difficult a task as to inrich with poverty, make famous with obscurity, sin­cere with hypocrisie, or honest with knavery. Which if any man can do, he needs not despair of proving, that an old Rump-Committee-man and an honest man, an Ape, Ass, Fox, Wolf or any other Animal and a Bear, are but one and the same creature, explain'd by different names.

These little Holders-forth are certainly men of great worth and as rare fellows as ever were heard of; as able as any men living to make hard words soft as Adamant, malleable as Glass, perceptible as Colours to the blind, or Musick to the deaf? In a word, as bright and clear as the palpable darkness of Egypt.

O the rare, unsearchable, unintelligible Power of these little Holders-forth! The quadrature of the Circle, the inven­tion of the Philosopher's stone, the solution of the hardest [Page 103] Phaenomena which have hitherto been heard of, are but toys to what they can do. Aristotle's Problems are but Childrens Riddles, Euclid's Demonstrations but School-boy-tricks and trifles, to their vast, incomprehensible Abilities. Who would not wish they might never do any thing else but hold forth? And if little Holders-forth are able to do all this, what Sentence is or can be so hard-worded, what Word so hard-syllabl'd, what Syllable so hard-letter'd or harsh-sounded, which will not dissolve like a Flint, steep'd in the Powder of a rotten Post, when the Men who make a greater figure in the faculty of Holding-forth, take it into their mouths, and roll it up and down on their tongues? Let their Carriage in point of Obedience to their Superiors be as refractory as this false Accuser hath said, but not prov'd it to be, there is no word, for certain, so hard, which these greater Holders-forth cannot presently make as soft as this man's heart, when they take it in hand.

It was wisely done however, (if it was not more by chance than choice) to confine the faculty of explaining hard words by unintelligible notions, within the modest bounds of but three or four such words and no more.

The first of which he calls, Predestination; the next, Re­probation; the third Transubstantiation; (a wicked hard word indeed, made up of at least seven Syllables, consisting of a do­zen and a half of Letters. Many Sentences are shorter, as well as softer.) and the last, Adoration.

These are the words which this worthy Censor said (in the Speech last pointed at, but never prais'd) are used to fright the People out of their senses, and then bid them make use of their rea­son. These, as he adds, are made the Subject of every Discourse, (being mightily pertinent, it seems, to all purposes;) and, as afterward he worded it, are explained by every little Hol­der-forth, and that too by unintelligible Notions, while the plain Doctrin of Obedience, Humility, and Charity, will by no means agree with the Constitutions of those over-grown-Prote­stants.

Now that none of those Holders-forth, be they great or little, may be longer in his debt than becomes their ability or agrees with his necessity (who, they say, is a Borrower, tho' I never heard of any wise Man that gave him credit;) give me leave to repay him with an equal number of words, [Page 104] but little softer if not altogether as hard as his own, to re­cover his senses, and rub up his reason; both which, I plain­ly perceive, are in danger of deserting him. Mine are, Pre­varication, Retrogradation, Transfiguration, Adulation. Which because I am somewhat too busie at present to explain by unintelligible Notions, let him take this homelier explanation of them: (the more dunstable, the more suitable to his intel­lect, I take it to be. Thus then it is:) Prevarication, or Double-dealing; (will not this please him who hath shewn himself as great an enemy to Plain-dealing as any of you all?) Retrogradation, or going back from Principles for­merly own'd and extoll'd; Transfiguration, or shifting of shapes; [like Proteus in the Poets,

Who, they say, could be Fire, or Water; a Tree, or a Stone; a Man, or Beast; a Lion, or Bull; a Bear, or Boar; a Fox, or Goose; an Ox, or Ass; a Calf, or Puppy, or what he would, whensoever he pleased. Shifting of shapes, I say, (like Proteus, which Philosophers take to be what they call Materia prima, that is capable of who knows how many forms?) this hard word may be term'd. And for farther illustration, if this suffice not, he may take the Polypus, (which can look like a Fish or a Stone, as he finds it most serviceable to save himself or catch his prey;) or Chamelion, who can turn it self, if Zoographers say true, into any colour but red (the token of modesty, as in blushing,) or white, the known badge of innocency. Which the least of those little Holders-forth be­fore-mention'd can tell him how and to whom to apply, if he cannot or will not make as right application as he ought to make.] Adulation, or flattery; of which as none but a Fool can be ignorant, so none but a Knave will be guilty.

Whether these or the other hard words have frighted more people out of their senses, I am too much in hast to determin: especially, being ignorant whether he meant their proper on common, their external or internal, their five or seven senses. What­ever [Page 105] becomes of that Question, it was cruelly, rigidly, un­reasonably and unmercifully done of those hard words to bid people make use of their reason, when first they had frighted them out of their senses. This, in truth, makes them hard words with a witness. The most hard-dealing words that ever were heard of. There is not, I believe, in all the Welch Tongue or Cornish Dialect, another such Mess of hard words to be met with. What! To bid people exercise their reason, who have lost their memories and fancies, their faculty of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling and all; Was ever the like seen or heard of? If there was, 'tis like the bidding them go, without legs, or speak, without tongues. It is pity, to deal plainly, that such hard Words are not banisht all Lexicons, Glossaries, and Nomenclators. And I wonder how those little Holders-forth can hold out to make them the Subject of every Discourse, or where they can find unintelligible Notions enough to explain them by, considering how many the Rosy-Crucians, Chymists, School-men, Quakers and other Canters have taken up before-hand for their own proper use, to make Divinity too, among other things, a greater Mystery than the twelve Apostles ever understood.

It is able to stun a wiser Man than a Country-Justice, to be thus abused and frighted with hard Words.

And how sad a pass is the World come to when the plain Doctrin of Obedience, Humility and Charity, will by no means agree with the Constitutions of over-grown Protestants!

The Crocodile (that amphibious Animal, who can shift himself from water to dry ground, and from thence back again to his liquid lodging; being a friend to both Elements, and befriended by both: as some can be of either side which happens to be uppermost; or of any Principles which are most for their profit. This Animal, I say) is said to grow bigger and bigger as long as he lives, whereas other living-creatures are subject to certain limits of augmentation which they never exceed. Be that true or false, if Protestants grow not better and better, but worse and worse, not grea­ter and greater, but less and less in Obedience, Humility and Charity, or any other Grace or Graces, they are not an over-grown, but under-grown, dwarfish, selfish sort of people; as like this idle and worse Talker, as one self-seeker can be like [Page 106] another, and as different from their primitive Paterns as a Dwarf differs from a Giant in Stature. But the man, I per­cieve, notwithstanding his little knowledge and less grace (or by reason of his defect in both,) was so overgrown with con­fidence, that he verily believed by keeping in with the Times to be kept from being out in his talk. Could those little Holders-forth (who all on a suddain, in the next breath or period, were grown over-grown Protestants with this novel Haran­guer) talk no wiser, I would not go the length of my Nose (which is none of the longest) to hear them.

Sir! Whatever you think, indifferent People are of the mind that the badness of the Tools with which you have wrought and labour'd as hard as you could to do me a mis­chief, is a sign of as hard a shift as ever poor People were dri­ven to. And the common opinion of your very Friends, for ought I can hear, is, That your better way had been to be quiet, while you found it needful to be silent, for want of matter to reply.

Your Scandalum Magnatum about which so much Breath hath been wasted in threatning and talking what wonders it would do, appears to be nothing but a scanda­lous pretence of a wrong never done.For, at present to say nothing of a scruple, which to me and others, as un­skilful in Law-cases, may render it doubtful; suppo­sing the man whom you placed in the front of your Bill (to make it look as big and terrible to silly People as was possible,) to be one of those hautes homes whom the Statute of West. 1. 34, speaks of; where was the false News or Report (dont discord, on maner de discord, on esclaunder puit surdre entre le Roy & son people, ou [...]es hautes homes de son Roi [...]lme,) which was apt or able to do such dangerous feats as the words of the Statute signify? In the fourth Book of the Lord Coke's Reports, (fol. 13. b.) there's an Action de Scandalis Magnatum brought by Hen­ry Lord Cromwel tam pro Domina Regina quam pro seipso against Edmond Denny Vicar of Nor­tinham in the County of Norfolk; in which the Nobleman declared against him upon the Statute of 2 Ric. 2. 5, made to prevent false News, horrible and false Reports (peront de­bate poit surder enter les Seigniors & Comons—per que peril, mischief & destruction poit es­chier a tout le Roialm,) which might be of perilous, mischievous and destructive Conse­quence to the whole Realm; but you had not a word of this nature to charge me with. Nor could any but the guilty be offended at a Book which was written against Hy­pocrisie and Double-dealing, Injustice and Oppression, Ʋngodliness and Wrong. About which having much more to say than can be confined to a Marginal Note, it is needful, I see, to refer it to a Postscript. All the noise you have made and stir you have kept, hath proved but brutum fulmen, Fire and Smoak a far off without shot to reach home; an empty crack without the least Execution. Your whole Prosecution but a Bug-Bear to fright (not Elder People out of their senses, and then bid them make use of their reason, but) Children; and as vain a sound as many words and no mat­ter use to make.

Shall I tell you a Story or Fable, or both, after all this?

The Fable speaks of a poor Idolater who had long been an earnest Supplicant, but successless Suitor to an wooden Image, to help him out of his Straits. Which not obtain­ing, his Anger at last was so kindl'd that he took up the Image by the Heels and dasht it's Head against the Wall. The Head being hollow was easily broken with the blow, and abundance of Money dropt out. Which the lately poor Votary percieving: O thou senseless perverse thing! said he (to his formerly ador'd Statue,) While I serv'd and wor­shipt thee thou didst me no good, but hast amply rewarded me for beating and breaking thee to pieces.

He that is not concern'd with stupider things than this carved Block in the Fable, if he find not at last that they who never gave thanks for being honor'd above their merit, may in time be propitious to those who pay them no more than they deserve; I am not the first who has been mistaken in mora­lizing a Fable; nor the only Expectant who lives in hope of beholding the Scripture fulfilled, which saith, He that re­buketh a man shall afterward find more favour than he that flat­tereth with the Tongue, Prov. 28.23. But if thus it succeeds, who sees not whether of the two, Adulation or Plain-dealing is best?

The Story goes thus. Once upon a Time, while Rome was govern d by Kings, (long before the Commonwealth of England, without a King, was heard of, or seen to swarm with Sequestrators and Committee-men,) a strange, unknown old Woman, brought nine Books of Divine Oracles, as she call'd them, to Tarquinius Superbus, and exposed them to sale: But the Price demanded being thought unreasonable, Tarquinius laughed her to scorn. Which moved her to cast no less than three of them into the Fire, before his Face. After which she required as great a Price for the Residue as hefore had been set upon the whole. This done, the King [Page 108] fell into so loud a fit of laughter as had almost broken his Belly; and as soon as his Speech was recovered, said, the Woman without doubt was delirious. Immediately she burned three more, yet refused to abate a farthing of her first Price. Tarquinius, at last, admiring her Constancy, and presuming that something of extraordinary Worth was contained in the Volumes that were left, gave as much for the remaining three as at first would have purchased all the nine. A. Gell. lib. 1. c. 19.

You know the time Sir! when a parcel of Books which you greatly desir'd to get into your hands, might have been your own on easier Terms than now you can hope to possess them, if ever you do. By abusing the Author you have raised the Price by two thirds at least. What there­fore remains but that every one of them should now cost you as much as three, and every three no less than nine, in time past, would have stood you?

To be plain and free, as all along hitherto I have been, should your stingy proposal above mention'd seem as silly and ridiculous to your selves as to me it looked as soon as it appeared, and the Terms now talked of, be accepted, it would not serve the turn. The wrong has been doubl'd, trebl'd, quadrupl'd, &c. septupl'd indeed, and so must the satisfaction, if you mean to be releas'd.

I could tarry much longer with you, on this occasion, but that other business calls upon me to withdraw.

If I am not yet out of your debt for visiting me with Appa­ritors, Libels, Warrants, Constables, and such like Compa­ny, (which must otherwise and elsewhere be talk'd with,) let me know it, that another Visit may be made. For of this, which hath now been drawn out to twice or thrice the length that was once intended, you cannot be more desirous than I am to see