A SERMON PREACHED AT PAULES-CROSSE, UPON THE 1. OF NOVEMBER, BEING ALL-SAINTS DAY, ANNO 1607.  
By Sa: Collins, Bachelor in Divinity, and fellow of the King's College in Cambridge.  LUC. 7.35. 
Wisdom is justified of all her children.  GREG. MAG. in Ezechiel. 
Nihil ad defendendum honestate tutius: nihil ad dicendum veritate facilius.  
AT LONDON, Printed by Humphrey Lownes, for Richard Bonian, dwelling at the sign of the spread Eagle, right over against the great North door of S. Paul's Church. 1607.   

To the most Reverend Father in God, Richard, the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury his Grace, Primate and Metropolitan of all England, one of his majesties most honourable Privy Council.  
THe excellency of the calling (most Reverend Father) that God hath promoted your Grace unto, by the un-erring hand of his sacred Deputy, to be their Agent, in causis maioribus, to the Churches of this Kingdom, may justly challenge the labours of as many as handle the pen with discretion in our days; but mine (if I be aught) after a more especial manner: whom, the continuance of your favour, for no few years, shining upon my poor studies, hath made wholly pledged to your service; and some employments also vouchsafed from your Grace, have kept from being altogether idle. So that if my meanness should ever be exalted to bring forth any thing worthy publication (which your Grace rather construeth over-favourably of this Pamphlet, than it any way deserveth) I have long since consecrated it to the honour of your Grace, as one that hath both countenanced always mine endeavours, and also directed, after a sort, my courses. Howbeit, this small work, such as it is I now present unto your Grace, not so much in am of received kindness (which you have multiplied upon me and mine, even when your name hath been concealed) as invoking patronage against the oppugners. For, lata porta, but adversarij multi, as S. Paul said to his; 1. Cor. 16.9. and As concerning this way, we know nothing, but that it is every where spoken against; as they said to S. Paul, Act. 28.22.  
I speak the truth in Christ (most Reverend Father) I lie not, the holy Ghost also bearing witness with my conscience; that I grieve unspeakably, night and day, whithersoever I chance to look, at the malice of Satan (how transformed soever) and the disaster of our times. And as our Saviour sometimes, in the days of his flesh, wept in compassion over the great City, divining the ruins of it: so mine eyes gush out with water, to see there is no religion amongst men for the most part, but that which is tainted with a spice of faction.  
But to let-go complaints, and to leave that to him which will purge his floor in a due time, as one that hath his fan already in his hand, and lets the yellow weeds to shoot up but in a policy, to exercise our patience, and to magnify his wisdom in the latter end: as for the Book, my comfort is, that whom the reverence of your Grace's mildness and temper, most befiting Moses, and the advancement of his chair, shall not repress for shame; him the edge of your judgement, long since tried and renowned for the most accurate perusal of these causes and controversies, above all the Churchmen of our Nation, shall daunt perforce.  
And with that very hope I end for this time; humbly recommending the prosperities of your Grace, and the good estate of the Church Christian, to the Lord Christ: that under your auspicious and happy government (which God of his mercy grant may be most most long) our Nazarites may be whiter than the snow, & our Priests purer than the Sapphires.  
Your Grace's most humble Chaplain and Servant, SAMVEL COLLINS.   

A SERMON PREAched at Paules-Crosse.  1. TIMOTH. 6.3.4.5. 
If any man teach otherwise, and consenteth not to the wholesome words of our Lord jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according unto godliness, he is puffed up, and knoweth nothing, but languisheth about questions, and strife of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmises, froward disputations of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, which think that gain is godliness: from such separate thyself.  

IN 1. Sam. 13.17. thus we read, that upon a day there came, out of the host of the Philistines, three garrisons of Champions, all minded to destroy; but, each turning several ways, one to Ophrah, another to Bethoron, and a third to Zeboim. This was a picture of the Church's condition, not only bodily then wasted, and afflicted for the time, but spiritually assaulted to the ends of the world: whom a treble squadron of conspiring enemies all bend to murder and destroy, yet all attempting sundry means to mischief, do molest continually; the heretic by his poisonous and corrupt doctrines, the evil liver by his scandalous and wicked examples, the schismatic by his turbulent and unchristian separations.  
And, against these, the jonathans' of God with their Captain Saul, higher by the head than all the children of Israel, that is the king and his Clergy, must always have their weapons in readiness to suppress their furies. We, the weakest of ten thousand, do it as we may to the utmost of our power, and have done it often heretofore in divers places, encountering them and coping with them, as the occasion guided us, either jointly all at once, or dividedly by themselves.  
This day we will single out the Schismatic from his fellows, as in a stage of renown, the greatest disturber (if my mind do not misgive me) that our Church hath complained under, these many years. And yet we will pursue him nor chase him no further, than S. Paul himself shall give us leave to do, nay aim and scope how to do, in the Text now propounded.  
The parts whereof are in effect these six; please you to peruse them with me. The first is, The indifferency of the parties offending, in these words, If any man, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉; If any, be he who he will be, high or low, rich or poor, great or small, learned or lay, famous or of no reputation, If any. The second is the Quality of the fact; consenteth not, agreeth not, accordeth not, I had almost said subscribeth not. The third is the degree of the fault; teach otherwise: not only think, but teach, publish his fancies, proclaim his conceits, draw Disciples after him, make a Sect, and blow a trumpet to sedition with Siba the son of Bichri, Every man to his Tents, O Jsrael, the 2. of Sam. 20.1. The fourth is the rule of trial for this matter, the square of truth to discern and judge by: Itself twofold; either the wholesome words of CHRIST and of godliness, or every doctrine according thereto.  
So I say, not only the written word of God, but every doctrine that is not dissenting or swerving therefrom; not only that which is expressed, but that which is inferred, and by interposition of lawful authority deducted, not only that which is originally good, but even that which is consequentially sound, the wholesome words and the doctrine according; that is the fourth part as I said. The fift is the Censure, and this is somewhat intricate: I pray you mark it the better, to save my labour. First, privative, he knoweth nothing, he is an Idiot, an ignaro, a very child inwardly, whatsoever he pretend & vaunt for outwardly. Secondly, positive, & that either Causal in the first place & radical, he is puffed up: for, Radix omnis peccati superbia, Pride is the root of every sin, but especially of this sin, Schism and separation in the Church. Secondly, formal, 
* 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉  languisheth about questions: He languisheth indeed, and spendeth his strength in contention & brabble. Hypocrates himself could say no more to discover the nature of the disease. It is a head pain, that I say not a heady; and Caput dolet, caput dolet, as the child complained, 2. King. 4.19. But the father's answer is very wise and good, Carry him to his mother, Let the Church censure him and correct him: That, if any thing, may chance to heal him. Thirdly, Euentuall or effective, of which cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmises: you may say they are Legion, they are so many, or here comes a company, they are so thick; as Leab said at the birth of Gad, Gen. 30.11. And yet ye have not all, but last of all disputations, disputations, I say, or at least offers & challenges to disputations: let the times interpret me. Fourthly, qualitative, from the dispositions of the persons themselves, and that threefold; In regard of their judgement, in regard of their affection, and in regard of their practice. In regard of their judgement, destitute of the truth, and therefore blind. In regard of their affection, corruptly minded, partially minded, & therefore crooked; pretending one thing, intending and aiming at another. Thirdly, and lastly in regard of their practice, thinking gain to be godliness, or placing their godliness in gain, as the Prophet DAVID saith of them in the Psalm, Therefore do the people fall unto them, and thereout suck they no small advantage. This was the fift main part, the Censure. The sixth and last still remaineth: which you may call the Caution or the Jnhibition; From such separate thyself. So have you, to make short, the indifferency of the parties, the quality of the fact, the degree of the fault, the rule of trial or the square of truth, the Censure and the Inhibition: For I omit the several branches of amplification, till I come to the handling. And of all these, or of some of these, as God shall give utterance, you patience, and the time allowance.  
I have propounded the parts, I must confess, somewhat otherwise than they lie in the Text (as preferring order of matter before order of words in the Apostles writings); and yet I see I must handle them somewhat otherwise than I propounded them: but all shall be directed to the easier apprehension of you that are the Auditors, & no force offered to holy scripture.  
To begin therefore first with the quality of the fact, in those words, If any consent not; the Pelagian as soon as he hears of this Consent, presently dreams a dream of his darling free-will, as if all sheaves bowed to her sheave, and imagines we may do this by the power of Nature, I mean yield assent to the heavenly revelation.  
But if the natural man perceive not the things of God, 1. Cor. 2.14. much less can he consent to them out of his powers natural, after once he perceives them. For, consenting is the harder, perceiving is the easier of the two. As for example, I can make a man that hath but an ordinary capacity, by my pithy declaration, to perceive what we mean by the mystery of the Trinity, folded up in reverend obscurity, by the incarnation of Christ that swallows up the sense both of men and Angels: but I cannot make him assent to it nor agree to it; digitus Dei hic est, this point surpasseth our skill, & it is God's finger alone that can import a consent, though we can imprint a conceit: he bows the neck of the inner man, and puts our feet into wisdoms fetters, our hands into her links and chains, mollifies and intenerates that same neruum ferreum (as Manasses calls it) the iron sinew of our unbelief. Nemo pugnavit in valle Terebinthi (saith S. 
Serm. de Temp.  Augustine most sweetly) donec David veniret ad praelium, spoken by the history of David and Goliath; that is, no man fought in the valley of Turpentine trees, till David came and undertook the challenge. So, no man is of force in this dale of mortality to act any point of ghostly chivalry, till the spirit of Christ which is the truer David shall come upon him, and the power of the most high shall overshadow him: of Christ I say, who is therefore called, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hebrues. 12.2. The beginner and the ender, the founder and the finisher, the Alpha and Omega of our faith. For, as he begins it in obiecto, so he ends it in causa: as he did what we might believe, so he helps us to believe what he hath done for us, shining in the darkness (if at least any will comprehend him) and illightning every man that cometh into this world. We read how Hiram was famous for his working and carving in brass. 1. King. 7.14. But the truer praise hereof (if you mark it well) belongs to him, who only writes his Laws in our hearts, and gives us heart for heart, Cor carneumpro lapideo, a heart of flesh for a heart of stone, supple and gentle for rough and untractable, and renews a right spirit within us in the midst of our bowels. Anatomize if you please with me the parts of Christian perfection: what are they? I suppose these; Thought, Faith, Will, Deed, Perseverance, Martyrdom. What more easy then to think? yet we cannot so much as think a good thought of ourselves, as of ourselves, saith the Apostle. What, next thinking, more easy than believing? yet ye are saved by faith: which faith is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Ephe. 2.8. What then like willing and affecting? yet it is he that worketh in us both to will and to do, according to his good pleasure. But at least we perfect and accomplish his onsets after he hath once begun them in us: No, but he which hath begunue the good work in you will fulfil it unto the end. Much less than can we suffer but by his supportance, if we cannot do without his assistance: yea verily; for so we read, to you it is given, (mark the word given) not only to believe in him, but to suffer for him. Thus you see, nothing so easy that he disdaineth for us; nothing again so hard, but he effecteth it by us. As to the one kind we are more than weak and feeble, without him: so of the other kind we are more than Conquerors, through him. For, as Christ saith by us, Without me you can do nothing: so we say by him, that in Christ which enableth us, we can do all things. And, in one word, my dear brethren, whatsoever progress we make, whatsoever step we set forward upon this jacob's ladder, the way of grace and virtue which conducteth our souls to bliss; stil Dominus super scalam (as S. 
Serm. de Temp.  Augustine hath observed out of Gen. 28.13.) still the Lord is above the Ladder, still Christ the Angel is conspicuous at the top.  
And yet we read, says the Pelagian, Esa. 1.19 If you consent & obey, you shall eat the good things of the earth: but do we not read again; It is not of the willer, nor yet of the runner, but of God that showeth mercy. And yet we read, says the Pelagian, I have inclined my heart to keep thy righteous judgements: but do we not read again, in the same Psalm; O Lord do thou incline my heart unto thy testimonies, & not to covetousness. And yet we read, says the Pelagian, My son, keep thy heart with all diligence; as if he were his heart's keeper: but do we not read again, The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts & minds in Christ Jesus. Lastly, and yet we read says the Pelag. Make you straight steps unto your feet, lest that which is halting be turned out of the way. Heb. 12.13: but do we not read again, say I, Order (O Lord) my doings in thy paths, that my footsteps slide not; and Take thou from me the way of lying, but lead me in the way everlasting.  
How then is it, my dear brethren? for, I may seem to have led you into a maze of wanderings: or how may these contradictions so great in show, be knit up in any substantial accordance? yes doubtless, very well: neither delighteth in the others overthrow, but both espouse friendship in the kiss of peace. free-will eats not up grace, as Pharaohs lean kine eat up the fat, nor grace devours not Free-will (Adolet non abolet naturam gratia, saith S. Prosper) as Moses serpents devoured the Enchanters: but the sword of the Lord and the sword of Gedeon, God's finger and human endeavour, may both stand together very well. And in one word, to finish this, because the time spendeth so fast; As in the case of the person of our glorious Saviour, we search the Scriptures to see what he was, and to redeem him from the slanderous depravation of tongues, some denying him to be God, some denying him to be man; we (I say) search the Scriptures about this point, go into the sanctuary, & finding him weary sitting at a Well, finding him hungry, finding him thirsty, sleeping, bleeding mourning, dying, and such like, we conclude a man; but considering him on the other side, trampling the waters, quieting the winds, calming the tempests, rebuking fevers, taming the devils, whipping out the Simoniacal bargainers of the Temple, we infer a God: So in this doubtful diversity, where some deny grace, some abolish Nature and Free-will, we turn the book, the book of decision for the weighty causes and controversies of God; and if propension on the one side make for liberty, grace on the other side appears in victory, neither defacing nor demolishing the other, like Dagon, and the Ark; but each countenancing and establishing, like the 2. Cherubins that beheld one thing, and yet looked both sundry ways.  
For, if any man consent not, as you have it in the Text, If he consent not, implies not a consenting power in us. No, though he had said, see that you consent, look that you consent; yet, that proves no ability of doing so: neither supposition, nor imposition, neither si, nor sic can evicte any such conclusion at our hands: but, Lex imperat, fides impetrat; the Law indeed was given by Moses to the end that it should drive us to the grace that comes by Christ: and commandment may extend farther than strength. As when we read Psal. 119. Ver. 4. Tupraecepisti, thou hast charged that we should diligently keep thy commandments, he adds not, nor collects not, Therefore I can, or, therefore I will, as the Pelagian would do in all the haste; but, O that my ways were made so direct that I might keep thy statutes. The Imperative begets an Optative, not a Potential with him: for, Da Domine quod jubes, & iube quod vis, Lord help me but to perform, and then I care not what thou require. And so much might suffice to have spoken, of Consent; but that the age, which we are fallen into, craves a word more by way of this discourse at my hands. I will obey the times, and yet not neglect the time.  
Consent, is of three sorts, even as it may be performed by three distinct Organs; the heart, the mouth, the hand. The Consent of the heart is called Faith, of the mouth is termed Confession, of the hand is Subscription. For, so saith S. Paul; not content with one without the other, Rom. 10.10. With the heart we believe to righteousness, that is but one step: and, with the mouth we confess to salvation, that is another step: and he might add a third, yea he adds it here in effect (or at least, for so many as shall be required and called upon) with the hand we subscribe, to maintain good order and keep all from running into endless confusion. Or, if you will have one speak plainer for this third kind of Consent, than S. Paul here doth; take but the Prophet Esay to you, who in his 44. & 5, foretelling of our times, the times of the new testament, makes subscription of the hand, in direct terms, one a principal mark of our honourable Christendom; They shall subscribe (saith he) with their hand.  
But alas! what should I say more in this behalf, if neither the Parallel of Scripture, nor the precedent of story, nor the manifest necessity of the thing itself, nor your own practice of common life can persuade you? I will briefly touch them all.  
First, the Parallel of Scripture: The Magistrates generally brought their people to make a covenant with almighty GOD, that they would continue in his service, and in obedience to his laws as concerning Religion.  
First, Josua, 24.25. I will make short. The place was Shechem; the Act was, writing the people's words of Consent, and writing them in the book of the la of God; the ceremony was a stone rolled under an Oak that was in the Sanctuary: which stone was to be a witness of their promised conformity.  
Secondly, Josiah, 2. King. 23.3. He renewed the like covenant again between God and the people, and established uniformity of worship by a vow. And though there be no mention, in that place, of writing, and taking names as in the former; yet either we must understand it so by conference of places (though for brevity sake it be omitted in the one) or at least it hath the same force: & I doubt not but as Job says of his words, O that my words were written in a book; so, none there professed but could well be content to have it registered, & the honour of that days Act to remain with Zebulun the handler of the pen, Judges, 5, 14. as well as with Napthali, the delicate Hind, smooth of language, and giving goodly words. Gen. 49.21.  
Thirdly, and lastly Nehemiah in his 9 and 38. where, in few words you have this, a sure Covenant as josiah made; and the writing of it, as in Josuah we saw; and yet, beside that, the seal put to it: which was more than in any of the former: So much briefly for Parallel of scripture. As for the precedent of story, infinite might be alleged: but I will insist in only one, so famous as it cannot be denied, and so pregnant as it may by no means be despised. Arius (I speak no more than almost all of you know) who driving ambitiously at a Bishopwrick, 
Theod. Ecclesiast. hist. lib. 1. cap. 2  was prevented therein by Alexander his Competitor, the worthier man, though perhaps not esteemed his equal for heat of zeal, missing his suit, pursued his spite by broaching an heresy as derogatory to the head, as these of our days are to the body (I mean to Christ, as these be to his Church) that he might seem somebody, for all the repulse, and draw a world of malcontents after him. The Council of Nice gathered for that purpose by the holy Ghost, to quench the fire that had kindled so far, and yet was like to spread a great deal farther, sent for this Arius, conferred with him, debated the cause, drove him to conform, & demanded Subscription of him: which in the end he denied not. So ancient is the custom of requiring subscription at the hands of Churchmen, to prevent faction once afoot. Now, if Arius subscribed but haltingly, and dissemblingly, retaining the poison of his opinion at heart, which he covered so cunningly with the sugar of terms, as many do now adays (with whom it is, not as with Pilate, quod scripsi, scripsi, what I have written, I have written; but, the Chapman inverted, of whom Salonion speaketh, It is good, it is good, and afterward falls to dispraise it again) I say, if this be so, yet that detracts not from subscription, as if less lawful and laudable for that cause; but shows in truth, that some stronger cords would be provided, if it were possible, to hamper these colts (that snuff the wind, as jeremy saith, and whisk it in the wilderness of their own boundless and transported fancy) from straying and breaking forth of the limits again. Yea verily, let Shimei be confined to the River Kidron for gadding, 1. King. 2.42. and make Renegates constant even against their will.  
The third head was from the manifest necessity of the thing itself: wherein, I shall need to say the less, because your own senses may be your own judges, and experience yieldeth her plentiful testimony. The heart of man (saith the Prophet jeremy) is like a great sea, huge, and bottomless; who can fathom it? and Solomon, This one thing yet have I found, that GOD hath made man righteous, but be hath begotten to himself many inventions: Many, many, whereof there is no number; and yet more would, were there no restraint. Certainly, my dear Brethren, if Order be a thing so much to be desired (Let all things be done comely and in good order. 1. Corinthians, 14.40.) And if God be the God, not of confusion, but of peace, & so I teach in all the Churches (saith the Apostle) and if Order be ranked with Faith in another place, for the excellency of it (as Colossians, 2.5, I delight to see your Order, and your established Faith) and, if the Church be termed terrible like an Army with banners, only because of the goodly array that she marcheth in; then think, what you must needs think of subscription, unless you will needs think amiss: without which, we should have (I tremble to speak it) so many parishes, so many part-taking, so many companies, so many rents in Christ's coat, so many congregations, so many distractions, so many Churches, so many sects; yea, more than so, quot capita, tot schismata, as S. Jerom saith; so many men, so many minds: and consequently, so many schisms, growing, and budding out of them; God's inheritance being like Jeremy's bird, a bird of divers colours. jer. 12.9. and faction multiplying without all measure, like Anacreon's fond loves, some perfect, some pipient, some hatched, some half hatched, some peering out of the egg, some riper in the chick; while others had the strength to fly nimbly away. Seneca reports, that the wise Senators of ancient Rome were content for a time to let the slaves go distinguished from the freeborn in apparel; the wearing of the cap making the difference between them and the Citizen: till at last they espied, there was this inconvenience in it, that the slaves might happily fall to numbering of their own side, and so to presume upon their own strength, till in the end it should break out into open rebellion. Let this be but practised here a little amongst us, in the Church of GOD, every congregation doing as they list, and assuming to themselves what fashion they list, till it begin to be considered, who have the most of their side; and we shall not need to be threatened Jsmaels' fist, though the time was when we were threatened it, as you know; their boldness, no doubt, springing out of some such observation: we should have felt it, I warrant you, walking about our ears even by this time.  
The fourth, and the last, is your own practice in common life. I confess, I am loath to descend to such specialties, that I may not say to such trivialties: but you must be convicted by your own proceed; who, for substantial assurance, use the Scrivener, & the Indenture, almost to every thing. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, saith Saint chrysostom of old, that is, you bind us in, with writings, stronger than any iron chains. So as S. Paul himself writing to Philemon, but about a matter of debt, between him and Onesimus his run. away servant, was feign to descend to your terms, and to your conditions, though he were an Apostle; and, after promise of repayment made, thus to say, Ego subscripsimanu mea, I have subscribed it with mine own hand, fear not: in the Epistle to Philem. Ver. 19  
Yea, the Awl was used in former times, by Gods own appointment, to bore-through the ear of him, that would not departed from his first service: Deut. 15.17. And do you think much, if they be put to the pen, to keep them from back sliding, and from Apostasy, that serve indeed, and serve not at the Tabernacle (which was but the pattern & shadow of heavenly things. Heb. 8.5) but are the immediate Ministers of the truth of the living God?  
But, Subscription they will say, they all allow of, & no body takes exception against the use of the thing; they refuse to subscribe to such, and such Articles. What Articles I pray you? Some dangerous ones, I warrant you, that our Church obtrudeth, that stern stepmother, and much of kin to those that Jobs Wife commenced to him; Blaspheme GOD and die. It were tedious to go over all that is controverted, and which hath been justified upon our side, over and over again, as clear as it were written with the brightest Sunne-beam upon a wall of glass as Lactantius speaketh. And, if so much ink, as hath been already spent in the causes, cannot cease the Ringworm of creeping contention; how then may I think, that my tongue, will be so sovereign and so medicinable (lick it never so cunningly nor so cleanly) as to cure the Lazar of such an inveterate sore? Christ alone must be invoked, and his good spirit implored, that shall staunch the wound, and dry up the issue of festered blood, that hath vexed our Syrophaenissian woman, the Church of the Gentiles in these Northern parts of the world, now more than these 8 years.  
Unless you look I should defend our Orders, and Hierarchies; which they say are Antichristian, we know to be Apostolic: our habit and vestments; which, they think, are so far off from the Camel's skin, that they are made of the Dragon's tail: the imperfections of our prayer-book; which they have made to stink in the nostrils of men, as much as ever it smelled sweet in the nostrils of God: our praying for all men; which, they say, is against particular election: for all that travail by Land, or by water; which, they say, is for thieves and Pirates: against lightning and tempests; which, they say, is against sparrow-blasting, unless it be at a certain time of the year only: that our Father's sins sit not heavy upon our shoulders; which, they say, is to acknowledge Purgatory: that we be hurt by no persecutions; as much in effect, as that we may lead a quiet and a peaceable life; the very words of S. Paul. 1. Tim. 2.2: Our entreating Christ by his agony, & bloody passion; which they call conjuring: our Ministerial absolution; which to them savours of a Pope's pardon: and lastly, our Cross in holy Baptism, so scandalous, that same Lignum juxta aquas, 
Serm. de Temp.  as S. Austin sweetly calls it, the Tree of the Cross that is planted by the waters of Baptism; which these good men, for want of other matter, call idolatry.  
I pass by many things: these that I have metioned, are too too unsavoury; and I am loath to give you a surfeit of distaste. If wise men be not deceived, they are more offended with our service-book, for that which it hath not, than for that which it hath.  
As for these that I have mentioned, what should I say? there are some things so clear, as they refuse trial; some slanders so lewd and so base, as they abhor purgation. Your good apprehension must be our best persuasion, & your capacity our Oratory.  
So much for the first point, The quality of the fact; If he consent not. The 2. followeth, which is, the degree of the fault; If he teach otherwise.  
I must be short in that behind is; this 1. hath devoured so much good time already.   

ALl faults are not of one and the same degree: some are smaller, some greater, some lighter, some more heinous. There is a mote and a beam, there is stubble and Lead, there is judgement, or council, or hell fire proportionable. If he consent not, that is janua mortis, to speak with Origen; but, If he teach otherwise, that is limen inferni. Our Saviour himself distinguisheth these so: Math. 5.19. Whosoever shall break one of these least commandments (and yet they count some so little & so petite, as they are not worth the keeping; the ceremonies being no better with these men, than a Cupboard of glasses, that they may dash at their pleasure, forsooth): but, as I was saying, Our Saviour makes a difference between whosoever breaks, and breaking teacheth so, one even of the least commandments: or rather he couples them, and joins them together; to show they seldom go asunder. Which is the cause, that S. Paul also reckons them for one here in this place, If he consent not, and, If he teach otherwise. For, serpit ut Cancer, as the same Apostle said of old, such Doctrine still creeps like a Gangrene, frets, proceeds, stays not; it hath a power infecting like the eye of a Basilisk: and if Archytas take no pleasure in vicuing heaven, with all the heavenly beauties thereof, unless he may have one to tell it to again, the Devil (saith S. Cyprian) easeth his condemnation, and so do his agents, with this, if they can draw as many after them, as possibly may be, into the same pit of error.  
It is most true, Hoc font derivata clades, and I may well add the rest, in patriam populumque fluxit: this is the original of all our woe, the desperate licentiousness of the Teacher. As when a wellspring is poisoned, the travailer must needs die for it, that drinks thereof, and all the beasts of the Forest, and all the birds among the branches, and the wild Asses that quench their thirst there; as the Psalmist speaketh: so from the mouth of the Teacher spreads this venom into the veins of the body, till it leave no place void of a mortal contagion. But execrabilis ille qui minxit in torrentem, according to the old saying; accursed be he that hath thus poisoned our Current. If Ahab must be deceived, there is no fit means to deceive him by, than for spiritus mendacij, a lying spirit, to get into the mouth of one of his Prophets, and from that Pulpit to preach as it pleaseth him 1. Kings 22.22. All the aberrations and corruptions of the people, both Israel and juda, are generally fathered throughout the Bible, upon the tongues of the Prophets, that taught partially: and God himself acknowledgeth, that their sour grape set the people's teeth on edge; the Serpent gave it them, and they gave it the people. For, whereas they should have been like an Oracle responsal, without any Philippizing, to the whole Kingdom, their lips preserving knowledge with indifferency, and the Law being to be required and rendered at their mouth; they on the contrary preached: what? Visionem cordis, & non ex ore Domini, a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord: which, to interpret by our times, were a dream of their own brain, begotten of choler and a hungry stomach, foretelling the downfall of the Prelates and the Clergy, with an imaginary scambling after the revenues of Bishoprics.  
And if it please you but to hear a little what may be said in this behalf for condemning of the Teachers, acquitting and releasing the poor ignorant people; you (may they say, turning to their Teachers) taught us to abandon the congregation, where prayers were but read out of a book: you to fling out of the Church in a fume, where any thing sounded but canonical Scripture, though never so wholesome else to be hearkened to you to damn Homilies to the pit of hell, which contained the kernel of salvation more lively, than all your vocal Sermons could ever amount to: you to measure Baptism by the person that administered it, as if no Preacher were no sufficient baptizer; a thing so contrary to all the rules of Divinity, that the principal Apostle says of himself, He was sent to the one & not to the other: you to ●et the Baptism of our new born babes, like a thing indifferent at six and sevens; as if the righteousness of the Parents made them perfect before God, that were borne in sin and in damnation, and the saving Sacrament were now but a complement: You to bite the lip, and hang the head, at Supremacy of princes, in each kind of causes, mentioned in prayers; as if that were but flattery, being cast upon kings, and the truer right thereof in Ecclesiastical menages belonged to the Presbyters. You to fly from the Surplice & the Cap, as from a she Bear rob of her whelps in the wilderness, whereas that defileth not that goeth into a man, much less that which cometh upon him, saith our Saviour, & 
* Rom. 14.14  there is nothing unclean, but to him that thinketh so. And how shall we reckon up all your other mysteries, that you were wont to encumber us with? You, to put great holiness, in not bending at Communion; high religion, in refraining from solemn thanksgiving after childbirth: main discretion in withholding our children from the most godly confirmation; deep judgement in abhorring the ring as a civil pledge at Marriage. This may the people say of their Teachers, & this must their excuse be, in the last day, when they shall be charged to have wakened the spouse of Christ, & troubled her rest afore she would. Oues autem istae quid meruerunt? as for these poor sheep, that have been thus beguiled, what alas have they deserved?  
Howbeit, here I cannot excuse the people altogether, of this our Land, so as fain I would, but that a great part of the fault still resteth on them; who, though at first they were angled with the enticing words of their new Prophets, yet afterward so played upon the hook, as in the end they could not be beaten fro it & the prophets now, if they would please them, might cast no other bait before the but that. So as a man may say, that if at first they were credited because they spoke it, now they were to speak it, because they would be credited: a very ball of faction being thus tossed in a manner, to and fro, what between the politic drifts of the Teacher, at his first entrance; and the liquorousness of the Auditors, now, not only easy to be taken, but jealous, if the taker applied any means, but those wherewith they were first taken. And yet even this again is no more, than the Church of the Israelites saw in old times, and had experience of; that we might be like them both ways, as well in our people, as in our Priests. For, even there Venite praedicate, was the common saying of the people to their Prophets, Come and preach to us such and such things, not as you should, but as we would have you, & like best to hear of. O my dear brethren, it was never well, since either the people durst presume to give aim to their Ministers, though never so secretly; or the Minister stooped at the Pulpit door, to take measure of the people's feet.  
But to return to the Teachers, because they without controversy are the principal in this condemnation, and our Text leadeth me by the hand to tax them most directly; it will be said (perhaps) that such and such false Teachers there were, in old time, under Achab and the rest, but none nowadays in the time of the new Testament. That indeed were to imagine a pretty popish Commonwealth, where truth had clipther wings, as they say, and could no more fly away; the spirit being as fast bound to the Desk, as ever they imagined it was to the Chair. But, besides S. Paul's here If any teach otherwise, if any, which extends to all times; besides that, I say, S. John tells us, that even now many spirits are gone abroad into the world, that would be tried before they be trusted, examined afore they be believed. S. Peter tells us, Erant Pseudo-prophetae, and erunt. 2. Pet. 2.1. (I name the place, because it is most observable) that is, there shall be false preachers, even as there were false prophets, and that in populo, among the people: what think you of that? Will you have any more notes of them? that shall privily bring in damnable Sects, and many shall follow their destructions, and shall make the way of truth to be evil spoken of. And through covetousness, they shall make merchandise of you with feigned words, walkers after the flesh, despisers of government, bold, standing in their own conceit, speaking evil of them that are ●n dignity; or if they admire them, it is but for advantage sake, contradicting the things, that in very truth they know not, beguiling the unstable, forsakers of the right way, and turners aside to a baulk of their own, after Balam the son of Bosor, that loved the wages of unrighteousness, whom, because he should not boast too much in his gift of tongue, his own Ass spoke under him, and a dumb beast rebuked the madness of a speaking Prophet. Haec Petri sunt ferè, these are all out of S. Peter for the most part, foretelling the disastrous event of our times.  
And I might add yet more, collected out of the same place, which place is so worthy for discovery of the ages that were then to come, and are now undoubtedly come upon us, that S. Jude hath thought good to repeat almost the same, in the self same words, after S. Peter, adding moreover a most famous & memorable mark, one or two, of his own, that S. Peter had omitted, to demonstrate the men, and to decide the question, if it may be, at once, between us and them; Murmurers, Complainers, and yet Mockers too, when they think good, and last of all separators. Quòd si haec picta videretis, non dicta audiretis, now if some painter had but drawn these things with a coal, not an Apostle described them in colours, as he hath, could you doubt by which side they were to be understood?  
It was our wish a long time, as you may remember, utinam omnis populus, O that all the people did prophecy, not only Eldad and Medad, but all the people. Such desire there was of that holy increase. But since we have learned, by a costly experience, what hurt a Neophytus doth by speaking in an assembly, because we would not believe S. Paul's advertisements: every stripling, nay every boy, being flabellum concionis, and flagellum optimatism, an instrument to set the mutinous a gog; and making this his first admittance to popular commendation, if he could declaim most lewdly, & yet most loudly, against them that scorned, and had good cause to scorn, to set his fathers, or his father's fathers, with the curs of their flock, as job saith. The truth is, now we might spare some of that seed, which hath abounded so much to our woeful decay, & juie-like eaten up the Tree that supported it. Take back, take back, may we say with Moses, not your stipends, but your Labourers, unless they could labour any better amongst us. Let go Churchmen, and give up your Church-livings, that you have withheld an unjustice from us. For, not only the people perish there, where prophecy faileth, which is a sentence that these men have never out of their mouths; but pastors multi, & indeed stulti, many shepherds, many, indeed too many to be good, 
jer. 12.10  diripuerunt vineam meam (it is Gods own complaint by Jeremy) are the cause that our vine lieth so waste & so defaced, as it doth at this day.  
Wherefore, in the name of God, if any teach hereafter, let them teach; but not otherwise: otherwise they were as good not teach at all. Let the old saying of the Chaldees be verified among us Christians, 
Mel. Canus in locis.  Homo quidam ex judaeis renit, Sacerdos, neutiquam decipiet nos: there is a certain stranger come to Town, a priest I trow, he will not deceive us at any hand. Such opinion they had of the preachers sincerity. Let the pulpits be no Pasquil's; nor the Mosaical trumpet, a trunk to shoot pellets at government and good order: Let no slanderous Characters be drawn in the oil of the Tabernacle, which no water can cleanse or wash away; and let a man take heed how he come there to claw sides, where no good man enters without quaking. For my own part, I say, with jacob, Haecest Bethel, this is God's house: and let the stone out of the wall witness against me, if I decline to partiality, or embrace untruth.  
But to return to our Text, If a man teach, Si quis docet, splendidum est: but if he teach otherwise, Si quis diversum docet, lubricum est: teaching is honourable, but otherwise is tempting; teaching profiteth, but this otherwise marreth and overthroweth all. Yet, Auia Pteridum lustro loca, nullius ante Trita solo; I would this were a Poet's affectation only, and not a Prophets: but self-love, they say, looks over Pulpits, as well as over meaner places, and private glory is made the purchase of public decay. Abner calls it play, to have the young men skirmish and flourish before him, though it be with edge tools: Samsons Foxes make a sport to toss firebrands, though it be to burn corn fields: the skittish Kine care not what become of the Ark, which they carry, so they may be frisking: and the very confusion of tongues and languages, is sweet meat to some, though Babel miss of her aspiring purpose. Well, I say no more but so; In teaching is not so much good, but this otherwise brings as much evil with it: like the good figs and the bad Figs, Jer. 24.2. none better than the good, none worse than the bad: so the Teachers of old times, when religion was first restored in this our Land, to those that put an otherwise to their teaching in our days, and fill all full of singularities.  
But to break off this point, and pass on to the next: The sum of all is, my dear brethren, that you make a difference hereafter between Teachers and false Teachers, not honouring all promiscuously that bear the name, nor yielding your ears like a Lute, to be played upon by every finger; but distinguishing wisely between the Teacher otherwise (as the Text here hath it, If any teach otherwise) and the Teacher according to the wholesome words, or according to that which is according thereto. For, as many as walk after this rule (I pray you mark the rule, for it is worth your marking) Gal. 6.16. That Circumcision is nothing, nor uncircumcision is nothing, that is, Ceremony nor no Ceremony; but the substantial a new Creature, I say, as many as walk after this rule, Peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Jsrael of God. But if any teach otherwise, opposing indifferency, and oppugning authority, Let no man trouble me henceforth, saith our Church: for, I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus; and am known to be his by the evident prints of his adversaries in my flesh, whom lately they would have blown up with hell-powder at once. And is it a small thing for them, thus to fight against me from my youth up, to vex me thus continually: but you, even you, must set to your hands, and make heavy my yoke, the children of the household, and my own mother's sons?   

I Come to the third point, with all the speed I can, though I am feign to pass by some things of moment, unspoken-to here; chiefly of the Conjunction of the two first parts between themselves, Consent not, and, teach otherwise. For, the door to false teaching, is, the not consenting, or not subscribing at the first. Therefore, S. Paul puts one with another, If he consent, and, If he teach otherwise. And yet again he puts one before another, as namely, false teaching before refusing to consent, because some first teach otherwise, and then have no reason to deny Subscription, but only because they have otherwise taught. They are loath that a woman should be said to brain Abimelech with a millstone from the wall, loathe that lawful authority should correct and curb their stubborn fancy.   

THe third point is, The Rule of Trial, the Square of truth, for judging of matters that depend in controversy. A most lively one, and a most absolute one, that the Apostle here gives, if I misdeem not; consisting of 2. parts; one, the wholesome words of Christ or of godliness, the other, The Doctrine that is according thereto.  
And first, to speak of the wholesome words; I cannot here discourse in the praise of Theology, as gladly I would have done at another time, how that it is the only wholesome science, when all is done; others are but for gloss and for ornament, hanging gold and jewels upon our apparel, as Saul did upon the Israelites garments. Abillis enim salubritas quaedam, or not so much as that; but ingenua animi delectatiotantùm: ab hac sanitas & vita ipsa petitur: they put blood into our face, like the Aliptae, amend our colour and our complexion a little; but this like the Physician cherishes our spark, maintains our life, whom therefore necessity herself compels us to honour.  
And surely, without these wholesome words, all that grows abroad in the green fields of Philosophy, it is but toxicum, but even mere poison, and mors in olla, mors in olla, death is in the pot, we may say, where that but enters. Elisaeus his salt only sweetens the broth, which a strange root hath made distastable, while the young scholars, and children of the Prophets do not discern what they gather: and Moses his wood, that is the Gospel of Christ jesus, lignum vitae, and lignum crucis, relishes the Marah of Gentile learning, whose waters are bitter, and end in desperation, without such mixture. Therefore S. Hierome was buffited by an Angel, for studying heathen Authors too much; but, an Angel made S. John not give over the book of wholesome words, that he brought him, till he had eaten and swallowed it down.  
But, as I said, I may not stand hereupon; no, nor yet upon the 1. part of this rule, The words of Christ, and that same hunc audite, hear you him; which was spoken when all the rest were vanished and disappeared out of the Mount, both Moses, and Peter, & Elias; that we might know his singular prerogative over the Church, wherein neither Moses, nor Elias, nor Peter nor any communicate with him. Howbeit, still we must remember, that there is another audite left for somebody else too, another hear you him, though in their rank and in their place, as, qui vos audit, etc. he that heareth you heareth me, spoken of the Prelates & Pastors of the Church, that shall succeed continually to the end of the World; and si non audit ecclesiam, if he hear not the Church in in her determinations, let him be counted among the heathen, and the Infidels, let him lose the very right that he hath of his Christendom. For so saith the second part of this rule here in my Text, And the doctrine according to godliness.  
For persuading whereof the better, & that we seem not to open a floodgate to popery, to rush in upon us all amain, it may please you to distinguish two kinds of Verities, which holy scripture hath distinguished long before us, in the Ep to the Col. 2.5. Some of Faith, some of Order. Now the verities of faith are so plentifully set down in the Old and New Testaments, as he addeth to his own plagues, that shall presume to add one jot thereto. For the will of an or dinary man, that dead is; no man dareth to interline (saith the Apostle) how much less than his, that witnessed a good confession under Pontius Pilate & sealed his Covenant with his own blood? Yet some do, it cannot be denied. In this net sticks the Boar of Rome at this day, & is gored with more Anathemaes for his presumption, than Absalon was with darts hanging between heaven & earth in the tree: though the beagels of the sect, mistaking their scent, leave him to pursue us with open volley & cry. The books of the two Testaments they are all in all, for evidence of our faith & demonstration impregnable; the two pillars to conduct us out of Egypt into Canaan, one of smoke, dark like the Old Testament, another of fire, bright like the New; the two great lights, that God reared in the firmament and advanced, and yet the sun to rule the day, the moon the night, so much clearer is our planet than was the Fathers; the two Cherubins that face the Mercy seat with mutual counterview, now the Mercy seat is Christ, whom the two Testaments equally argue & demonstrate; the two spies loaded with a cluster of grapes most delicious to ghostly taste; the two Olive branches that stand before the Lord of the whole earth; the two millstones that never Tyrant yet took to pawn from the poor church; the two dugs of the Spouse, the 2. sticks of the widow, the 2. wings of the Eagle, the two mites of God's treasure-house, exceeding all that was cast in before or beside, the bag that hath both old and new in it, able to make a Scribe learned toward the heavenly Kingdom. O beware how you disparaged the sufficiency of scripture for matters of faith. O beware how you detract from the fullness thereof, cuius plenitudinem adoro (saith Tertullian) whose absolute perfection I admire at my very heart, and worship with my face bowed down to the ground.  
But, there are other matters of Order beside those, which though they be far less in valuation than the former, yet their littleness is not to be drowned in the others greatness. Et haec facere oportuit, & illa non negligere (saith our Saviour) these things you ought to do, and yet not despise those. Faith, Faith (I say) as great as she is, cannot maintain herself, without the rules of good Order, in any state or ctedit, no more than the king can consist without the field that is tilled, as Solomon saith, And these things are not expressed in scriplure; they are not. For neither need they, neither could they; they need not, because so obvious; and they could not, because so numbrous: but, Reliqua cum venero ordinabo, saith the Apostle, Other things I will set in order when I come, these things must be ordered, as they may be, by occasion. David did not all things during his life, as he meant should be done in process of time; but he gave order to Solomon to see to the execution of them by leisure, because he was a wise man; as himself saith, thou art wise and knowest what is fit to be done: therefore, after my departure, see that thou do thus and thus, etc. So, the Christian Magistrate and Regent of the Church, whom God hath endued with the spirit of wisdom, and with whom he is assistant, to the consummation of the world, supplies in this case, that which was no imperfection for the scripture to leave out, but rather an impossibility for the scripture to comprehend. I dare be bold to say it, the scripture which is Christ's letter of of love, penned to his Church, as S. Austin sweetly calls it, must have exceeded not only mensuram Epistolae, the measure of so small a composition, which should never fill more than the left hand of the Reader, if we believe Seneca; but even swollen in quantity above the Pope's Decretals, which LUTHER of zeal burnt in the market place, (they were so irksome and so tedious) if all things of this nature had been to be registered & engrossed in them. Fonts, plates, pews, bells, desks, can you want them? can you spare them? yea Churches & Chapels too, by your leave, which the Apostles had none, nor divers successions after the Apostles; and therefore the Brownists like good honest fellows pull them down, as fast as they can, by virtue of this principle, & never dissemble for the matter.  
If all things were written that our Saviour did, saith S. John, I suppose the world would not contain the books: but I may say, if all things were written, that are lawfully incident to the particular worship & service of God, a world of worlds would not contain the books, that should contain them. Yet are not our Ceremonies therefore so many, that they should oppress us with their multitude & load, as they unjustly cavil at us; they are in number as few as possibly can be in a Church, in substance as grave, in choice as discreet, in sight as comely, in observation as easy, in significance as natural & correspondent: but though we have confined ourselves to paucity for good respects, yet the thing itself in nature is wonderful broad.  
Now let the scoffers of this our doctrine appear in their likeness, & show their faces, if they dare for shame. They traduce our champions, & blaze them to the world for blasphemers: one because he saith Christ is not the sole Lawegiver of his Church, 
In their Challenge to Disputat.  another about the rawness of the primitive times compared with ours; though it cannot be denied but in many respects the church hath been bettered as well as impaired by continuance. Separate awhile yourselves from prejudice, and let not the captiousness of terms trouble you, consider if you can the naked truth. Why should this seem strange in your ears, that Christ is not the only Lawgiver of his Church, in the sense that we deny it, or how can it ever be avowed for true in the sense that they obtrude it? Are there no laws, think you, to be observed among christian men & women, touching matters of church and of Religion, but such as Christ hath established and promulged with his own mouth? Certainly, I will produce no hidden arguments, certainly I will not search the depths, as they say, nor scour the bottoms for this matter; I will allege no more than you all know, & are all able to judge of, and yet I will conclude the thing in question; that you may see the difference between the wholesome words of Christ the Lord, as our Text here hath it, and the doctrine which is according to godliness.  
If any of you should command your servant, or your son, to carry a Bible with them to Church upon the Sundays, under pain of your heavy displeasure if they did not, do you think it were a law that might be broken, or no? A law doubtless it were, as being taxed with punishment upon the offendor. Yourselves would think it fit to be kept, not fit to be broken. And yet it is in matter of God's service and Religion. For, let no man deceive himself my dear brethren, not willingly misconstrue us; there was none of us ever placed so much Religion in a garment, as you do in a Book. And yet CHRIST never bad it, and it is left free; for all sin not, you must think, that come to Church without their Bibles, though they can read.  
Wind yourselves now out of this net, as well as you can, which is no net, but a sound and substantial confutation, specially you that delight in ambush, as the twelve reasons, and intorteled Syllogisms. Or, if you say that Christ commanded us to search the Scriptures; well, though that doth not enforce, that we should carry them to the Church, to every Lecture, or sermon, with us; yet, let the former supposition hold, but in Lidleyes prayer Book, or Bradfords' Meditations, or some such like, and then see what you can say to it; whether you will allow your servant or your son to cross your commandment in such a respect or not. Neither again may you except that the bringing of the Bible helps to edify, the ceremonies not: for the ceremonies edify too in their place and order (I will not now compare them with a lay man's Bible) and the question is not so much touching edification (if you mark it) as whether they may be urged upon the consciences of believers by law, though they be never so apt in themselves to edify.  
How then is it my dear Brethren and sisters of this City? may your prentices be constrained, your children compelled, by your private law-giving authority, thus and thus to demean themselves in God's service & worship, without any disparagement to the supreme Lawgiver, and may not they whose jurisdiction is so far greater than yours, attempt the same over them that they govern? May the Housholder do this in his house, and not the king in his kingdoms? May the father and the mother, and not God's lieutenant and Deputy general? Nay, may the Paedant in his flock and not the Prince?  
For to say the father commands but a few, and the master a few, the King all the Ministers & Preachers of the Land, is an opposition more fit for you to make than for me to remove, or rather so unfit for me to remove, that indeed it is not fit for you to make: the king's authority justly stretching farther, why? because the limits of his Realms are wider; and if he allow you to be kings in your households, you must allow him to be a householder in his kingdom, at the least.  
Again, to say that the one are Ministers and Preachers, the other but children & servants, is as vain. For, if christian liberty must not be infringed in binding ministers & preachers, no more may it be infringed in binding children, and servants; & if Ecclesiastical Canons wrong the privilege that came by Christ's blood, so do domestical: we know no such prerogative of one above another in these kind of causes, every man's conscience is as free and as untouchable as another's before God, 
Coloss. 3.11  one price was paid for all.  
I omit many things, that might be alleged, to make this fort not only strong but invincible. The Church we say, may make laws, and not Christ only. She that may repeal them, she may make them: 
Act. 15  The Church repealed the law of abstinence from strangled and blood, when she saw fit time, & canceled that which the Apostles by the instinct of the h●ghost had enacted, but enacted without any limitation of time. The same I might say of the kiss of Charity used in Church, and commanded in Scripture, 
2. Cor. 13.12  Greet ye one another with an holy kiss; now laid aside with as much maturity as at first it was brought in with advise. The same of widows to be fed by the Church, an Apostolic sanction, and yet now not so much as called for once, by them that profess the restoration of the golden age to the quick, so as we shall not have a pin nor a peg missing, as they say, in the great work of their second Tabernacle.  
I might proceed to more. 
Calv. Instit. l. 2. c. 8. sect. 32. et 34. Chemn. in loc. Com. p. 2. de 3. praec. Vrsin. in catech. in 4. pra●. Bellarm. de imagine. Sanct. l. 2 c 7. ubi. August. Irena●et Thomam citat in eandem sent. Catechis. Rom. et Chapeaville in eum locum Cat.  The Sabbath that we celebrate every seventh day, is it not of the Church and her constitution mere? The discourse were impertinent but the * consent of writers may go for proof in the mean time, and the places are very pregnant, Rom. 14.5. Colossi. 2.14. Matth. 6.5. with the like, besides a troop of reasons that persuade that way.  
Judas Maccabaeus instituted a Feast, by virtue of his place, and of his authority among the jews, and increased the number of Feasts that God had appointed to his people. Yet our Saviour sanctified it by his blessed presence; thought it no disparagement to his sole law-giving. John. 10.22.  
The Music of the Temple, that David brought in, we read it approved, we never read it commanded. What some think they may gather out of obscure consequences, I regard not a rush: If ever it come to trial I can say as much, why David should do it of his own head, as by any special commandment, for aught that appears by Scripture: Yet, the high Lawegiver was not displeased with it. And, if happily these men had been by the same David, when he danced naked before the Ark, they would have greatly blamed him, for bringing a new service into the Church, for somuch as dancing was no where prescribed; and chid him for affecting nakedness in God's worship: which, they might do with better colour than they can chide us for our apparel. So is our case one with the Fathers: so are the actions of the greatest patriarchs subject to the same reprehension of the scornful, that our practices are here at home; and the Land is not yet rid of her Micholls.  
jonadab the son of Rechab interdicted his sons the use of wine, for all their life time; and God commended his severe Law-giving. Yet, Jonadabs' authority came short of the royal, and we have no such strictness enjoined us, as is the abstinence of wine for a man's whole life time. The brazen Serpent was Gods own ordinance; Ezechias as King broke it in pieces, when he saw cause. No direction from God, no intercourse of the Prophets moving him thereto: yet, his fact is famous throughout all posterities. Lo, the weapon that they thrust at us so often in vain, mortally retorted upon their own breasts. Lastly, the K. of Nineveh clothed cattle in sackcloth, a thing more monstrous & uncouth to behold, than any surplice upon a man's back; Yea further, made children and beasts refrain from meat, a fasting for which he had no foundation in scripture. Was it therefore ever a-whit the less accepted? I trow not: God was appeased with it, God turned away his wrath upon it: we put no such confidence in our constitutions, albeit the ceremonies have their use.  
The ancient Fathers, S. Austin in his 5. book de Baptismo. 9 chap. and Tertullian in his book of the same argument, agree in this that God gave no direction to S. John Baptist of baptizing in particular, but only in general appointed him to baptize; the rites and the fashions he was to add himself at his own pleasure. And therefore it is called, say they, the Baptism of john, as being his own for the most part. Yet here was no injury to Christ the sole Lawgiver, or else he should have been sure to have heard of it. To conclude in a word, we never read in all the Scripture, that Christ is the only Lawgiver of his church: and yet if we should, we have that small understanding with us, as to construe it no otherwise than the only Teacher, & yet other Teachers; the only Magistrate, & yet other Magistrates; (for we must desire them now that we may have no Anabaptism to trouble us in our arg. whatsoer they think, or whatsoer they would do at another time:) so the only Claviger of the house of David, & yet the Church hath her keys too of no small consequence; the only foster-father of his flock, & yet many nursing fathers & many nursing mothers (God inrease the number) of his poor Church; whose milk is discipline, whose diet is censure, whose nourishment is nurture & good laws. No doubt the sovereign drowns not the subordinate, in all these & the like instances. But simple folks may be bleared with terms, & the one eyed man ruffles it they say among the stark blind. Forgery ceases in the wise man's presence. So much therefore concerning that. Another thing they carp at in the doctrine of our men: which because it belongs to the place that I now handle, I will speak a word or twain unto, & so an end. It is for saying the Church cannot er in defining about ceremonies, or any such matter of order arbitrary, & indifferent, define she how she wil Truly to inquire what the Church may do, in utmost extent, without possibility of sliding into error, is a thing more meet for schools than pulpits, & to exercise great judgements than to tickle curious ears. Yet thus much as a schoolman I will be bold to undertake to determine by the way, that forsomuch as things indifferent are exceeding divers in their own nature, & many lawful that are not expedient, according to the apostles saying; yet supposing the assistance of the spirit of God in ruling his Church, which is rather Christian to believe than to deride or to deny, the church cannot err, define she howsoever in such cases: & again, not supposing so, yet she cannot oer dangerously, howsoever she determine touching such matters. I say determine; for in preferring the ceremonies before the substantials by way of observation she may err, as the Church of the jews did, whom God often reprehends eo nomine; & again I say the Church, for if the Papists have erred even in devising some of their ceremonies, yet that is since their synagogue lost indeed the honour of that title. So much also briefly may serve for that.  
The last thing that I will note out of our adversaries exceptions compared with the doctrine of this present place, is that which the author of the challenge to disputation hath set down in a certain place, much (as I remember) to this purpose;  
That, if we in our opinions, which we maintain about Ceremonies, used in the Church of England, as they are at this day, be right, than our departure from the papists cannot be justified, and the Pope with his adherents, nay Christ the Son of God, and his heavenly truth in them, hath had great injury to be so long now relinquished upon no other grounds.  
Yea they farther profess, that themselves will become papists, and jesuits (& what not?) if we can but quit ourselves in the controversy. O speech worthy the authors of it! O speech most unworthy the ears of any christian manlô speech than which the devil of hell could never have roared out a more viperous, nor a more detestable one, above ground. Let it be noted, I would wish you, & noted again, with a pen of Diamond, in tables of brass, to show the disposition of the sect for ever, that, when they would revoke it, they may not be able. For, what think you my dear brethren & Countrymen of this place? Is it matter of Order that we have left Rome for, or matter of Faith? Is it matter of ceremony, or matter of substance? Is it a straw, or a block, nay a great beam? Is it a gap and a bush, or a countermure of stone, and trench unpassable, that divides us from them? so great, as we cannot imagine that was ever greater, which sometime divided Abraham from the rich man in hell.  
And yet behold; worshipping of Images, adoring of relics, invoking of Angels, building Churches to Saints, sacrificing for the sins of quick and dead with a Wafer-cake, treading down Kings, the Deputies of God, from their throne of Majesty, to set up a foxie Intruder in their room, whom all ages have acknowledged their vassal; taking away Bibles, mangling of Sacraments, licensing Stews, condemning marriage, wrapping up your service, and the obsequies of your conscience in the strange livery of an unknown tongue, selling pardons for six pence, soule-ease for money, heaven at pleasure, opposing the flax of our transitory deeds to the unpartial fire of the heavenly righteousness, mingling the blood of Martyrs, that I say not of Traitors, with the blood of the Lamb of God, spotless and immaculate, which only taketh away the sins of the world, which only quencheth the rage of the wrath to come, which only abateth the edge of his father's justice, and the sword cherubical that glitters afore Paradise, these things are now no cause to leave Rome for, by our men's doctrine; or at least no more cause, than surplice or no surplice, gesture or no gesture, ceremony or no ceremony, presbytery or bishopdom amount to here at home between ourselves. But as I said before, so I say once again: Let it be noted, I would wish you, and noted most heedfully, to show the disposition of the sect for ever, that when they would revoke it upon better deliberation, they may not be able. So much also concerning that. For I doubt not, I, but your knowledge is satisfied, and their frenzy discovered sufficiently herewith.  
I should proceed from hence, to some of their objections, as weak as water, and as vain as vanity itself upon the weights: As, Mardocheus his refusing to rise to Haman, though the King commanded it, will-worships, man's ordinances, Whatsoever is not of faith, is sin; therefore we must have express Scripture for all that we do, shows of evil would be abandoned, Relics of Idolatry laid aside, no conformity with unbelievers, and the like. For, who ever rose up in contradiction against the Church, but had a scriptum est of his side, and somewhat to say for himself? Yet with such stuff as these (a thing lamentable to be spoken) they usually suck the blood of your souls, and pervert many from the right way. But I must make haste to that which is behind: and to say truth, whom the former positive confirmations will not satisfy, he will be little the better for dissolving these and the like their cobweb-obiections. I have done it often, most often, in other places; I pray you once give me leave to pass them over here.  
So much of the third point, The rule of trial, or, the square of truth: which consists not only in the wholesome words of our Lord Jesus Christ; but in the Doctrines, that are commenced and framed according thereto. 
Contra Psychicos.  For, as Tertullian says most sweetly, Non tantùm servire debeo Domino meo, sed adulari; we must not do all that we do of Injunction, but we may honour God with our freest invention. And S. Paul's limitation is very large, and no way thralled to the narrowness of those precincts that they imagine, Philippians, 4.8. Whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things pertain to love, and are well reported of, those do, and the GOD of peace shall be with you. Do you but mark the promise that the God of peace shall be with us? whom these men would so feign keep out of our Land, and banish, as they say, by head and shoulders. O the sweet mask of Peace to appear in! O the gracious form of peace to mask in! Let him alway appear to me in that form: let him alway present himself to me in that shape. Not in fire nor in tempest: for, in them the Lord was not, saith the Scripture: but in the soft and still wind. The God of peace shall be with you. This was the promise: but now mark the precept also, I pray you: Whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things pertain to love, and are well reported of, those do. If there be any virtue, if there be any praise. O notable accommodation of the Apostles pen to our times! For, what more honest, than that which can be charged with no crime, but only jealousy & suspicion refuseth! So are our Ceremonies. What more just, than that which lawful authority hath established, and those lips that harbour an oracle, ratified and approved? Yet so are our ceremonies. What more pure, than that which is refined in the furnace, and purged from the dregs of all ancient superstition? yet so are our ceremonies. What more pertainining to love, than the pledges of combination between the Ministers of one Kingdom, likely also to draw the adversaries to an union? yet this is the very nature & scope of our ceremonies. As for praise, and virtue, and good report, and such like, the best, & the best-iudgmented will easily allow it them: the worst I know deprave them, whose judgement makes them never the worse for all that. And where the former titles go before, as honesty, purity, and the like; these latter must needs follow of their own accord, they may not be parted. Wherefore, if your delight be in the God of peace, strive not against such things: as for those that put them from them so violently, they show plainly that peace is not their seeking. But, so much shall serve, as I said, for the third point general of the Text.   

THe fourth point remains, which is, the indifferency of the parties, offending against that which we have formerly delivered, of consenting to the words that are according to godliness, and, not teaching otherwise. If any man; be he who he will be, learned or lewd, Clerk or Lay-man, spiritual or temporal, holy or profane, one or many, For there is no rising up against justice for respects, and salomon's sword strikes unpartial where it hits; Ulysses must not serve for Telemachus in the furrow, and a judge must have ears to scan the causes, but no eyes to discern the persons. If any.  
Yet the multitude cries out; The good men, the purer sort, the preciser sort, of great parts, of great pains, they are silenced, they are deprived. Parúmne Sanctus Paulus, was S. Paul, think you, an Apostle, or no? Did he speak by the instinct of the holy Ghost, or no? that hath so damped the clamours of the iniudiciall multitude, and checked their fond exceptions long aforehand, with his If any, if any man; be he who he will be, look not to his person, trust not to thine eye, make no difference, remember the Church, and the peace of the Church, the coat of Christ, nay the body of Christ, Pereat unus potius quàm unitas, and, Nulla charitas ad eam charitatem qua obstringimur Ecclesiae: Let Saul take heed how he spare Agag for pretexts, and slay the meagrer and the wretcheder of the Kine and Cattle, passing by the fairer for his own lust's sake.  
But because they do so aggravate the matter against us, in regard of their worth; we will way the respects that they most trust to, in due balance, and see what in extremity they may challenge at our hands. I am loath, I confess, to enter into this kind of comparative conflict. For, I have learned of Aristotle not to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉: 
Ethic. 4.  but the importance of the cause, and Saint Paul's If any, overrules my disposition for this once.  
Three things they most beard us with, their life, their learning, their labours. For they are honest men, as they say, painful men, and profound men. And if we go to levy them now by the Tribes and the families, and at last by the head and the poll, to see if they be all answerable to this report that goes of them, or no; we are told aforehand very mannerly forsooth, not all without exception for life, but some; not all so deeply learned, but some; not all so painful nor industrious in their vocation, but some. And so we have here in effect bestiam pharmacopolae, that Julian the Pelagian upbraided S. Austin with, the beast that the Apothecary promised his patient of wonderful virtue, which, afore morning was come, had eaten up herself. For, if only some be thus approved for life amongst themselves, what then shall we say of the other more obnoxious? and yet behold, they all cry out to have the vices, and the scandals of the Clergy reform. And if only some be thus esteemed for learning among themselves, what then shall we say of the other sort of insufficient? and yet they all require a learned ministery. And if only some be so famous for pains taking amongst themselves, what then shall we say of the other idle Drones? and yet all cry out against lazy labourers, and would have Hive, and Bees, and honey, & all, given over to them to suck.  
Do you not see, beloved, by these things most clearly, the beginning, the proceed, and the end of the whole faction? Set on foot no doubt, by some, that thought well of themselves, and perhaps had cause so to do, if they could have done it, within any good measure, or compass; afterward helped forward by others, that had no such desert of their own to raise them; yet thought they would be followers of the Camp, lending their hands, and their names with the foremost, partly for company, and partly for hope of spoil and booty? at last the poor people carried away with hobubs & imaginations, hearing them not only to vaunt of their virtues, but to crack of their forces, and that by the hundreds now and the thousands? Whereas, of all these things there is no one true, as I have showed, or that they dare stand to, in strict terms; and yet if all were as true as they make show for, yet number prevails not against the right, as S. Paul here hath it, If any man, whosoever he be, or how many soever they be; and excellent gifts bind to excellent modesty, give no leave to men to be mutinous.  
You see beloved, by these delays, how loath I am to come to the stricter scanning of their threefold Comparative, their life, their learning, their labours, that they bear down ours so mightily withal, as they think. Yet somewhat must be said, I cannot dwell long upon it, because I come to it against my will.  
First, for their life, that they magnify so much. Howbeit, I would counsel them to spare this plea, or let some other speak it for them. Alienus laudet te non os tuum, it would sound better in their neighbour's mouths. Surely, virtue never dwelled at this sign; surely she is no Dinah that rome's abroad to see, and to be seen of the daughters of the Country; but rather an Elizabeth that hides herself six months together breeding child, and that so famous a child as S. john Baptist was; neither ever did religion write upon her posts, My house is the house of prayer. It is no speech of a contrite heart, Stand farther from me, I am purer than thou; but, depart from me Lord, for I am a sinner.  
Besides, this is most certain, no vice ever showed her face without a vizard yet, in public, if she could hide it; hypocrisy must lead in heresy by the hand, and usher it, and make way for it, like the damosel that led S. Peter into the high Priests Hall, every body so abhors it, if it appear as it is. But, Speculum consulitur, saith S. Cyprian, cur? nisi quia timet ne sit ipsa, she consults with her looking-glass, till that at least say she is fair. Boys with nuts, like the Jndians with rattles, or such pretty toys; and men many times are carried away with shows, with gloss, and professions. As if judas kissed not where he meant to kill, or old shoes transformed a Gibeonite, or Jezabels paint were any better than the plaster of a leprous countenance, that lurketh underneath. Therefore we read of Wolves that shall come in sheeps cleathinges, therefore we read of Satan, dressed like an Angel of light. False Prephets have worn rough garments next their flesh, as well as the good, and Pelagius, was as strict a man for life, as he was reprobate concerning the faith. Did not devout women resist S. Paul? so I say, de●●●● women, Acts 13.15. and we hear th●● these have the like on their side: no marvel. Neither are the Monks of later times yet out of our minds, with all their painted holiness & goodly shows, whose souls, if it were not an error of Pythagorisme, I would not stick to say had come to take up their mansions once more in these men's bodies. Pardon us, pardon us, if we yield not to a second gull, specially served upon us so freshly in the same kind, and give us leave to distinguish between Samuel, and the Devil, whom the Witch of Endor hath suborned in his mantle; so far forth like him, if you will, but that he is known by his ascending out of the earth.  
I am loath, I protest, to discover Noah, wallowing in his shame, and drunken fits, though their boisterous enormities cannot make them to judge mildly of others infirmities. But what think you? shall we call that mortification, which we are sure to find, not in the Monastery embracing the dust, nor yet with the Doctors disputing in the Temple; but sitting upper most at belly cheer, and at Feasts? shall we call that austerity, which fawns, and crouches, and tells news for a meal? courage and fortitude, that rejects tithes and properties, to graze upon a benevolence? contentment with a little, which hath a hook in the end of it like a Harpago, and picks as many purses by day, as a thief takes preys in the night season? humility, that shaking of the Bishop's jurisdiction, would now be the only Pope in the Parish? I pass by many things: patience, which passeth over the miseries of prison, with such manner of delicacies & store, that Quails are no meat with them? chastity, which placing all perfection in wedlock, is found many times not to stay there? Charity, modesty, purity, they are but names, as Brutus complained when he was dying, that virtue herself was no better; and sacrifice hath turned mercy quite out of doors. Why doth Coniah break down my Cedar work (saith almighty God in Jeremy) and then paint it over with vermilion? so why do the fair shows of worship, and the first table, gilled over the monstrous breaches of the second? But I stand upon thorns, while I stand upon comparisons. Nos nec pugnas narramus nec cicatrices nostras, though Thraso may; it is enough for us, if we may be found one day amongst them, In quorum ore non est inventus dolus, in whose mouth there was found no guile, that is as Saint Austin sweetly expounds it, which confessed meekly that they were sinners, and built their glory upon humility: So much of their life.  
Follows their Learning: which if Quintilian might have had his wish, Soli ut artifices de artibus iudicarent, that the people should not presume to judge of faculties, they would not once have dared so much as to mention: They being so far off from attaining to the first three, as I may call it, or to any superlative perfection in that kind, that they have devised many ways how to rid the World of such a cumbersome employment, as cunning is; and put all their commendations in this, If they could put all Learning quite out of countenance.  
Who of us knows not, what they have done in Schools for pairing and nimming of the Arts, till they have made them more bare than the King of Ammon sent David's messengers away, and grubbed not only their beards but their chins? And who of you know not, how they have declamed against them in pulpits, as if the Captive Woman were to be slain and not to be shome, as if AGAR stood ABRAHAM in no use for procreation, and all Philosophy were now but cozenage? Let us believe that they can have reached to the top, that scorned to climb by the middle stairs: let us believe that they are such mighty men in Divinity, that profess not only strangeness, but war to philosophy. Though, who sees not what a divinity they have coined us? more ignorant, or more petulant I can hardly say whether. Once; they will teach their Nurse to suck, with shame enough, and correct Magnificat afore they know quid significat, a Proverb so fit, as if it had been made by them: while they impute those errors to the Church of England, both in their teachings, and in their writings, as is a tickling to the adversaries to hear counted for errors; to us not so lamentable to be charged by them, as charged for those things, or not so much for those things as by those men for those things, while the common enemy stands by and laughs. And if it were not in a Theatre of such conspicuity, where whatsoer is spoken one way, is sure to be detorted, and wrested another way, thereafter as is the humour of the Consterer; I would not stick to say it, that they have more errors in their doctrine, than they have hairs on their head: and Saint PAUL'S verdict is herein also veresied of them, that he that consenteth not, but teacheth otherwise, knows nothing, nothing, at least as he should do. A just judgement of God to light upon them, that thought it nothing worth to be counted wise, unless all the world were fools beside: whereas we stand not so much now to boast ourselves, as to keep off scanned all from the Church of Christ, and slander from the army of the living GOD; which hath not her better under the sun (let not envy hear me) for all the glory of Arts & Sciences, howsoever these demilances and these Dwarves (only big in their own conceits) proudly defy her.  
But to finish this point, and to grant them their ask for this once; let them be as wise as all the children of the East, as Hethan, as Chalcol, as Derda, or as Daniel; yet what get they by it, what gain they by it, to the purpose now in hand? The stronger wit the stronger heretic, said Vincentius of old, & Origen proved it true by his example Never mean parts set traitorous plots abroach, neither in church against Christ, nor against King in the commonwealth. Were not Core, Dathan, and Abiram, the 3. resisters of Moses their Governor (as these are of the government, at this day) the famosest & the eminentest men in the congregation? I am sure the Text says so. And let no man think I do them wrong to rank them with Core, or his fellow-conspirators: For as I have often said, so I will say it once more, that as for the sin of Core and these men's, but a pair of shears went between. Wherefore, once again, let me enforce S. Paul's If any; if any, be he who he will be; and let Saul take heed how he spare Agag for pretexts, and slay etc. when all are a like faulty, and liable to censure. So much also have I spoken unto their learning, with no other intent (God is my witness) quàm ut ista ilia quae sunt inflat a rumpantur, then to prick the bladder and let out the wind.  
The 3. point only remains; their labour, their diligence, & their travel. Wherein I will use no dissembling, nor hafting: they have been but eve too too diligent, running with Chuzi afore they were sent, and yet again, with Ahimaaz out running Chuzi because they have run by the way of the plain. A way of such plainness most of them (God help them) as I think the like was never in use before, and I hope shall never be in practice again. But to speak to their pains: what marvel, if the children of light be not always the forwardest in their generation? the pharisees compass sea & land to make one proselyte, though they make him doubly more damned than themselves. While the good man sleeps the enemy is not idle, but sows his tars very industriously. Mischance is nimble, & one Ate outstrips they say a hundred Litae. I could wish, our men would imitate their diligence; but by all means they must beware of their pestilence. Who knows not what hath been the wont argument of their sermons? railing against our service book, & defacing prayer, to take up the time forsooth in preaching; like the hedgehog that drove his Host out of doors. For so prayer lets in preaching: & by it we can do, if we can do any thing. Yet as Caesar drowned Bibulus his Consulship, so they make one of them to live by the spoil & wrack of another, preaching by praying; though the Ch. be the house of praying nor of preaching, properly so instiled by God himself. Then their squibbling at the Prelacy, yea & glancing sometimes at the sovereign authority: which I have heard, to my great grief, with mine own ears in this City, when time was; not without the great applause of the seduced multitude. And now no dumb dogs I warrant you, but (which is worse) barking afore they espy a thief, yea biting true men that come in their way: whose legs would be broken or their hamstrings cut, by the custom of old Rome, for being so fierce by day; whereas they are set to watch the night, & the Capitol to give them maintenance for such a service only, & no otherwise. They tell us of rigour, & persecution, & hard measure: but it is they with their tongue, not the church with her hand, that is the persecutor. Hagar beats Sara, & not Sara Hagar, though you would think it otherwise when you read the story; because Hagar is the malapert, as having gotten a great bell lie (these being full & desirus to vent, like a vessel stuffed with new wine, as job says): Sara doth but as a mistress should (& so the Church) striking when she is provoked. And shall these pains be mentioned to their praise, which a mean severity will not serve to chastise? They delighted in bitterness, let it come unto them; their theme was cursing, let them inherit it; be it as water unto their bowels, and as the girdle to their loins, that they are girt withal. 
Preface to the challenge.  They tell us, they have laid their axe to the Prelacy to hue it down: but if it chance to swerver & hit the striker, let such a man know that it comes of the Lord. This I have spoken of the matter of their sermons: but now if I should enter to entreat of their form, the day would fail me. Be it conceived in a word, The most of them have made Gods offerings to stink, like the sons of Eli, & the pulpits to lose much of their ancient estimation & credit, that they held in former times, by the undiscreet handling of their business. Aristot. was wont to say, it was the reward of a liar not to be believed when he told truth: so, many men of worth are the worse thought on for their unworthiness. To omit other faults, so retchless & so dissolute they are in their preaching, that now it is become a la among them, as it was among the Tarentines, nemo de nobis, let him be no body in the faction, that brings a studied or a premeditate sermon. That were to tithe H. Ghost to an inkhorn, turn the cock & it will run well enough of itself, (I think I speak their own Proverbs:) & there are some worse, as when they say they bring sermons of Gods own making, because they took no pains in the penning; with others more, that for honesty sake must be concealed. Thus they tell us of labour, & labour, in their preaching; and when all comes to all, they hold it no preaching, if it be laborious. Alex. would be painted by none but Apelles, graven by none but Lysippus, one an excellent painter the other an excellent carver: these can allow any to handle the word, to touch the mystery with unwashed hands, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as S. Basil says, base fellows, and (more than so) a degree below baseness itself. And therefore no marvel, if any thing accounted good enough for our Order, when they have counted any body fit enough for the labour.  
But to let go this, because they will say this is to preach in the evidence of the spirit, and in all demonstration of power and authority (though God knows there is great difference between the two) what think you of that, that they challenge to themselves a converting power, (I speak no more than I know by good proof) and deny to others a converting ministration? In the latter whereof they are not so injurious against charity toward men, as in the former heinous in excess of pride and impiety towards God. Certainly, my dear brethren, if we could convert others, we would first begin with the conversion of ourselves: but because no man converteth himself; therefore, it is most true, he cannot convert another. Turn us Lord and we shall be turned, says the Prophet himself, though he could preach no doubt sufficiently: and our Saviour likewise, You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, spoken not to the multitudes but to the Apostles themselves; above which level the Church men of our times, and the men Apostolic that live yet, may not seek to soar by any means. The heart of the King is the hand of God, as are the waters in the South; that we read in the Proverbs: but we never read, the heart of the people is in the hand of the Minister to turn it which way he will; But, Paul is nothing, and Apollo's is nothing, and, We are not Lords over your Faith, and again, Why gaze you at us, as if we by our Virtue had made this Cripple whole? Yet, as the Fly that you have heard of, which riding upon a coach-wheel at the games of Olympus, gave forth that it was she that made so glorius a dust; so these as vainglorious, but in a higher kind, arrogate to themselves the manage of that service, whereunto it is enough if they may be reputed but the meanest accessaries.  
And now we are not angry with them, for denying us the fellowship of such a prerogative as cannot be held without God's highest dishonour: but leaving them this blasphemy to adorn their head withal, we think it worth the noting that they have excluded us from being so much as instruments, aswell as invested themselves in the principals. For, thither no doubt tendeth that speech of theirs, 
Preface to their Petition first offered to his Majesty.  which you may all well remember, it was so famous, That all the flower is of their bolting, throughout the land, the bran & the chaff (if any be in the Church) is theirs that have laboured in a different kind from them. Ruth could not glean so much as a handful, these mowers have so carried all into their barn; & the Amnons' of the people could not be persuaded to let any cakes go down, but only those of Thamar's baking. All this night have we fished (may we say with good S. Peter) & caught nothing, because we have not fished with the worm that they have. New Palaemon's in the school of divinity, that say of themselves, nobiscum nata, nobiscum peritura, with us it was born, & with us it must die, as wisdom should do with jobs friends. I could wish yet that Philip had left somewhat for young Alexander to conquer: but the frantic Merchant cries aloud from the key, the ships are all mine. And if one of us do but look out of a pulpit, presently they have for him, as for Paul, Quid vult hic semini verbius dicere? It is possible for a consormer to make a good sermon? (Let the guilty confcience acknowledge his own speech) and again, as for Saul, numquid Saul inter Prophetas? is Saul also among the Proph.? To whom our Apology must be, as than it was, Quis pater eorum, who is their father? &, hath not he abundance of spirit? or is all enclosed in your breast? &, did the word of God come to you only, or may it come from no body now effectually but you? Doubtless, as I have heard some Divines reason, that they had rather be Publicans, than pharisees, and do no good works than grow proud or censorious after their doing, which is the dangerousest temptation that a man can fall into, and which most separateth from Christ: So, it had been better for these men, to have kept silence, even from good words, than out of their labours to have grown into such a spirit, as either to intrude into God's rights by overweening, or excluded us as unworthy by disdain.  
Howbeit, because they magnify so their pains in preaching, and think they bear us down so mightily that way, we will end this point, if first we desire them, not to censure all over sharply that shall not ply the pulpit as they do. For mine own part, I say with the holy Apostle, vae mihi nisi Euangelizavero, woe to me unless I preach the Gospel, and with Bishop Jewel, stantem me inveniat Christus & praedicantem, let Christ find me in the pulpit, if it be his will, when he comes to judgement. Yet, preaching is no necessary annexum of Orders (as shall be defended if ever it be doubted) but that it may yield to a more weighty dispensation; as the Pilot doth no small good in the Ship, though he sit still at the helm, stir not as other Mariners and as the gally-boys stir about. In a word, as Demosthenes said to one of his fellow-Lawyers, that bragged he had received a talon for his pleading, tush fool, I had more for holding my peace; So it cannot be denied, but some men's silence profits the Church of Christ more than all their tonguinesse can do it hurt. And so much also, concerning their labours.  
I had verily thought I had done with this fourth part, The indifferency of offenders; when an objection presented itself to my considetation, which before was not thought upon, but now must be cleared in any case, because every mouth is so full of it. For, if the green tree be thus punished, why not then the dry? and if the puritan smart for it (say they) why not the papist much more? for so hath our Text, If any. I cannot be so long as the answers are plentiful, & yet I will point you to much in a word.  
One would think the Papist were borne like a flower, in the bosoms of us English men, that heard these men take exceptions so strangely; and again, one would think that our State had very simple Steers-men in it, that heard these Phormiohs reprove them so boldly. But, if the perpetual government of our English nation, since religion began first to hold up the head, be rather a matter of wonder among ourselves than of repine, of envy to our neighbours than scandal and reproach, of thanksgiving to God, unconceivable, unspeakable, then of expostulation never so little; then think what credit is to be given to these exceptours, or what weight their words ought in due to carry with them, which can find no place of entertainment in our minds, till God's mercies be undervalued, our nations praise stained, and the very truth & evidence of so long proceed shamefully denied. As for the affairs of State, I shall speak another time, & show what reverence belongs unto them, the ark that may not be pried into, the mountain that a beast may not presume to touch, the sun that dazzles curious beholders, the sea that swallows profane ventures, the way of an Eagle in the air, and the way of a Ship in the waters, whose tract may not be espied nor inquired, but admired and adored afar of. For even of them hath God pronounced an O homo, tu quis es? and none may say unto a king, Cur sic facis? Why dost thou so? Ecclesiast. 8.4. or to the Princes, you are unjust, as Job hath it: Lest of all they, that know not so much as the way into the City, says Solomon, but lose themselves in seeking for their own Father's house; a house, which, of all other houses, might well be the most conspicuous to them at this day, the Church of God in their own Land.  
And how then, if the Magistrate, upon great considerations, should alter his hand in proceeding against papists, as S. Paul doth change his voice among the Galath? how if he should turn sternness into mildness, as before mildness gave place to sternness; suspendens verbera, and producens ubera, as the Fathers speak, & preferring suffusion of blood before effusion, shame before smart with Tertullian? 
Petilianus a● pud Augus●  Sith this is most certain that not only Christianitas (as that author said) but even haeresis mortibus crescit, the more they are pruned the more they grow; and whom the horror of their own late unnatural proceed, specially illustrated with the Commentaries of our patience, cannot read a Lecture to, of a better mind, them no bondage nor hard measure can ever be thought able to suppress or reclaim.  
This I might say in defence of the State, if it had been partial, and to this I might allege that out of the psalm; If it had been mine enemy I could have borne it, but now my fellow & mine own familiar friend, that walked, that talked, & took sweet counsel together, etc. Can this be passed over without a check? Nevertheless, the truth is, and experience showeth to them that have but half an eye, that the Papists (God be thanked) enjoy no such impunity among us, and justice hath not let fall the balance, nor Censure yet put up her sword. Indeed they are not taxed with the same kinds of punishments, because they are not capable of being so punished, as those to whom more favour hath been always showed. They are not silenced; for they never had been licenced to preach among us; they are not deprived nor put beside their benefices; for they were never suffered to enjoy any. But in the mean time, they are so kerbed and so restrained (as truly fit is) that if the troubles and incommodities of the two factions popish and puritan were laid upon a heap, and every man allowed to share equal, I doubt not but the puritanes would greatly refuse it. It was time the wheel of administration should turn about, and the Law begin to prick them a little, that had not felt it, but laughed at it a long time, and through connivence slid into contempt. If it had come any later, the evil had been almost unredressable, and even now we may say to the most of them, as Christ did to the man of Bethesda, that had lain diseased 38. years, Visne sanari, wilt thou be reform, yea or no? The short of it is, my dear brethren, though the Papists be troublesome, yet the Puritans must not look to go uncontrolled. As when the enemies assault a City or a Town, the children may not be allowed to keep what rule they will in the house in the mean time, but rather live so much the more orderly. Or else we shall think there is a confederacy, & that they reap more advantage by the thriving of Popery, than they pretend for, and favour the spreading of Antichrists Kingdom with all their heart, if the tyranny of the one be the liberty of the other, and as they shall have increased, so these must be excused.  
To conclude, I might urge them with this dilemma; If the Papists be not so bad as they make show for, when they exaggerate their pestilence so much above their own; why are they so eager to have them punished? and if they be so bad, what praise is it for them, or why do they place their defence in that, that they come somewhat short of enormous Malefactors? So much may serve to have spoken to that objection: and so much also generally of the party's indifferency.  
You would not think how glad I am, having passed these rocks, and escaped these quick sands. Now we shall sail in a gentle stream: now we shall go forward with tide and wind. Or rather once again behold a whirlpool. For, the fift part follows, which is the Censure, full of dangerous and devouring waters, He is puffed up, he knows nothing, he languisheth about questions, of which cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmises, etc. Almost there is no bottom in it. Is the sixth any better then (the Inhibition, or the Caution) from such separate thyself? We might speak here I confess of excommunication administered by one person, as by Timothy himself. For, this in effect is nothing else. We might speak of certain separators and stragglers from us here at home, erecting Church against Church, Altar against Altar, Paul against Peter, and Christ against Jesus, insomuch as they call themselves the brethren of the separation, and openly delight now in that title; though in truth they deserve that we should separate first from them. We might in one word increase the punishment by handling the two latter parts, as we have laid open the fault by discoursing the four former. But I am not wont to insult over their infirmittes more than needs I must, whose errors and evil courses I cannot choose but pity from my very heart. Only I had thought to have given a touch touching languishing away, as Saint Paul here calls it, and hanging their haps upon the wilful trees, that might make good melody to the recovering of souls, if they would apply them rightly, and welcoming home of the prodigal son again.  
For, let them not tell us, they would do it, but for conditions: It is too nice in them of conscience, not to reach the cup, but after a service of their own; when we that are ready to perish for thirst, are content to drink the wine out of any hand. Remember, I pray you, the Lamentation of David over Abner being slain, and see if it fit not more than ordinary to our purpose. How died Abner, says David, how died he? his hands were not bound, nor his feet tied with setters of brass, and yet he fell down at the foot of the Conqueror Yesterday a man, to day a coarse. No body compelled him, no body constrained him, no body forced him, but his own will was his own overthrow, his own outstanding his own undoing, and the battle was fought between him and himself. What wilt thou answer to the Lord in that day, what shall thy excuse be to him, for slacking thy hand, which thou hadst put so manfully unto the plough, and smothering the talon that he lent thee of his good grace, not in a napkin of unprofitable modesty, but (which is worse) in snuff, and pelting discontent?  
Is this to stir up the gift of God that is in thee, as S. Paul bids Timothy to do in this Epistle? is this to become all to all, that thou mightest gain some? which thou shouldest do by his example; whereas thou standest upon such strictness, as thou wilt be like none but thyself. Is this not to jangle about words to no profit, but only to the subversion of the hearers? Is this not to offend thy Christian brother, which offendest the whole congregation of Christ, for fear of offence? Nay, is not this to be delivered over, bound hand & foot to perpetual doing nothing, before the sentence of the last judge?  
Why might not thy wit be as well occupied henceforth, in explaining the ceremonies, as thy tongue hath been violent heretofore in traducing them? why shouldest thou not do as much for true peace, as thou hast done for erroneous truth? what shame is there with wise men in recanting an oversight? or who ever lived but had his error? and, what greater conquest than in overcoming thyself? For, 
Lib. vlt. in jul. Pelag.  Cum animositatem viceris qua teneris, veritatem poteris tenere qua vinceris, as S. Austin said to the lofty Julian. Yea, this were fit news to be told in Gath, this would sound terribly in the streets of Ashkelon, that the English nation had voided her faction, that Pisistratus and his sons were made friends, linked in the pledge of a long desired, and never to be disannulled conformity. This, I say, and much more I had thought to have spoken, and prosecuted against the wilful languisher of our times, the cutter off of himself from the sacred ministery without cause; That lets his days consume in vanity, his years and beauty in trouble: whose waters are turned into blood, so that no man may drink of their rivers, their fruit is given to the caterpillar, and their labours unto the Grasshopper, their vines are destroyed with hailstones, and their Mulberry trees with the frost. Yea, the fire consumeth their young men, and their maidens are not given in marriage (Imagine you by the loss of all their principal studies and endeavours) Nay last, their Priests themselves they are slain, but not with the sword, and there are no widows (or but one at the most) to make lamentation. For the wretchedness of the cause drowneth and banisheth all the compassion of the case.   

But another theme expects my handling: which I will not seek how to apply to the Text (though perhaps I could tell how, if I would) itself is Text enough to the handler; And give leave I pray you once, for deeds to beget words amongst you, since so many words of ours have brought forth so few good deeds abroad in the world.  
We must speak therefore a word or two, of the worthy contributers to the performers of the duty, that is weekly here accomplished throughout the year, and I for my part have now laboured to discharge. First, the reverend Father and sometime Bish. of this Sea, John Ailmer (how well does it become a Clergy man to stand first, holding out the candle of direction to others, that might in time imitate his good example? and how well doth this charitable ointment of expense trickling from the beard of old Aaron the high Priest, till it wet the very nethermost skirts of his clothing?) First therefore, as I said, that reverend Bishop, as much esteemed by me, as sometimes perhaps distasted by the world of the malapert and malignant. Next the right honourable Lady Eliza. Countess of Shrewsburie, that forgetting her ornaments & costly tires, which the Scripture says a woman cannot forget (they are so wedded and addicted to them) bequeathed her blew-s●ke & her purple to the decking of the Tabernacle. Last of all, one Thomas Russell Citizen of this City. But I might have spared that note, for the name itself was much, & yet you may know him to be your fellowe-Citizen by his liberal intention. The deed shows the mind, the mind shows the man, the man shows the City's temper and disposition that he lived in. They were want, says the old proverb of the Hebrews, to ask counsel in Abel: for there dwelled the wits: But we may say, they were wont to do deeds of charity in London; which praise (God be thanked) is not worn away, but remaineth and lasteth to this day.  
All these that I have mentioned, had this care and this respect, that the feet of the Saints should not be unwashed with Abraham, specially those Saints that bring with them the glad tidings of peace, and fly unto the windows with their dove-like murmurings, as Esai speaketh; that the fighters of the Lords battles, should be refreshed with a competency of bread and wine, meeting them in the half way, as Melchisedech did; that the Prophets, and men of God, should not want a chamber, and more than so, a table; and more yet, a candlestick, not empty of a light in it (saith Saint chrysostom) but all well and conveniently furnished, with Heliseus his hostess; that forasmuch the Inns shut out as too cutting for them, the manger might not receive without a glistering oblation, which is Myrrh and Frankincense in the nostrils of GOD, with the wise men (not so much worldly wise) that came from the East to worship Christ: Lastly, that the keeper of the holy passover should not lack for a room to celebrate his mysteries in, nor a beast to ride upon into jerusalem, having none of his own, with them that did our Lord the like favour and courtesy; I mean they have all provided, that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Apostle saith, that your gain should not be our loss, your profit our hindrance & thankless vexation both of body & purse: but they have advanced & improved the spirituals of other men, with the loss & flinging away of their own carnals as a gage.  
Let their own works praise them in the gates, let their own actions rise up to them, & call them blessed. Let the garments of purple be brought forth, and showed unto the people, that these Dorcasses have wrought with their own hands for the use of the poor; and let them say to them in this wise, Many have wished, and many have talked, and many have meant charitably to this purpose; but you in doing it, you in effecting it, you in preventing their slow and lingering determinations, have surmounted them all. Chief, & before all, let the God only wise, immortal, and Father of our Lord jesus Christ, which is to be blessed both now and for ever, have his due honour out of their proceed: Who first gave such gifts unto men that they might be liberal, and then gave such minds to men, that out of their gifts they were content to be beneficial. O how well doth his name sounding among their praises! O how well do his titles amidst their style? and O how dead, & dismal, and uncomfortable is all, where, virtue being commended, the Wellspring of virtue (which is Christ the Lord) is forgot to be honoured? Let him be magnified, let them be mentioned, and be you excited to the emulation of the like religious practice. Redeem your sins, cancel your bonds, break off your unrighteousness, traverse your inditements, defeat God's judgements, provoke his mercies, purchase his rewards, enlarge your bowels of compassion towards all. And when you have done all this, and all that you can do, or all that you should do, put no confidence in your own works, trust not in your own merits, but let them be to you as dross & dung to gain Christ, and the shining Robes of his alone incomparable righteousness. So shall your work of Charity be accepted, so shall your labour in the Lord be recompensed, so shall your mite be prized above all that is cast in by the hand of the swelling justiciaries, so shall the seed of your alms deeds shoot into the ripeness of a perfect blade, so shall your cup of cold water spring into a fountain of everlasting bliss. For let no man deceive himself my dear Brethren, the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that seek peace. Hear we end for this time.  
Desiring Almighty God, etc.  
FINIS.