And so he well might, and all his auditory besides | good teaching, as to have discerned between faithful with his "teach each." 66 "Whether so me list my lovely thoughts to sing, teachers and false. But now, with a most inhuman Delicious! he had that whole bevy at command whether in morrice or at maypole; whilst I by this figure-caster must be imagined in such distress as to sue to Maronilla, and yet left so impoverished of what to say, as to turn my liturgy into my lady's psalter. Believe it, graduate, I am not altogether so rustic, and nothing so irreligious, but as far distant from a lecturer, as the merest laic, for any consecrating hand of a prelate that shall ever touch me. Yet I shall not decline the more for that, to speak my opinion in the controversy next moved, "whether the people may be allowed for competent judges of a minister's ability." For how else can be fulfilled that which God hath promised, to pour out such abundance of knowledge upon all sorts of men in the times of the gospel? How should the people examine the doctrine which is taught them, as Christ and his apostles continually bid them do? How should they "discern and beware of false prophets, and try every spirit," if they must be thought unfit to judge of the minister's abilities? The apostles ever laboured to persuade the christian flock, that they were called in Christ to all perfectness of spiritual knowledge, and full assurance of understanding in the mystery of God." But the non-resident and plurality-judge aright in this point is, when he who judges, lives gaping prelates, the gulfs and whirlpools of benefices, but the dry pits of all sound doctrine, that they may the better preach what they list to their sheep, are still possessing them that they are sheep indeed, without judgment, without understanding, "the very beasts of mount Sinai," as this confuter calls them; which words of theirs may serve to condemn them out of their own mouths, and to shew the gross contrarieties that are in their opinions: for while none think the people so void of knowledge as the prelates think them, none are so backward and malignant as they to bestow knowledge upon them; both by suppressing the frequency of sermons, and the printed explanations of the English Bible. No marvel if the people turn beasts, when their teachers themselves, as Isaiah calls them, "are dumb and greedy dogs, that can never have enough, ignor ant, blind, and cannot understand; who while they all look their own way, every one for his gain from his quarter," how many parts of the land are fed with windy ceremonies instead of sincere milk; and while one prelate enjoys the nourishment and right of twenty ministers, how many waste places are left as dark as "Galilee of the Gentiles, sitting in the region and shadow of death," without preaching minister, without light. So little care they of beasts to make them men, that by their sorcerous doctrine of formalities, they take the way to transform them out of christian men into judaizing beasts. Had they but taught the land, or suffered it to be taught, as Christ would it should have|laneous gear blown together by the four winds, and iu been in all plenteous dispensation of the word, then the poor mechanic might have so accustomed his ear to a christian life himself. Which of these three will the confuter affirm to exceed the capacity of a plain artizan? And what reason then is there left, wherefore he should be denied his voice in the election of his minister, as not thought a competent discerner? It is but arrogance therefore, and the pride of a metaphysical fume, to think that "the mutinous rabble" (for so he calls the christian congregation) "would be so mistaken in a clerk of the university," that were to be their minister. I doubt me those clerks, that think so, are more mistaken in themselves; and what with truanting and debauchery, what with false grounds and the weakness of natural faculties in many of them, (it being a maxim in some men to send the simplest of their sons thither,) perhaps there would be found among them as many unsolid and corrupted judgments both in doctrine and life, as in any other two corporations of like bigness. This is undoubted, that if any carpenter, smith, or weaver, were such a bungler in his trade, as the greater number of them are in their profession, he would starve for any custom. And should he exercise his manufacture as little as they do their talents, he would forget his art; and should he mistake his tools as they do theirs, he would mar all the work he took in hand. How few among them that know to write, or speak in a pure style; much less to distinguish the ideas, and various kinds of style; in Latin barbarous, and oft not without solecisms, declaiming in rugged and miscel their choice preferring the gay rankness of Apuleius, Arnobius, or any modern fustianist, before the native Latinisms of Cicero. In the Greek tongue most of them unlettered, or "unentered to any sound proficiency in those attic masters of moral wisdom and eloquence." In the Hebrew text, which is so necessary to be understood, except it be some few of them, their lips are utterly uncircumcised. No less are they out of the way in philosophy, pestering their heads with the sapless dotages of old Paris and Salamanca. And that which is the main point, in their sermons affecting the comments and postils of friars and Jesuits, but scorning and slighting the reformed writers; insomuch that the better sort among them will confess it a rare matter to hear a true edifying sermon in either of their great churches; and that such as are most hummed and applauded there, would scarcely be suffered the second hearing in a grave congregation of pious Christians. Is there cause why these men should overwean, and be so queasy of the rude multitude, lest their deep worth should be undervalued for want of fit umpires? No, my matriculated confutant, there will not want in any❘ congregation of this island, that hath not been altogether famished or wholly perverted with prelatish leaven; there will not want divers plain and solid men, that have learned by the experience of a good conscience, what it is to be well taught, who will soon look through and through both the lofty nakedness of your latinizing barbarian, and the finical goosery of your neat sermon actor. And so I leave you and your fellow "stars," as you term them, "of either horizon," meaning I suppose either hemisphere, unless you will be ridiculous in your astronomy: for the rational horizon in heaven is but one, and the sensible horizons in earth are innumerable; so that your allusion was as erroneous as your stars. But that you did well to prognosticate them all at lowest in the horizon; that is, either seeming bigger than they are through the mist and vapour which they raise, or else sinking and wasted to the snuff in their western socket. SECT. XI. His eleventh section intends I know not what, unless to clog us with the residue of his phlegmatic sloth, discussing with a heavy pulse the "expedience of set forms;" which no question but to some, and for some time may be permitted, and perhaps there may be usefully set forth by the church a common directory of public prayer, especially in the administration of the sacraments. But that it should therefore be enforced where both minister and people profess to have no need, but to be scandalized by it, that, I hope, every sensible Christian will deny: and the reasons of such denial the confuter himself, as his bounty still is to his adversary, will give us out of his affirmation. First saith he, "God in his providence hath chosen some to teach others, and pray for others, as ministers and pastors." Whence I gather, that however the faculty of others may be, yet that they whom God hath set apart to his ministry, are by him endued with an ability of prayer; because their office is to pray for others, and not to be the lip-working deacons of other men's appointed words. Nor is it easily credible, that he who can preach well, should be unable to pray well; whenas it is indeed the same ability to speak affirmatively, or doctrinally, and only by changing the mood, to speak prayingly. In vain therefore do they pretend to want utterance in prayer, who can find utterance to preach. And if prayer be the gift of the Spirit, why do they admit those to the ministry, who want a main gift of their function, and prescribe gifted men to use that which is the remedy of another man's want; setting them their tasks to read, whom the Spirit of God stands ready to assist in his ordinance with the gift of free conceptions? What if it be granted to the infirmity of some ministers (though such seem rather to be half ministers) to help themselves with a set form, shall it therefore be urged upon the plenteous graces of others? And let it be granted to some people while they are babes, in christian gifts, were it not better to take it away soon after, as we do loitering books and interlineary translations from children; to stir up and exercise that portion of the Spirit which is in them, and not impose it upon congregations who not only deny to need it, but as a thing troublesome and offensive, refuse it? Another reason which he brings for liturgy, is "the preserving of order, unity, and piety;" and the same shall be my reason against liturgy. For I, readers, shall always be of this opinion, that obedience to the spirit of God, rather than to the fair seeming pretences of men, is the best and most dutiful order that a Christian can observe. If the Spirit of God manifest the gift of prayer in his minister, what more seemly order in the congregation, than to go along with that man in our devoutest affections? For him to abridge himself by reading, and to forestall himself in those petitions, which he must either omit, or vainly repeat, when he comes into the pulpit under a shew of order, is the greatest disorder. Nor is unity less broken, especially by our liturgy, though this author would almost bring the communion of saints to a communion of liturgical words. For what other reformed church holds communion with us by our liturgy, and does not rather dislike it? And among ourselves, who knows it not to have been a perpetual cause of disunion? Lastly, it hinders piety rather than sets it forward, being more apt to weaken the spiritual faculties, if the people be not weaned from it in due time; as the daily pouring in of hot waters quenches the natural heat. For not only the body and the mind, but also the improvement of God's Spirit, is quickened by using. Whereas they who will ever adhere to liturgy, bring themselves in the end to such a pass by overmuch leaning, as to lose even the legs of their devotion. These inconveniencies and dangers follow the compelling of set forms: but that the toleration of the English liturgy now in use is more dangerous than the compelling of any other, which the reformed churches use, these reasons following may evince. To contend that it is fantastical, if not senseless in some places, were a copious argument, especially in the Responsories. | of an idolater's prayer, much more the conceited fangle For such alternations as are there used must be by of his prayer. This confuter himself confesses that a several persons; but the minister and the people can- community of the same set form in prayers, is that not so sever their interests, as to sustain several per- which " makes church and church truly one;" we then sons; he being the only mouth of the whole body using a liturgy far more like to the mass book than to which he presents. And if the people pray, he being any protestant set form, by his own words must have silent, or they ask any one thing, and he another, it more communion with the Romish church, than with either changes the property, making the priest the any of the reformed. How can we then not partake people, and the people the priest, by turns, or else with them the curse and vengeance of their superstition, makes two persons and two bodies representative where to whom we come so near in the same set form and there should be but one. Which, if it be nought else, dress of our devotion? Do we think to sift the matter must needs be a strange quaintness in ordinary prayer. finer than we are sure God in his jealousy will, who The like, or worse, may be said of the litany, wherein detested both the gold and the spoil of idolatrous cities, neither priest nor people speak any intire sense of and forbid the cating of things offered to idols? Are themselves throughout the whole, I know not what to we stronger than he, to brook that which his heart canname it; only by the timely contribution of their parted not brook? It is not surely because we think that stakes, closing up as it were the schism of a sliced prayers are no where to be had but at Rome? That prayer, they pray not in vain, for by this means they were a foul scorn and indignity cast upon all the rekeep life between them in a piece of gasping sense, formed churches, and our own: if we imagine that all and keep down the sauciness of a continual rebounding the godly ministers of England are not able to newnonsense. And hence it is, that as it hath been far mould a better and more pious liturgy than this which from the imitation of any warranted prayer, so we all was conceived and infanted by an idolatrous mother, know it hath been obvious to be the pattern of many a how basely were that to esteem of God's Spirit, and all jig. And he who hath but read in good books of de- the holy blessings and privileges of a true church above votion and no more, cannot be so either of ear or judg- a false! Hark ye, prelates, is this your glorious mother ment unpractised to distinguish what is grave, patheti- of England, who, whenas Christ hath taught her to cal, devout, and what not, but will presently perceive pray, thinks it not enough unless she add thereto the this liturgy all over in conception lean and dry, of teaching of Antichrist? How can we believe ye would affections empty and unmoving, of passion, or any refuse to take the stipend of Rome, when ye shame not height whereto the soul might soar upon the wings of to live upon the almsbasket of her prayers? Will ye zeal, destitute and barren; besides errours, tautologies, persuade us, that ye can curse Rome from your hearts, impertinencies, as those thanks in the woman's church- when none but Rome must teach ye to pray? Abraing for her delivery from sunburning and moonblasting, ham disdained to take so much as a thread or a shoeas if she had been travailing not in her bed, but in the latchet from the king of Sodom, though no foe of his, deserts of Arabia. So that while some men cease not but a wicked king; and shall we receive our prayers to admire the incomparable frame of our liturgy, I at the bounty of our more wicked enemies, whose gifts cannot but admire as fast what they think is become are no gifts, but the instruments of our bane? Alas! of judgment and taste in other men, that they can hope that the Spirit of God should blow as an uncertain to be heard without laughter. And if this were all, wind, should so mistake his inspiring, so misbestow his perhaps it were a compliable matter. But when we gifts promised only to the elect, that the idolatrous remember this our liturgy where we found it, whence should find words acceptable to present God with, and we had it, and yet where we left it, still serving to all abound to their neighbours, while the true professors the abominations of the antichristian temple, it may be of the gospel can find nothing of their own worth the wondered now we can demur whether it should be done constituting, wherewith to worship God in public! away or no, and not rather fear we have highly offended Consider if this be to magnify the church of England, in using it so long. It hath indeed been pretended to and not rather to display her nakedness to all the world. be more ancient than the mass, but so little proved, that Like therefore as the retaining of this Romish liturgy whereas other corrupt liturgies have had withal such a is a provocation to God, and a dishonour to our church, seeming antiquity, as that their publishers have ven- so is it by those ceremonies, those purifyings and offertured to ascribe them with their worst corruptions eitherings at the altar, a pollution and disturbance to the to St. Peter, St. James, St. Mark, or at least to Chrysostom or Basil, ours hath been never able to find either age or author allowable, on whom to father those things therein which are least offensive, except the two creeds, for Te Deum has a smatch in it of Limbus Patrum: as if Christ had not " opened the kingdom of heaven" before he had "overcome the sharpness of death." So that having received it from the papal church as an original creature, for aught can be shewn to the contrary, formed and fashioned by workmasters ill to be trusted, we may be assured that if God loathe the best gospel itself; and a kind of driving us with the foolish Galatians to another gospel. For that which the apostles taught hath freed us in religion from the ordinances of men, and commands that "burdens be not laid" upon the redeemed of Christ; though the formalist will say, What, no decency in God's worship? Certainly, readers, the worship of God singly in itself, the very act of prayer and thanksgiving, with those free and unimposed expressions which from a sincere heart unbidden come into the outward gesture, is the greatest decency that can be imagined. Which to dress up and garnish with a devised bravery abolished | it pleases him much, that he had descried me, as he in the law, and disclaimed by the gospel, adds nothing conceives, to be unread in the councils. Concernbut a deformed ugliness; and hath ever afforded a ing which matter it will not be unnecessary to shape colourable pretence to bring in all those traditions him this answer; that some years I had spent in the and carnalities that are so killing to the power and stories of those Greek and Roman exploits, wherein I virtue of the gospel. What was that which made the found many things both nobly done, and worthily Jews, figured under the names of Aholah and Abolibah, spoken; when coming in the method of time to that go a whoring after all the heathen's inventions, but age wherein the church had obtained a christian emthat they saw a religion gorgeously attired and de-peror, I so prepared myself, as being now to read exsirable to the eye? What was all that the false doctors of the primitive church and ever since have done, but "to make a fair shew in the flesh," as St. Paul's words are? If we have indeed given a bill of divorce to popery and superstition, why do we not say as to a divorced wife, Those things which are yours take them all with you, and they shall sweep after you? Why were not we thus wise at our parting from Rome? Ah! like a crafty adulteress she forgot not all her smooth looks and enticing words at her parting; yet keep these letters, these tokens, and these few ornaments; I am not all so greedy of what is mine, let them preserve with the you of what I am? memory No, but of what I was, once fair and lovely in your eyes. Thus did those tender-hearted reformers dotingly suffer themselves to be overcome with harlot's language. And she like a witch, but with a contrary policy, did not take something of theirs, that she still might have power to bewitch them, but for the same intent left something of her own behind her. And that her whorish cunning should prevail to work upon us her deceitful ends, though it be sad to speak, yet such is our blindness, that we deserve. For we are deep in dotage. We cry out sacrilege and misdevotion against those who in zeal have demolished the dens and cages of her unclean wallowings. We stand for a popish liturgy as for the ark of our covenant. And so little does it appear our prayers are from the heart, that multitudes of us declare, they know not how to pray but by rote. Yet they can learnedly invent a prayer of their own to the parliament, that they may still ignorantly read the prayers of other men to God. They object, that if we must forsake all that is Rome's, we must bid adieu to our creed; and I had thought our creed had been of the Apostles, for so it bears title. But if it be hers, let her take it. We can want no creed, so long as we want not the Scriptures. We magnify those who, in reforming our church, have inconsiderately and blamefully permitted the old leaven to remain and sour our whole lump. But they were martyrs; true, and he that looks well into the book of God's pro-readers, by men that would overawe your ears with vidence, if he read there that God for this their negligence and halting brought all that following persecution upon this church, and on themselves, perhaps will be found at the last day not to have read amiss. SECT. XII. BUT now, readers, we have the port within sight; his last section, which is no deep one, remains only to be forded, and then the wished shore. And here first amples of wisdom and goodness among those who were foremost in the church, not elsewhere to be paralleled; but, to the amazement of what I expected, I found it all quite contrary; excepting in some very few, nothing but ambition, corruption, contention, combustion; insomuch that I could not but love the historian Socrates, who, in the proem to his fifth book professes," he was fain to intermix affairs of state, for that it would be else an extreme annoyance to hear in a continued discourse the endless brabbles and counter-plottings of the bishops." Finding, therefore, the most of their actions in single to be weak, and yet turbulent; full of strife, and yet flat of spirit; and the sum of their best councils there collected, to be most commonly in questions either trivial and vain, or else of short and easy decision, without that great bustle which they made; I concluded that if their single ambition and ignorance was such, then certainly united in a council it would be much more; and if the compendious recital of what they there did was so tedious and unprofitable, then surely to set out the whole extent of their tattle in a dozen volumes would be a loss of time irrecoverable. Besides that which I had read of St. Martin, who for his last sixteen years could never be persuaded to be at any council of the bishops. And Gregory Nazianzen betook him to the same resolution, affirming to Procopius, "that of any council or meeting of bishops he never saw good end; nor any remedy thereby of evil in the church, but rather an increase. For," saith he, “their contentions and desire of lording no tongue is able to express." I have not therefore, I confess, read more of the councils save here and there; I should be sorry to have been such a prodigal of my time: but that which is better, I can assure this confuter, I have read into them all. And if I want any thing yet, I shall reply something toward that which in the defence of Muræna was answered by Cicero to Sulpitius the lawyer. If ye provoke me (for at no hand else will I undertake such a frivolous labour) I will in three months be an expert councilist. For, be not deceived, big names and huge tomes that .contradict and repeal one another, because they can cram a margin with citations. Do but winnow their chaff from their wheat, ye shall see their great heap shrink and wax thin past belief. From hence he passes to inquire wherefore I should blame the vices of the prelates only, seeing the inferiour clergy is known to be as faulty. To which let him hear in brief; that those priests whose vices have been notorious, are all prelatical, which argues both the impiety of that opinion, and the wicked reWe hear not of any missness of that government. which are called nonconformists, that have been accused of scandalous living; but are known to be pious or at least sober men. Which is a great good argument that they are in the truth and prelates in the errour. He would be resolved next, "What the corruptions of the universities concern the prelates?" And to that let him take this, that the Remonstrant having spoken as if learning would decay with the removal of prelates, I shewed him that while books were extant and in print, learning could not readily be at a worse pass in the universities than it was now under their government. Then he seeks to justify the pernicious sermons of the clergy, as if they upheld sovereignty; whenas all christian sovereignty is by law, and to no other end but to the maintenance of the common good. But their doctrine was plainly the dissolution of law, which only sets up sovereignty, and the erecting of an arbitrary sway according to private will, to which they would enjoin a slavish obedience without law; which is the known definition of a tyrant, and a tyrannised people. A little beneath he denies that great riches in the church are the baits of pride and ambition; of which errour to undeceive him, I shall allege a reputed divine authority, as ancient as Constantine, which his love to antiquity must not except against; and to add the more weight, he shall learn it rather in the words of our old poet Gower than in mine, that he may see it is no new opinion, but a truth delivered of old by a voice from heaven, and ratified by long experience. "This Constantine which heal hath found, 'Yet may a man the sooth see. "God amend it whan he will, "I can thereto none other skill." But there were beasts of prey, saith he, before wealth was bestowed on the church. What, though, because the vultures had then but small pickings, shall we therefore go and fling them a full gorge? If they for lucre use to creep into the church undiscernibly, the more wisdom will it be so to provide that no revenue there may exceed the golden mean; for so, good pastors will be content, as having need of no more, and knowing withal the precept and example of Christ and his apostles, and also will be less tempted to ambition. The bad will have but small matter whereon to set their mischief awork; and the worst and subtlest heads will 66 not come at all, when they shall see the crop nothing answerable to their capacious greediness; for small temptations allure but dribbling offenders; but a great purchase will call such as both are most able of themselves, and will be most enabled hereby to compass dangerous projects. But, saith he, a widow's house will tempt as well as a bishop's palace." Acutely spoken! because neither we nor the prelates can abolish widows' houses, which are but an occasion taken of evil without the church, therefore we shall set up within the church a lottery of such prizes as are the direct inviting causes of avarice and ambition, both unnecessary and harmful to be proposed, and most easy, most convenient, and needful to be removed. "Yea but they are in a wise dispenser's hand." Let them be in whose hand they will, they are most apt to blind, to puff up, and pervert, the most seeming good. And how they have been kept from vultures, whatever the dispenser's care hath been, we have learned by our miseries. But this which comes next in view, I know not what good vein or humour took him when he let drop into his paper; I that was ere while the ignorant, the loiterer, on the sudden by his permission am now granted" to know something." And that " such a volley of expressions" he hath met withal, as he would never desire to have them better clothed." For me, readers, although I cannot say that I am utterly untrained in those rules which best rhetoricians have given, or unacquainted with those examples which the prime authors of eloquence have written in any learned tongue; yet true eloquence I find to be none, but the serious and hearty love of truth: and that whose mind soever is fully possessed with a fervent desire to know good things, and with the dearest charity to infuse the knowledge of them into others, when such a man would speak, his words (by what I can express) like so many nimble and airy servitors trip about him at command, and in well-ordered files, as he would wish, fall aptly into their own places. But now to the remainder of our discourse. Christ refused great riches and large honours at the devil's hand. But why, saith he, as they were tendered by him from whom it was a sin to receive them." Timely remembered: why is it not therefore as much a sin to receive a liturgy of the masses' giving, were it for nothing else but for the giver? "But he could make no use of such a high estate," quoth the confuter; opportunely. For why then should the servant take upon him to use those things which his master had unfitted himself to use, that he might teach his ministers to follow his steps in the same ministry? But "they were offered him to a bad end." So they prove to the prelates, who, after their preferment, most usually change the teaching labour of the word, into the unteaching ease of lordship over consciences and purses. But he proceeds, "God enticed the Israelites with the promise of Canaan;" did not the prelates bring as slavish minds with them, as the Jews brought out of Egypt? they had left out that instance. Besides that it was then the time, whenas the best of them, as St. Paul saith, 66 was shut up unto the faith under the law their schoolmaster," who was |