A survey OF THAT Foolish, Seditious, Scandalous, profane libel, THE PROTESTATION PROTESTED.  
Both. de consolation. 〈…〉.  
LONDON, Printed in the year, 1641.   

READER.  
THis flash, the sudden thoughts of a day, had outfaced its adversary the first week of his age, ni praesum sub frequenti puerpero gemiscens, obste●●iceam negasset operam; nor without much pressure through a crowd of opposition hath it thronged out to thy hands; the birth how mean soever was nigh strangled in the ●●adle: Take it as it is, an autoschediastick. The same affection to my mother the Church screw it from me, that loosed his tongue in defence of his father; She may say to her more concerned sons, as Jacob to his, why stand you gazing one upon another? a fatal lethargy hath so stiffened their imaginations, that nothing is heard from them but the damps and groans of a dying body, whether sydere tacti, or fallen in a spiritual praemunire, I know not. It is true their scale may expect a more proportioned adversary, but they do not mean time consider that Libels the more vulgar, because fitted to that capacity, be the more dangerous; silence appears guilty or timorous to this talkative age, either of these may edge an ignorant or base party. This Come● points also at the State, for the loose rained popularity the libeler aims at, is no less dangerous to the liberty of the Subject, than a too high tuned prerogative. Once acquaint that Briareus, the multitude with the secrets of government, they will rush into the cloth of state; they like the smaller stars have their course th●art that of the greater lights of the kingdom, nor give any motion (Unless these be retrograde at biddings) to the higher spheres, except that of trepidation, and when they come to be stellae culminantes, and take the influence, the management upon them, they neither know the disease, nor the remedy, but like empty 〈◊〉 ●●acks work upon themselves, while the spiders of the State weave nets of their humours to catch adv 〈◊〉. Sed manum de tabula, I find my affections 〈…〉 here for my judgement. I do ingenuously 〈…〉 no enemy to the agents or petitioners for a Reforma●●on; The last times abound most in lees, and the evening Horizon hath the thickest vapours: but a medicine not a destructive must purge those, a 〈◊〉 not ●●hunderclap dispel these, only the sectaries who swell now beyond the reach of names and numbers, I have here glanced at: these hotspurs run themselves breathless, and leave others so far behind that they despair to follow: nor can they (Error and faction is so individ●ated with their opinions) attend the leisure of authority, or keep the path chalked out to them by a Parliament, but they must needs instantly from superstition to profaneness, from disorder to Anarchy; so far have I justified myself, give thy approbration if it please thee, I court it not, nor 〈◊〉 I a Chameli●● to breath in that ●ire; only let thy charity extend to the errors of the press, and be not moved with such grains and scruples, but impute them to the epidemic of the times.  
Farewell.   

Errata.  
Pag. 2. l. 9 for a read or. p. 6. l. 4. f. ●ayles r. 〈…〉 p. 7. l. 16. to 〈…〉.   

A survey OF THAT FOOLISH, SEDITIOUS, SCANDALOUS, PROFANE libel, The Protestation Protested.  Epist. 2. Timoth. Chap. 3. IN the last times perilous days shall come; for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, blasphemous, disobedient to Parents, unthankful, unholy; without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of these that are good: traitorous, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God: having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof, from such turn away: for of this sort are they that creep unto houses, and lead captive silly women, loaden with sin, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth; now as Jannes and Jambres withstood moose, so do these also resist the truth. Epist. 2. Pet. Chap. 2. But these speak evil of the things they understand not, and shall perish utterly in their own corruption: They have eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin, beguiling unstable souls: An heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children, which have forsaken the right way, and have gone astray, following the way of Baalam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness: These are Wells without water, Clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever: for when they speak swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, and while they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption. Epist. Jude. Also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominions, and speak ill of dignities: These speak ill of these things which they know not: W●e unto them, for they have gone in the way of Coin, and run greedily after the error of Baalam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core: clouds they are without water, carried about with winds; trees, whose fruit withereth; without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the root: raging waves of the Sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever: These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts, and their mouths speak great swelling words. 
GOodman cobbler, (it is you that hath stitched together this Tubb-Sermon) or whosoever else of the most holy inspired fraternity, I have taken you Sir for my task: And that because of my abilities, Nil Su●or ultra crepidam, I dare venture no farther than your old shoes; if I can find you there, and that your trade mistake not the reformation of soles, it is well: but you are become a Preacher at the Last, and by that old piece of yours, (such stuff you meddle with) taken from Barrow, or Marprelates relics, hath made the scissure worse. Nor shall I trouble your conscience to thrust order upon you, whose Religion it is to contemn all order; I must follow you, as you have followed your enthusiasms, and that in the same manner; for as in preaching and prayer you are extemporary, so am I in answering: I am not two days your debtor, lest you, as your usurious brethren are wont, had expected Interest: It was too much cost to bestow paper though not pains upon you. When I traced every step of your lazy and superfluous discourse, to have joined with my adversary, I found you as naked as an Adamite, not (one reason) the least piece of armour with you; It had been a shame therefore to have drawn upon you, I have only used the whip, that may perhaps teach you sense. It is true, four times you cite antiquity, but in your own way, that is, with greater respect to heathenism, than Christianity, if that proceed from a Bishop, for you marshal three ethnic Emperors with one Eusebius. And why him, I pray you? doth not this derogate from your infallibility, if in a syllable you be obliged to a Father? what? are not you and your Bible the only Judge of Controversies? can any one find out the true meaning of Scripture, except yourself, who hath monopolised (with all piety and reverence be it spoken) the Spirit of truth? To say otherwise, were to prefer Rome to Amsterdam: but I do forgive you, you have dealt very moderately in this point; one only you mention, and him in matter of fact, the rest of the book is your own invention, where you have as faithfully abstained from Learning and antiquity, as (and they are so to you) from heresy and superstition. If the Reader complain of vinegar in the ink, let him remember that the bite of the Viper (and such they are that rend the bowels of their mother the Church) is best helped by the antidote of Vipers: a frenzy is hardly cured but by the lance, the scourge, the whipping-post: dark rooms indeed, and a large dose of Ellebor, were the fittest attendants for such rovings: But give me leave to convey him home to his Bedlam, there in the paroxysm of his madness, to have his family exercise; and by the way (though I wander after him that hath long since wandered from himself) I hope in charity so belabour the man, that he may henceforth know that part of Scripture practically; (if it be not against his justification to know any so) A rod is for the back of the fool: nor wish I worse success to all his braying associates, though their lugges be without the Bishop's visitation, yet I hope their necks is within that of the Parliament; that Honourable and Judicious Assembly will in due time provide against these monstrously absurd libels, that heap of nonsense, from the which such a vapour of stupidity and ignorance is exhaled; that who are strangers to our better times, if they behold this island thorough the same, shall verily think it under an universal lunacy. But I have stayed you too long before the door.  
You usher in that discourse of yours by a preface, used belike many times before your Dresser-Lectures, and tell us something of conscience, and its scale; not unlike the lapwing, keeping the greatest stir when you are farthest from your nest: conscience in the contemplation, in the pretence, is yours; but what have you to do with it in the reality, (so here you press it) in the practice? beware this care of yours in agendis make you not suspect of merit, if not of supererogation. The piece of sacred Scripture you make bold with, in my poor judgement comes not home to the point: the words do rather concern a voluntary then imposed vow, if any be such; and therefore had been more congruous (if, as you do, by your infallibility, you had justified the matter) to the holy Protestation is made in your Parlour meetings, for tearing a liturgy, rending a Surplice, burning the rails, and pluming a Bishop: but you cheat the world with a froth of words, and amuse the well-meaning; but the ignorant multitude with an empty noise of conscience, purity, and reformation: they say it is an evil sign to stumble at the threshold; and If God take no pleasure in fools, you have prefixed a very slender approbation to your book.  
Your next is, you tremble to see what small account most men do make of so solemn a Vow. How do you (which is yours quarto modo) preach and practise contradictions? Were ever the most superlative votaries of the Church of Rome, Jesuits and seminary Priests, more obstinately miszealous in refusing Oaths, as civil and ecclesiastical tyranny and Antichristianism than you, when they suit not with your passions, and interests? Witness these of supremacy and canonical obedience; the gatehouse can tell us how much less you have esteemed your bodily, than your Christian liberty in such cases: And if the fear to be plundered of a fair Estate, or the love to a fatter Benefice, can buy in this niceness of yours, and persuade you to lose a Button, you have no more conscience in observing, than you had obedience in taking the Oath: For, if Authority be in the waning, and some popular stars promise you liberty, how soon do you break these cords asunder; and with a Jusjurandum illicitum solummodo stringit ad poenitentiam, start you aside like a deceitful bow? Yea, think yourself obliged to redeem your slackened rigour by an after-increase of heat and violence? Yet are you still the same man, love of gain prescribed your oath, and the same absolves you from it, which doubtless your honesty by a mental reservation, did ever lay as a ground; Happy you, whose conscience can mould and fashion itself to the impress of the times, and ebb and flow with the aspect of different occasions! be ashamed therefore (tremble you cannot) when you see What small account most of you make of your solemn vows: God is not mocked; nor shall your brags of casting out Devils of idolatry and Superstition in his name, save you in that day.  
Having thus skirmished, you advance with the main battle, subjoyning, That the Ministers and persons have taken the Protestation, and have solemnly vowed to maintain the Doctrine of the Church, so far as it is opposite to Popery. They have so, and so might they ever perform; but cannot one devil be cast out, unless seven enter? have they therefore vowed to erect Anabaptism? is there no mid betwixt the extremes? no salvation, but either in the communion of the one, or conventicle of the other? must either a shaveling or a scavinger be the star to point us out the way to Christ? lend us some of your light, your tallow, to find out a consequence here, I pray: I must tell you, and (Ni frons periit) you may blush at it; you have defiled your father's house, and laid us open to the opprobrious insolence of the common enemy, who eyeing us in (〈◊〉) our dross, wantonly upbraid us, to have rejected under the name of Superstition all visibility of a Church, and by the title of purity, to have brought in nothing else but profaneness and atheism.  
And it is not profaneness to think so slovenly as you do of God and his Service, atheism; to profess so much, and practise nothing at all? You are so pointblank against an innocent, harmless, decent worship; that either there have been no Christians before your days, or you are none such: Ours perhaps in abomination of so obstinate foolishness, may desperately make apostasy to Rome, but we can expect none from thence, if you be admitted to banish from us the outward being of a Church, their very sails may think us refuted by common sense, when they find nothing amongst us that relates to Christianity. But what if under the name of Popery we find you 〈◊〉 touched by the Protestation, and so transport you in a second colony from New-England to Babylon? It is a received principle, that Proximius est extremum extremo, quam extremum medio: and Lysimachus Nicanor doth tell you, (not these to whom he speaks) that whilst you refute the ●ittle, you nourish the worst of Papists in your own bosoms. See yourself in him, and take these gleanings further: you plead the same independency with Rome from the civil power, except it be more easy for a State to tamper with one Bishop in Christendom, than with one in each Parish: You maintain the excommunication of Princes, which is denied by many of her followers; and that too, so much the more dangerous in you, as you are ready to pretend a charter, a demise, of temporalities in ordine ad spiritualia, not from the Pope, but by a revelation from heaven; with the clause, Deus transfert imperia: you may, and it please you, remember of Johannes Lerdensis Rex Israel, who was hurried by such a trick as this from the Shuttle to the sceptre. Yea, in the matter of episcopacy you join hands with the Beast; you and his holiness must have all Bishops, except him and yourselves, to be in the best sense, but of human institution; see the hot Bickerings about this plea, (if your reading goeth beyond a sixpenny beware) in the third Convocation of the council of Trent: unhappy Bishops! ground betwixt two factions, as betwixt two millstones; there the Pope of Rome, here the Pope of the Parish upbraiding them equally as usurpers. I could tell you further your Ethusiasmes, and their traditions are from the same Mint-house, you from a tumour of presumption, they of authority, alike ready to belie the holy Spirit, and the blessed Fathers: But having brought you to Tiber, I leave you both as twins (no difference but in age) to suck the wolf your common nurse, and proceed to your (for the Sections, if no more) schismatical discourse.  
Here I must luctare cum larva, grapple with nonentities, doubts and negatives; as if the old Sceptike Philosophers were revived in you, or as if Sixins Empericus had founded your sect; Tell me in good earnest, why is there nothing positive in you, but all your reformations consist of denials: you are perhaps, afraid, by having any thing common with others, to be thought of the Church universal, which you have now thrust out of your Creed, and given her a bill of divorce; or else it is that your Christian liberty can hear of no restraint, even in the fundamentals. Your objections (though like Ixion's cloud, airy, and by your own fancy and supposition) I pass them by, as the only orthodox part in you; and shall strictly tie myself to your answers, lest I seem rather to have a cause, than found a party.)  
In your first and second, you make your posture, and take your aim, in the third you let in the thrust against the Church of England; but with no less mistake, nor better success, than when Dou Quixot (one who for a head-piece, might have been moderator to your diet) jousted against the windmill, in stead of the enchanted castle. At the first view, by the multiplying glass of your purity, you can descry four of the beasts heads, and inform us, that the liturgy, discipline, government and ceremonies of the Church of England are popish. Suppose now it were so, is not your curse, who discovereth your mother's nakedness, double to his, who did not cover his fathers? But I have mistaken you, your anabaptization doth privilege you to be none of her sons. What a cursed Shimei is this to lay this heaviest imputation upon the most glorious Church in the world? I should tell you, if you had either patience or judgement for instruction, the Church of England, since the reformation hath been only she, who hath seriously entered the lists with the enemy, keeped them in hot blood, and scarce granted a breathing time to her opposites, who, if not to award her blows, had not daign'd to blunt a pen against your sect. Did not Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and numbers more of religious and learned martyrs, seal their departure from the Church of Rome by their dearest blood, and must your sacrilegious hands throw their sacred dust in the air, by persuading us, that they died popish, not as members only, but (in some kind) authors of that Church, that public service we now enjoy? How may this encourage the Romanists, when by our pretended selves, not only our best champions, but our very Church is made theirs? How shall they triumph over us, and our unnecessary debates, (they fight closely within doors, when we bawl in the streets) telling us, we cannot agree amongst ourselves, until we return ad Petram unde excisi sumus. What you say in defence of this your general position, we shall see in each particular, only I cannot pass your Imposition of the liturgy; Hinc illae lachrymae: any thing that is by order and authority is burdensome; you idolize only the calves of your own making, that is, of your crazed imagination. But how shall this humour of yours suit with the unity of a Church? can many shreads of cloth make a garment, and do not you remember that Christ's coat was without a seam? Nay, for that you care not, you will be very loath to plead right in Christ's Testament; My peace I leave you; for a needless fear to be polluted with the Antichristianism of ecclesiastical courts. These who are in civil or ecclesiastical power, may from thence learn, what a narrow circle you confine them within; nor should they take this ill, when some of you, the Antinomians, do pretend immunity from the moral Law, the Law of God himself (perhaps they dream of a Patentee by the gospel) and tell us with Pharabo, in the pride and hardness of their hearts, Who is the Lord that we should obey him? But I hasten to your next.  
Then you labour with tooth and nail to untie the obligement of the Chaos, and tell us first, That the Law for reformation never intended to allow or set up Popery in England, nor I hope to deface Christianity. What the intention of the Law hath been, and how understood hitherto, whether shall we believe the Law itself, the articles, the canons, the rubrickes, the service of the Church, the statutes of Parliament, the joint consent and practice of all good men, and learned Writers (these without a seeming difference, give approbation to the present liturgy and government of the Church) or you, who is filius terrae, a Mushrume, a son of yesterday's? yourself conceit deserves my pity, not my refutation, and having by your pulse found out your fever, pardon me if I refuse to take such a verdict upon your trust, until you be restored to your wits, neither then must you expect to be balanced with so many contrary pregnant testimonies. Your second is yet of a higher reach, All human laws contrary to God's Word are invalid and void, ipso facto, and all must be such, to the which your infallibility is not pleased to give approbation. Tell me, I pray you, whether should the Judges, or yourselves determine the integrity of the Law? if they, why do not you attend their determination? how is it, that the hand must reform the head, the people their Prince? and do you think petitions, covenants, and insurrections the surest gradations to the kingdom of Heaven? But if yourselves only, what need have you of Judges? Magistracy, and triennial Parliaments are to you but cyphers, and visible nothings; your consent is the figure which makes the number: for if old laws be to be repealed, it is sufficient, if you say, These are against the Word of God, no more obedience from you; your Sic volo sic jubeo is more than powerful, the wall of each city must to the ground at the voice of your rams-horns. And if new laws be to be made, it seems it is you that truch with the sceptre; unless your wise heads find them agreeable to the Word of God, all is void ipso facto: What language is this? Is it not the Dial●ct of rebellion? the very {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, the Tactus physicus of all disorder, mutiny, and confusion? Now let the world judge betwixt us, whether or not this your Doctrine strikes home to the very life of government, and destroys it insensibly, as the worm that Gourd of Ionas: every man, by this ipso facto of yours, is left with a supreme power to be King and Priest to himself.  
Your third ground is of the same bullion, and carrieth your Image, that is, of schism and democracy: You have vowed against all Popery, and finding the particulars mentioned to be so, you will have no more communion with them. What if you should find the Decalogue, and the Lord's Prayer (as you have already the Creed) to be Popish, must not all the Principles of our Religion, for your pleasure, be drawn within the verge of a thundering abjuration? nor is this fear in vain: your precisest gospelers already deny the Law, as only suitable to the Climate of the Jews, and some of your best rabbis make it a case of conscience not to say the Lord's Prayer, that Magicum canticum (as they term it) Pontificorum; if therefore this wantonness of yours be not restrained, I appeal to yourselves (that is, to prejudice and faction itself) if we shall have more certainty of Religion left us, then what may subsist with the ebbing and flowing of your distempered and moon-changing brains.  
It is your next care to draw the Parliament to your party; but there is no communication betwixt light and darkness: nature hath taught all Entities to intend their own preservation; nor can that Honourable Court forget its being, and join with you: plant you at such a distance, whether your antipathy may reach, you shall no less exhaust the privileges and authority of that most honourable meeting, than the cabbage doth the sap and life, and vigour of the noble Vine: can this be more evident than by the case in hand, where you take the supremacy upon you, and with intolerable pride and foolishness presumes to give us the infallible sense and meaning of the Parliament: I know you had no such Commission from their Honours, as to be their trenchman, and to print a Declaration for them. But let us examine your reasons. First, They intended the Protestation against all Papery. It is granted: but are you not like the door that turneth all day upon the hinges, and never changeth its place?  
Have you yet proved these things to be Popish? nay, though you had, (which you shall never do,— rumpantur utilia codro.) were the probabilities of your arguments, a warrant good enough for your reformation, without the approbation of your superiors? you indeed never desire a better, whilst you do what seems good in your own eyes, acknowledging no King in Israel. But who gave you authority to cleanse the Temple, unless you maintain that all power is from the people, (your hands) and that you may stop the wellspring, the fountain, when the fit takes you. Secondly, You remember us that the Honourable House of Commons will not have the Protestation extended to the maintenance of any form of worship, discipline, and government; nor of any Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of England, and therefore they condemn them as Popish? What a wild consequence is this? if that pious Judicatory did not find it convenient (as it is not) to assert the grounds of Doctrine and Discipline with the same oath; did they therefore condemn all as Antichristianism? that they did not is clear to any that will not shut his eyes: first, from the main distance they put betwixt Popery and Popish Innovations, and the form of Worship, Discipline, Government, and Ceremonies of the Church of England, interserted by such a period, as your ends shall never be able to draw together: Secondly, from their laudable and religious practice, in being at all occasions present at the service of the Church, wherein none but Familists (who do conform themselves to any public worship) can imagine their integrity and nobleness, for all the world would prevaricate, if they had but thought (much less declared) the liturgy, as you would have it, to be the mass-book. And for the government of the Church by Archbishops and Bishops (this is the heel you would most willingly bruise, because it bruiseth your head) it is no less evident that the protestation doth not condemn that: First, from their actual sitting in the House, should these members integrate that body, if they were already adjudged as ●ims of the Antichrist? this were a too heterogeneous fancy: Secondly, what needed the late dispute concerning the present Discipline, if the sentence had been already past? Thirdly, would so considerable men for honesty, wisdom and power, of that number, whose reasons militates for episcopacy have stood up in defence of a main branch of Popery, and not have been ashamed (if not punished) for public maintaining the Antichrist, and contradicting their late vow and order? These reasons, nill you will you, do convince you, that it was not the intention of the Parliament (as you to arm them against ecclesiastical persons and orders in every corner of the kingdom would bear the people in hand) to protest against (though it seemed not fitting to protest for) the present Discipline, Government and Ceremonies of the Church; if you had a forehead, you would be ashamed of this boldness, but your obduration hath no more sense, Quam si dura silex, aut stet Marpesia cautes.  
These great patrons of Church and State, shall no doubt punish this malapert sauciness of yours; for their love to peace and truth cannot permit such a firebrand to belie their int●ntion, and abuse the credulous simplicity of the multitude: I am confident this reply of mine shall first visit you in the gatehouse. Did you, I beseech you, ever think it possible, that the roarings and out-cries of such braying schismatics as yourself, could have induced the honourable Court of Parliament to change upon a sudden the whole face of the Church, as that of a scene, upon the daring and misgrounded information of your ignorant & malicious libels: the dross, the off-scourings of the multitude are yours; these, and these only, you are able to induce by promises, or deceive by pretences: Tell them, as you do, that they are the people of God, set apart for the great work, and shall not this ambition blow up the unconstant vulgar? Show them they may change their fortunes, and last share in the public government, you may draw them along with you to the slaughter, though there you leave them with your grandfather Munsers benediction, Si quidem populus vult decipi, decipiatur. But do you expect that the grave statesmen of the kingdom shall be pleased to venture upon this Chaos, and let you shuffle the cards again, in hopes of a better set? your parity brings along with it an anarchy, and that, all imaginable ruin and confusion; I'll tell you in your ear, you had better keep your Pamphlets at home, and have restrained the late zealous stirs at Southwark and Saint Margaret's, if you would not have had your passions detected; these staring looks of yours so soon after the change, do foretell what madness you may come to at the height of the moon, and will (no doubt) persuade that supreme Judicatory either to draw blood of you in time, or to provide manacles for binding up your furious attempts, lest you tear out your own bowels. Your third reasons leans to a thought, a supposition, and is a strain of your old lunacy; That the honourable House of Commons did intend to exclude whatsoever should be found to be a branch of popery. But who should find it so? themselves, or you? Have they resigned that power which God, his Majesty, and their ancient privileges have endued them with, into your hands? must they and we be tied to what fancy your humour shall be pleased, to thrust upon their just commands, and our due obedience? This were a dangerous implicit faith, and of as large bounds and great variety, as there is judgements and opinions in a kingdom: for shame (if you be reasonoable creatures) spare this nonsense; and rather think that the protestation hath an edge to cut out your tongue, than to cut off what your unsettled imagination after a Fridays supper from the back of an oyster shall Dictator-like happen to belch up. You tell us in the fourth place: That you are all in an erected hope of a reformation from this most noble Parliament; and so are we too; yea, no less confident than yourselves, that all Popish trash shall be made packing; but may it please you to go along with that baggage, and attend the safe transportation of these fopperies, we shall be rid of two great evils; at your return from Rome, you may take your rest by the way with your brethren at Amsterdame; no peace for Israel how long the Jebusites are thorns in our sides; and if the Papists and you (I cannot tell how to name you, unless it be Legions, you are so many) the Foxes, the boutefeux joined by the tails were once removed, we should have good hopes no more to see our cornfields in a fire. The reformation you expect, is a deformation; your active zeal extends to the purifying of Churches, yea, of churchyards; as lately one of your society was buried in the fields, lest his sanctified body might be polluted by consecrated, that is, superstitious ground: a strange separation that hold even amongst the dead: But when you have banished from us all that can speak as Christians, what shall be the event? the sad ruins of a torn Church and State, yea, of Religion itself is at the stake: for the more weak and conscientious people, who expect salvation in some Church, will rather join with Rome, then have no Church at all, like the fish, changing the hot water with the hotter fire; others, who have made Religion their handmaid, shall be bold to laugh at piety, and think it nothing but an invention of policy, to bridle the humours of the less daring, and to encompass the designs of the more active wits; so the fruits of your reformation shall be like these of Gomorra, pleasing to the sight, but in effect either apostasy, or atheism. In your fifth ground I acknowledge your perfect idiom, the complete language of Amsteldame; their you tell me, that suppose the House of Commons had, not intended the removal of these things, but the protection rather of the same, yet private Christians must put to their bands, and reform themselves, and live no longer schoolboys and punies under the fernla of that discipline: Now you speak to the point, and have but dallied hitherto. Bishops I see and Parliaments are in the same respect to you, if once they cross your humour; if this be not a trumpet of sedition, there is nothing so. Go on, and give not over till the commonwealth be fitted to your Church (as one of yours said, the hangings to the room) let us have that prodigious monster, your parity, in both, without so much as distinction of head and feet, and then you may reform when, and what, and how you please. Can there be the least thought of loyalty and subjection beneath this, when such an o yes is made for every man to take up arms, and to reform what first comes unto his hand? nor is it a wonder to hear this from you; e'er all be done you will speak with a higher tone, even that the propriety of all goods is your own: For it is your doctrine that we have fallen from all dominion and right to the creature by the mortal sin of Adam; this, say you, was restored by Christ, who reserved the dominion to himself (there your love to Magistracy) but gave the right to his children, the sons of the Church, these whom the conventicle hath assured that they are marked with the white stone, you may therefore possidere terram, and who besides you do so, are but usurpers. Yet give me leave to wonder, if in a settled Church and state some care be not taken to suppress this madness, whereby every man is invited to a freedom and liberty of doing what his humour suggesteth; as if this Diana of yours inspired nothing else but frenzy and rebellion: You will by this your exorbitancy, make the Bishops enemies long after them, and while they are going out at doors, pull them back by the gowns: in the time of their power, which of you durst vent such dangerous whimsies; now you teach us, that by one blow we cannot land off the inconveniency of Bishops, and the inconveniency of no Bishops, and that the greatest danger in a mutation is that all daugers cannot be foreseen: if this popular reformation of yours take root for Religion, Learning and civility, we must content ourselves with profaneness, ignorance and barbarity, nay, all the evils that anarchy and confusion can produce must attend upon us. But the honourable House of Commons, against whom by this reason you have taken up the bucklers, will provide for that fire, that gangrene of yours, which hath already inflamed the bedstraw, and ceased almost upon the very heart of the kingdom.  
In your sixt answer you'd dealt your strokes about you; your first blow is at the Liturgy; this you observe to be popish in two respects.  
First, in regard of the whole frame and matter of it, as being translated out of the Romish Latin liturgy: But is it not the Romish liturgy translated? That is, are there any thing in the mass book, which is not in the book of service▪ if your answer be negative, I leave you to be hissed at; but if affirmative, What advantage have you gotten by this envious calumny? Do you think we may not use what is in the mass book consonant to Scripture, and purest antiquity? to say otherwise, were to deny the Lord's prayer and the Decalogue, because they are there: Indeed I think you intend no less than a perfect reformation from Rome, that is, a flat denial of all that ever Rome maintained, so much doth your new Creed proport: God grant you do not deny Christ to be the son of God, because the devils confessed him to be so. Tell me in good earnest, are you so silly as to conceive that there have been heretics before yourselves, who durst adventure to have nothing common with preceding Christianity? And why may there not be some few pearls in that dunghill, the mass-book? If these be culled out, and according to Scripture, and the best pattern of ancient Liturgies, most judiciously framed for the service of our Church, what can malice or ignorance say against it? no greater error in you, and our other enemies of Rome, than not to distinguish betwixt the purging of an old Church, and the building of a new; they upbraid us, because they say it is so, you because you think it is not so; all must be admitted from them, errors with truths, all rejected by you, truths with errors: they destroy the perfection of the Scripture, you the being of the Church; you no less enemies to the authority of this, than they to the belief of that. But let both of you roar like the lioness bereaved of her whelps, and mix heaven and earth together by your lowings, Naaman shall be the same man to us before and after his washing, we will in despite of papists cleanse the leprosy, in spite of you retain the substance; you mention the late parallel, in a mathematical sense, justly so called; for as Lines parallel cannot be in one point coincident: so neither the Service book with that of the mass: he is an ungracious son of the Church, who hath falsely invented these whoredoms, and they the unworthy offspring of such a mother, if they rest unrevenged. Mean time what a death it is to think of the sport and advantage our watchful enemies will be sure to make of our self-confession, that we have the same public worship which in them we do condemn as heresy, as idolatry? what exporbrations, what triumph of theirs will hence ensue? How shall we argue against them without bespattering our own faces in time to come? all our help is that the Treatise itself (the parallel) is so ridiculous a piece, that it will be thought the dreams of a sleeping person, and (they say) Dormientes non tenentur de j●re, we are not answerable for the fact. You tell us, you omit to say, what you cannot, you dare not say, all your frivolous exceptions are so fully answered by the learned Mason, judicious Hooker, and others, that it will be three ages yet ere you attain to so much judgement as to understand their discourses: why do you gull the world with these bravadoes, such general flashes, and when it comes to the close, to the dispute, 
— frustra comprensa manus affugit imag●,  
Par levibus ventis volucrique fimillima som●●.   
No word of you then: if we dare call the settled laws of Church and State in question, we shall by the meanest of five thousand in England stop your black and ignorant mouths, and make you confess, there is nothing contained in that book which is not agreeable with Scripture, suitable to antiquity, and allowable by the confessions and writings of the best reformed Churches and Divines in Europe. And you Sir, who hath made all this din, how should a man find your out, either to convert you, or to be converted by you? your name it seems was affrighted of the title-page; but it may be you had none, and that this libel hath been penned by you, in the interi●● betwixt your renunciation of that name you had from the Church of England, and your anabaptization. You add there is viciouss things (animus meminisse horret) that run thorough all the veins of the Service book; all the letters of the Alphabet cannot furnish censures for this blasphemous Rabshakeh; God rebuke thee Satan. Sufficiently discovered? by whom? in whose age? Did your Separatists ever produce any thing upon this subject, but lazy indigested fables, as far from learning as their authors from sense. King Arthurs story, a tale of Robin Hood, or the books of chivalry, were ever thought more profitable nonsense, more judicious stuff.  
Your second general respect is, The imposition of the liturgy upon all men's consciences; let the matter be never so landable, yet the manner, the imposition, is a wile of the Antichrist: Here I entreat Geneva to answer you, whose Church hath an imposed, a set form of liturgy, and whose worthiest men, Calvin and Beza, do stoutly maintain the church's power in prescribing Ceremonies and Orders for unity and Peace sake: It were easy to have loaden the margin with quotations, if I had not abhorred the ostentive foolishness of your sect. Who runs may read here that in terminis terminantibus you brand all superiority ecclesiastical, whether of King, Church, or Parliament (for all these are included in this imposition) with the mincing titles of Popery and Antichristianism; if this be the reformation you intend, that no law can please you, much good may it do you, and those that desire it: I am confident the Church and State of England are not so weary of themselves as to become slaves to your fancy; this perhaps may fit America, where there is no government at all, but how it may subsist with a being of a kingdom here, I understand it not. Popery (you say) is Antichristianism, hence every Papist must be the Antichrist; nor stay you here, but bring the matter home from Italy to England, and tell us by a necessary consequence; that not Bishops only, but all superiors do oppose and overthrow the Kingly office of Christ, which is incommunicable to any creature and power in heaven or earth, bona verba quaeso. The Scripture you bring 2 Ioh. 22. is as far from the point as you from truth and judgement: speak out, dare you say it in open terms, though indeed you say as much, that the King and Parliament, because of the liturgy imposed have denied Jesus to be Christ? Tyburn for you if you do. You indeed seem rather stained with this blasphemy, who hath boldly and prophancly averred, that bowing at that sacred name is idolatry, and (as you jeer with the bad thief on the cross) Jesu-worship. But let me from your own principles use one argument against you; whosoever prescribeth to their people a set form of prayer, do Lord it over the conscience, and are the very Antichrist, but your extemporary prayers in public are to your people a set form of prayer, you therefore are the Antichrist. The major is your own, the subsumption is proved by this inevitable dilemma; when you pray before your hearers, either it is as their mouth to God, or for yourselves only: if you say the last, you contradict the action itself, your expressions, and the cause of your meeting; and if the first, must not the people join with you in word, or at least, in thought? and is not this to be stinced and tied to aforme of prayer how raw and senseless so ever? By your sole lawgiver, you express your thoughts of authority; you can hear of no general commission for ordering the House of God as place and time shall require; but pardon me to believe the Apostle better than you, who hath not in vain appointed this qualification, Omnia fiant decenter & ordine; if the Kings and States of Europe would be pleased from this your tenet to learn what a moth, a cancer-worm you are to all superiority and jurisdiction, you would be sent novos quaeritare orbs. And for this cause the Pope, say you, is proved to be the Antichrist, in that he fitteth in and over the Temple of God, that is, as you please to Paraphrase it, The consciences of men: it had been well you had spoken with application; you are the only men I know, who must have all men's consciences squared by the supposition of your own. The will-worship you name is truly that you practise, that is, an affected contradictorious way in the service of God to Scripture, to antiquity, to the Church you live in, to Discretion, yea to Christianity itself. If by a liturgy devised by men, you understand man's device, it is a gross calumny, a notorious untruth, not a syllable in that book, which is not either (as the greater part) the words of Scripture itself, or clearly deducible in the very Phrase from thence; if your sense be, that it is imposed by human power, you are no less mistaken; there is either a particular warrant from Scripture, or at the least a general Commission granted for the ordering of the House of God, which extends to the full latitude of the book, if you had either impartiality to conceive aright, or conscience to obey; but it may be you mean that men have contrived the book of liturgy, so they have the Apostles Creed, which perhaps you for the same reason have rejected; nor was ever the Church of God since the first Congregation of the Jews in a politic body, to your last and worst days, without a public form of service and worship. We bid you therefore with Saint Augustines, Erigere scal●●, and go up to heaven alone, but again, Dat● venia●●, nos non credimus, that all the Churches of the Christian world have been over-laid with idolatry and Antichristianism, till this late one of yours.  
Having choked (as you think) the liturgy with this illpeeced discourse of yours concerning the Antichrist, your second onset is upon the Ceremonies of the Church; these you say because of man's devising and imposed upon the Conscience are also Popery: you give no new reason, nor I any new answer, only this, there is no greater error committed by you Sectaries, then that because the Church of Rome hath thrust upon us some unnecessary, many superfluous Ceremonies, you would have the reformation to have none at all, not considering that Ceremonies as the hedge, do fence the substance of Religion from the indignities that profaneness and irreligion oftentimes put upon it. Ceremonies though in the particular, that is, This or that, be not necessary, in the general they are; how long we are men, and do inhabit these our dull bodies, we had much need of some visible helps to sti●re up our Devotion, and to give a being, a continuity to public decency and order: It is true, the inward worship of the heart, is the great service of God, but the outward worship of God, is the great witness to this, whereby our light shineth to the world, that men may glorify our Father which is in Heaven; now no outward worship without Ceremonies, they, the ancienter (superfluity and Superstition laid aside) the better, so they fit time and place: for you, your are so spiritual, (though some think you no less carnal than your neighbours) I am afraid your Religion, may evapour in words, turn in the smoke of a thin airy profession, and as no substance of good works, so leave no visibility of worship behind it; though now while the heat of a party keeps in the fire, you seem to have some zeal in your breasts, if you were settled on your dregs, and after this great motion returned to your cold blood, it is very possible you shall have no Religion 〈◊〉 all. It were not hard to tell you here what happiness Christians do enjoy by the wholesome constitutions of a Church or State; what peace, what unity, what concord, what increase of ●●ll p●ety and virtue from thence. And unity, if it be not nature itself, it is the first principle riveted by the hand of nature, no essence, no action without this sickness and Rebellion, the two great confusions of the natural and politic body do evidence this truth, no subsistence, no continuation of other, but by a first cause, a prime agent, even your discipline must have unity and order in it, if it have life and motion; and this the more general it is, the better: It's true, the extension of good is not its touchstone, yet this doth not hinder it to be communicative, and that to the dimension of the body which is to be governed. But now the matter imposed is left in its own nature indifferent still, though not so in the practice, and why this very same restraint enlargeth then Christian liberty, for otherwise they would be in conscience obliged to abstain from every thing that the nice and peevish humorist should conceive to be offensive, now, being tied by a Law, they may use their freedom, yea, must prefer a necessary duty to an imaginary scandal. But this were to digress, nor are you for such peaceable thoughts, for you love that order and not any besides it, that may be raked out of the ashes of Monarchy, but your late injuries meeting with its discretion will teach a necessity of foresight, not to adventure huge bodies as you are, quia su● feruntur pondere, down steep hills, that is, to your own swing. But you could soon reply to me that not to abstain for every offence though in a case commanded by lawful authority, were soul-murder, and against the sixth commandment, and that the authority so commanding were Antichristian: which how it may agree with a Legislative power in King or in Parliament, and how comply with the presbyterial or parochial government more than with that of Bishops, I profess I do not understand, all superiority, all imposition, all public order and common decency is a popish and antichristian usurpation of Christ's sceptre.  
Your third endeavour is against the discipline of the Church in exercising the power of Excommunication; this you prove to be another branch of Popery, because it is from the Church of Rome: you may with the same pains argue Christ and his Apostles to have been popish, who are the undoubted authors of that power, but you do well to deny all censures, having already denied all laws, Superiors, and Judges, lest you might happen be punished for this contumacy. You tell us of the Homilies, and what do you think are meant by the third mark, the true discipline there? it must be either this of ours, or that of yours: yours are not at all, that we have heard of, nor needs there discipline where there is neither Law nor injunction; if this of ours, the homilies stand up and witness against you: but your aim is to prove the Church of England by the book of Homilies to be no Church at all; I pray you, how were they Homilies, but by the Church? this is to prove by a Church that we have no Church at all. a logic indeed that beseems your conventicles, where repugnantia in adiecto is attended by wilful malice and gross ignorance. Now, this clear denial of a Church, how agreeth it with your advice of reformation? motus supponit non facit subiectum, nor can we reform that Church which as yet is not gathered together; I know by your breath you are an actual Separatist, who have some years ago condemned the whole body of this Church to hell and perdition, though now to insinuate yourself the better you appear (as your master before you) sometime as an Angel of light. You add the not due Administration of the Sacraments; Did you never think that rightly done, till in Germany the holy Supper (with all reverence to that sacred mystery be it spoken) was given by one of your number after some long wound orations from the back of an oyster board to his fellow sitting Communicanter in brown bread and small bear: It was say you, the pride and delicacy of the Antichrist, that first used a wheat loaf and wine, nor will you have us in this (though in other things to the very communicating in an upper room, as you do, and after supper) follow the example of Christ, he, you tell us (horr●sco refer●us) was content with the ordinary and native elements of the country, and so must we be too. But the Church of England doth no less hate the absurd Popish Transubstantiation, than your foolish sacramentary bare representing signs: both sacrifical and Sacramentary let them go packing for her, and so that other Sacrament of baptism, though you have vainly nibbled about the sign of the cross, (no less hateful and Idolatmus to you, then ridiculous and shameful to the Pagans of old) yet when it comes to the push of an argument, you deserve nothing but Virgil's description of his evanishing apparitions: 
Ingenti trepidare metu: parstollere vocem  
Exiguam: incoeptus clamor frustratur hiantes.   
In spite of you and all wrangling opposites, the Church of England, as the purity, so shall ever retain her decency as beseemeth so high actions in dispensing these sacred mysteries. The restraint and edicts you complain of were much indeed against your Catholic gift of preaching, but now I hope you have repaid that loss, when not a sowgelder among you who makes not hold with a tub for his pulpit, Dii, fi qua est Coelo pietas quae talia curet, persolvant grates dignas.  
The fourth plea is against the root of all bitterness, the very heart and lungs of the Antichrist, the government of Bishops, each casual mishap in them must be an error, so will your rabbis have to be, who deeming themselves less in employment then in merit, do heartily rail against that which they heartily desire, the Rochet. This you say is not of divine, therefore it must be of diabolical institution, can you give a reason of this consequence? yes, I will help your to it, and from your own grounds, all laws, impositions; superiorities, ordinanc●s from men, are in your opinion, (and this is no weak one) usurped, tyrannical, ●ntichristianty, and against the prerogative of Christ, who is the sole 〈◊〉 to the commonwealth of Israel in his spiritual kingdom; these are your wise religious thoughts, but what say you to your parishes, these were not instituted by Christ, here perhaps you will slip me and adhere to family, yea personal discipline, and withal bring your warrant for it, that Paul did send greeting to the Church at the house of Priscilla and Aquila: neither can I reach you here, I know not what customs you use in your rebaptisation; what say you of meeting together in private houses, and expounding a piece of Scripture? for this you will allege apostolical practice, and the same necessity, because of the persecution, and the same (otherwise the Argument were nought) infallibly too: what say you of the giving of the holy Supper to women? this sure you dare not deny, lest the Diaconists punish you, if I should remember you here of the baptising of infants, the distinction of Apocryphical & canonical Scripture the Apostles creed, you would presently stifle me with the noise of tradition, the first and last of those you have taken an order with, and for the other, you desire no more testimony from or of scripture, than your own, that is, of your own spirit, you are so naked in your outward worship (as the wrestlers of old) it is impossible to lay hold upon you, and so grumbling against all church custom and laws (for what is not commanded in scripture is to you contramandat, and shall so be to us too if you grant a general power, and rest not only upon particulars) that I can find nothing material of public order and decency to lay to your charge.  
I must therefore go about to prove the government of Bishops to be of Divine institution, or nothing, and here I will take the surest way, that is to show the Divine institution of Episcopacy from Christ himself, not from the precept and practices of the Apostles, else you would s●ip out of my fingers and tell me, that if not by the blessed Apostles themselves (as one of yours said) yet in their time this mystery of iniquity of Antichristianism, did begin to work. My assertion is therefore and with better ground than your denial of all authority, that the apostolical office itself, in its proper & reciprocal acts, was nothing else but the episcopal (I see you startle & change your complexion) as it is now a days exercised in the church of England: whether the ordination of that function was, Ioh. 21. 15. or 20. 22. or as others more probable by these words, as my Father sent me so send I you in the same place, and at the same time were Bishops ordained: These are the Apostles successors in ass et ex solido in all things that ever was assentative to their office; as to call the Disciples and elders of the Church (not theirs who come with sword● and pistols to maintain the truth) together, Act. 12. 2. 20. 17. v. or divine Prosbytors. Act. 14. 25. to give direction for Church censures 1 Corinth. 5. 5. to make laws and canons ecclesiastical. 1 Cor. 11. 2. to require observation of the same 1 Cor. 16. 1. Now the gifts of immediate calling universal commission, infallibility, long●●●, and miracles, were 〈◊〉, in the Apostles nor official, but personally only extraordinary, and for the employments of the time▪ neither indeed can that be called apostolical, which is not proper to, and convertible with the Apostles, but all these extraordinary inducements were in others besides them, and in the E●angelists, in Philip the Deacon, or in the Disciples, though not all of them in every one of these 〈…〉 essential to that office in constituendo, but the Acts of Ordination and jurisdiction: these the Apostles as Apostles once had, and these by the same right of Institution, transmitted by the succession of many ages to the present Bishops. 〈◊〉 you angry at this (stant Lumina flamma) and it may be it may do your good, if you shall happen to empty your stomach of some loathsome humours at the view of this position, nor have you a possible way, for all your windings to get about it, unless you either maintain that the office of the Apostles, in its very 〈◊〉 was extraordinary (and then no office, 〈◊〉 an inducement, a gift) and nothing useful for our times, which your schisms, as many of them, as you are of men, will not suffer us to believe; or that each of you, and not the Bishops only are the 〈◊〉 of the Apostles, and then would we gladly see you give Imposition of hands (as they did) and pronounce the sentence of Excommunication, without the consent or assistance of your lay-brethrens, and inspired-parishoners, but you divide the coat, seemlesse before, betwixt you. You have better right, I think, to the extraordinary gifts, as that of immediate calling, when you despise the Orders of the Church, & tell us the Imposition of hands was the ceremony of a miracle if you can presume upon your abilities, and obtain the humings of a factious congregation, you have your calling, and are sent by God: that of universal commission, when the reformation of all Kingdom●s is alike to you; 〈◊〉 parishes must confine the single gifts of others, but a whole national Church, not your double qualifications, that of infal●ibility, when you obtrude your sense of Scripture; the Fathers are but dull tapers to your bright stars, they more of kin to the Antichrist than you; if you think you have found a text for it they (good men) must be heretics, no more disprite, you cannot err, that of miracles was never more believed by the popish ridiculous Legends, than by you, Johannes de Vordg. feigned something that deserved the name of a wonder, but your rabbis, to the laughter of the hearers, content themselves with each common accident,) this they will have to fall out by the strength of their prayers, either for the confusion of the reprobate, as they call them, or the furtherance of the good cause; nor are they satisfied to give (which every Christian must and should) the determination of all successes to almighty God. but they in a presumptuous holiness will be upon his sacred counsels, prey into his secrets, and boldly design a particular end for his divine providence in every thing. Only the gift of tongues, I cannot tell how to fix upon you, and withal not pollute you with (which God knows you are not guilty of the language 〈…〉) You see now I have not troubled 〈◊〉 conscience with Timothy and Titus (and the●e shall be still Bishops to me; while you prove the circular and monthly changes) I have derived the original of Episcopacy from the Apostles Office; not their authority; Doubt not therefore if Bishops be 〈…〉, unless you doubt if the Apostles were so, or because of your love of parity you think them of that same order with the seaventy Disciples, deny if you dare that the institution of our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ were divine, and I give you the bucklers, as to neg antibus principia. Thus have I flourished with you; it were a shame to bestow a blow in earnest upon such a poor smatterer as yourself, I have ever thought it the best refutation of you and of your cause, to lay your foolish impertinences open to the eye of the world, than I am assured only these who love to have their brains suspected, would give you the least approbation.  
You find in the administration of the Episcopacy office the perfect image of the papal beast from horn to hose; but stay and take it home to yourself, who a●e the only beasts I know amongst men, if irrationality and passion, can argue want of judgement, and turbulency in affections, your plurality of marriages (the old licence o● the German Anabaptists) your love Feasts, your night me●tings can abundantly witness this; your absurd simplici●y and ignorance in this and other your libels give testimony of that, it is not altogether a mistake of religion but aliquod naturae vitium, a hypocondriacy a fault in your brain, that causeth your ravings (hence I incline to think this humour of yours may be epidemical because of some 〈◊〉) & this to be as physio logists transformed (as the life quoad act● secundum) a man in a beast. But I have mistaken you, all this time you m●ane the papal beast the Antichristianism, I pray you if his definition can fit you, who sit in the house of God and opposeth●l (Magistrates) that are called Gods; only in this you differ, that God's house is mistaken for your own: nor shall we want an individuality, it is no less in the unity of your covenants and oaths of secrecy, than in the successive race of the Bishops of Rome. You are pleased to call the ministers a dumb priesthood, a mockery: what disgrace is this to the Church, to these that have baptism from her, or do expect salvation in her? You have indeed named them bald-pate●, with those ungracious children, but take your seat for it in the first psalm, and there stay for your punishment. Doctors with us and Priests do pronounce the sentence of excommunication, and with no more indecency, we think, than if some reverend cobbler, or inspired Button maker did the same; give me leave to remember you here of the late schism of your congregation at Rotterd 〈◊〉; they upon debate were divided in two bodies; each of them was the supreme Church of God upon earth, and each of them gave commission to an honest Weaver to excommunicate the other; this cannot but please you well (though your discipline cannot) because there is neither reason, nor order in it.  
I think it strange, that you who deny all outward calling except that from the people, should think the Curates, None of the Ministers of Christ in that they derive their ministry from the Antichristian Hierarchy, if no orders be necessary, sure a mistake of orders cannot be much prejudicial. Hence let the world judge how both these mal●cious factions spend their fury upon the Church of England; the papists object that she hath for feited her ordination, you that she hath one, but the papists they tell us we are no Church because we want a Priesthoood, you, because we have one: They will here of none but a monarchical subjection, you do establish a democracy in the Church or an anarchy rather; they complain of perjury, because we refuse to maintain their orders (as if who amongst them had sworn canonical obedience to a heretical Bishop, were obliged to be a heretic) you of the want of purity, because we do not renounce all continuation and orders of the Church. In spite of you both she shall still maintain a visible succession in the mi●istery from the very Apostles times: may not the Church of Rome though in her old age more faulty, give baptism, and may not this warrant the derivation of our orders from her first and better times? but I crave you mercy Sir, this argument do●h not concern you, who not after the Church of Rome only, but also in the Church of England, do rebaptize. You frame here an objection to yourself concerning the antiquity of archbishops, & Dio●esan Bishops (this you add to distinguish them from these of the late edition for parishes) and how do you answer it? First you tell us they were not known by the primitive Fathers; but this is as gross as to say the primitive fathers did not know themselves, whom we undoubtedly know by a moral belief to have been Bishops, as we do that the Saxons did here succeed the Britain's: scarce a leaf in the counsels, Fathers, and Church histories that doth not speak this for us. Secondly, you tell us that government was corrupt even from the wellhead, but since I have proved to you that this was Christ (the Apostles you will venture upon) I hope you will mend your expression, and retire.  
Thirdly, you will have this government a● limb of papacy, and I dare boldly-say it, there is nothing more destructive of it, for to maintain that every Bishop is de jure divin● (as you in the same place grant that the present bishops of England do) is 〈◊〉 only to deny all dependence from Rome but to give her her death's wound by lopping of the prerogative whereby she subsists; for by virtue of this, 〈…〉 come to her, dispensations from her, exemptions of 〈◊〉 and religious houses (the main pillars) which if the bishops of Europe by man-seeming there office to be de jure divino, would challenge as an usurpation, her borrowed father's might; perhaps return home to the first own; 〈◊〉. You say the Pope and the Bishops of England hold their authority by the 〈…〉 ●amely from Christ, so I hope duth the meanest 〈◊〉 sweeper amongst you his calling to preach, to expound scri●pture, to give the Sacraments, and yet will be offended, if you think him or his argument popish, though the Pope of Rome do the very same here, like yourself, that is, a very compound of absurdity, and boldness, you mention Doctor Hall, and his learned pains: out upon thee for a fool, and a babbler! The works of that reverend, p●infull, and judicious bishop, shall be entertained by the posterity, with app●obation and thankfulness, when the better times shall ●isse thee and thy associat● out of the Church; the quintessence of you all do come short to the meanest croatchet of his learning, judgement, integrity, & eloquence; nor shall these your calumnies be aught else to him but stig●ata Laudis, cicatrices to testify his conscience and resolution, who had the courage to set his face against you the Amalakites, when others turned the back. For 〈◊〉; his very citation refutes you; you say he fails in that he cannot prove Rome's succession from Peter, and yet you have said, his assertion is that he proved Saint Gregoryes succession from Peter. But I forgive you, you knew not before now 〈…〉 it, that Gregori● was bishop of Rome. Now, what if I should teach you, that we in the Church of England, perhaps have neither Christianity nor sacred orders from Rome, s●re the first we had not: for by the observation of Easter according to the tradition of the Eastern Church (To let the tale of Simon zealots, and Joseph of Aramathe● pass) it is most probable this kingdom had the blessing of the gospel from the Disciples of John: if after the Saxon devastation we were restored by Rome, in some parts of the island, the Northerns at the same time; were converted to the faith, by bishop Aydanus from Scotland; as Beda mentions Lib. 3. Cap. 3. But this discourse is not for you, who in the preceding page hath prophainly called the Ministry itself a pe●ce of Popery, whether from Rome or not is all one to you, such is your superlative hatred against all order. Give me leave here to slip out of the way, and meet with a friend of yours, the Author of The petition for Bishops examined; this man tells us our archbishops, and Bishops were substituted to the places of the Ar●hflamins & flamens of the heathens, this is a now conceit, that bishops are not from the new, but old Rome, not Antichristian but heathenish. Here for all the grace you brag of you may learn of nature, that not the least show of religion, except this mad one of yours, can subsist without 〈◊〉 cement, this harmony, the subordination in its office-betrers. But will he have the Bishops heathenish 〈…〉 joy the rooms designed for the residence of the flamens, and are we not all Papists, yea pagan's, because such did once inhabit this kingdom? Now I smell out the reason why you persuade so vehemently the pulling down of Churches, it is because of some inherent wickedness in the place. He says further that the first four or five hundred years there was Bishops in Scotland, but that (as he citys Ioannes Maior) communi monachorun regebantur Concilio, but their histories are there for it, that Amphibalus was Bishop in the Isle of Man An. 237. and for some 100 of years after the monks were not so much as reckoned among the clergy, much less had they dominion over them.  
In the close of this answer you are assured that the Government is protested against. If such a worm as myself might presume to speak of that honourable judicatory and the p●otestation made by it, I might upon better grounds argue, that you and your sectaries, are within the reach of the same: my instance shall be in one point (when I might in a hundred) that of magistracy, your doctrine concerning it, is pointblank against the doctrine of the Church of England, the King's honour and estate, the power and privilege of Parliaments, and that for to use your terms, deserveth to be cut off and cast out as a fruitless withered branch, and to be plucked up by the roots as a tree twice dead, and as a plant not of God's Planting.  
Hitherto I might have taken you up by some pains, but now you pass all understanding: fall you once upon the business of reformation, you rave perfectly, like these lunatics who will perhaps speak sense, do they encounter with the purpose that first chased them out of their wits, then straight they run out. Sir, by laughing at you, you have spared me the cost of physic for expelling melancholy. Your first assertion is that it will be impossible to constitute a national Church agreeable in all points to the visible Congregation of Christ: here you no less cross the Consisteries than the Bishops; and therefore it shall be convenient to leave you to their refutation.  
It is your brag, that there is many thousand Saints, whose hearts are perfect before God, that is pleasing to you: and shall these empty Pitchers, these factious lights, these trumpets of intent, multiplied to make a noise, affright the kingdom? I dare say, that if from your party you deduce mad men and fools (and none of these, are men envied) with such as love for their own ends, to fish in your muddy waters, scar●e a number, yea scarce an unity shall remain; though you try the Sword of the Lord and of Geddon, as a friend of yours did in another kingdom, the Church and state of England, will ever have prudence to detect your Stratagems, and courage to award your blows. What you mean by defiling of garments I know not, but I know you have lately provided against that by your naked meetings. Now you speak plain Language in persuading a separation, and, forcing us to believe, we are in no better condition than those Heathens to whom the Apostles first peached the gospel; for you tell us the Sheep must be called forth, and gathered into Christ's Folds, and that it is a strange speech be you separate. You therefore will begin ab ovo, and call together the Holy ones, to make up your new household congregations: but how shall these be descended? Only by the infallibility and presumed omniscience of your spirit, that of error, not that of truth; you only know these few names, and here you tell us that sca●se a number shall be found to make up these holy meetings, what? are all your thousands evanished, you boasted of in the last page? oportuit mendacem esse memorem, but I take you at your last word, if there be so few (as you profanely abuse that Scripture) marked with the white stone in his kingdom, pray you spare us the pains of Separation, separate yourselves for some new colony in Virginia, and trouble not your pates about unpossibiliti●s; would to God you would leave us, or your madness you, and then both of us should be at rest. Now let the whole world judge if you be a fit man to usher in a reformation, and thus boldly to thrust your impious sense upon the protestation, (made by the most honourable Parliament) whose head is fraughted with such whimses, and who can hear of nothing but the gathering of a new Church in this kingdom. And if we all had made a total apostasy from the faith; we should descry you blasphemously as the Apostles did when they came to plant Churches in a Country where the gospel had not been formerly preached; not your ears, but your neck is in danger for this.  
But what answer you to the question, if they have not received baptism? Or are they not Christians? Here something sticks in your throat: you answer negatively, by an equipollent Metaphor, that the lame and blind are not to be offered up in a Sacri●ice to the Lord. Do you thus tempt the patience of the Prince and people? Is it nothing for you to object paganism to them at every word? To call them profane, ignorant, unbaptised, unchristian persons? This were intolerable to any free soul, and must induce all those who have the smallest affection to generosity and Religion, to provide a way how such monsters as yourself may be suppressed.  
You go on, and tell us the godly may not communicate with the profane. Quo Donate ruis? are not all profane to you, that are good churchmen and obedient Subjects? And must all these fall within the verge of your excommunication? May we expect, dum viatores sumus, your contemplative perfection, or that the wheat shall be here without the chaff? And know you what iniquity some of your holy Sisters might have committed yesternight? if you communicate with them, do you partake of their profanation? It may be you have so before, nor is it a sin in you or her, but an oversight: I see there is a necessity laid upon us to search the hearts of men, to have their breasts made of crystal, to find out their very thoughts, else no fellowship, no communion. But if every known sin be every man's, where is Christ's burden? What difference put you betwixt the head and the branch? Others uncleanness can no more defile you, than your holiness excuse them: if you be for this separation, you must either fly out of the world, or your flight is in vain; the best metal here hath its dross, the best grain its oftall, there is need indeed of a fan, and a Furnace, but not that of yours, destructive, not purging.  
Nor stay you here, all are dogs and Swine to you that will not be of your kennel, nor wallow in your Puddle: so your Founders the Pharises upbraided Christ, with the name of a Wine bibber, and said he had a devil, because he haunted with sinners and publicans, while they themselves cleansed only the outside of the Platter, beware of their woe. A little Leaven leaveneth the whole lump, never better known then of late by you, what cozenage and hypocrisy have these years by-gone hid up in the mass from the eye of discipline: none must come to the Passeover except yourselves, who have not washen your hands in innocency, but your tongues in the gall of Asps. You seem to speak of known evil doers; if you mean such as are under the church's censures, you fight against your own shadow, none such are admitted to partake of our holy mysteries; but if you understand, as you do, those of a contrary judgement to yourself (for it is the first, and your fancy about that, not the second Table, all this time you respect) we pray for your health, and do protest against your madness.  
Now I have found you out 
— Qualem primo qui s●rgere mense  
Aut videt aut vidisse putat per nubila iunam.   
And know how to take a direct aim: the reformation you aim at is shorter laced than either consistories or parishes, there is a necessity of setting up other Congregations besides these; here your intent is to have all reduced to families, old 〈◊〉 must be your Doctor and pastor, his wife Tib your diaconess, his son Die your ruling Elder, and the serving man Will your Deacon: a pretty Church indeed, and where none are to be admitted but such as are approved by the whole assembly; he And his household, the supreme and only congregation upon earth; not any beyond it in purity, above it in jurisdiction; no more contest now for consistories, or Parochial Churches, you for the avoiding of profaneness have assigned us a lesser circle— ipse ratem conto subigit— all will be well and you be at the Stearn. Is this your model, your pattern of reformation? It is so, ridiculous children will point at you and it in the streets; if not for Christianity, yet for shame ●ake abstain from such motions for the which the enemies dreaming you and the Church of England to be concentrike, nam● us no more heretics, but mad men: nor are you less dangerous than they: the innocent sheep are no less terrified by the barking of the dogs within, then by the handling of the Wolves without; my very soul bleedeth to think what discouragements you give us at home, what ignominy, and scandal, and disgrace you are to us abroad.  
But you proceed and tell us, If there must be a national Church, let not this exclude and bar out the free use of congregations. Here you play the Libertine: give you freedom and you care not what religion is at the next doors: this is the Golden branch, let you once see this, though your mouths were as main and wide as these of Cerberuss tumida ex ira tune corda recedunt. This is indeed the confusion your parity aims at, that every man may do what seemeth him good in his own eyes: now let any Christian judge, whether it is your love to purity, that persuaded your Separation from the Church, now your reformation of the Church, or your desire of licence, when, if that be granted to you, you are willing to be daily spectators of the Antichristianism and their patron (such is all to you beside your sanctified Conventicle) of a national Church, Order as they call it: and how do you? You have no use, no name for order at all: all be●de your humour, though prescribed by the state, must be order as they call it: this is your respect to Parliaments, you are the only mouths, I know, of all power and jurisdiction. Nor must the consciences of God's people in things indifferent for order and unities sake, be regulated by wholesome laws; when every man's conscience must be tied to yours in the very principles of religion; how far they decline from this, so far from purity, from salvation: without this no admission to your society, to your communion, nor (as you will have it) to the kingdom of Heaven. It is said of Aristotle, he disputed against monarchy, lest any beside his master should affect that, just so you against government, when you are the hardest Tax-masters, the most curious searchers of opinions in the world, nothing can pass your censures (and that is either to be saved or damned) which is not borrowed from yourselves.  
You will have us to believe, that though you are in, yet you are not of the world, you, good men, are separated from the world in the corruptions thereof; whether is this that you cannot sin, or that you do not sin, whether boast you here of your opinion, or your practice? If the first, take it with you, and that of the Apostles, when you say you have not sin you are liars, and the truth is not in you: but if the last, I will tell you, you are now too gross not to be discerned, all your fig-tree leaves, of Purity and reformation, will not cover your nakedness, violence, rebellion, deceit, cruelty, dissimulation, wrath, incharity, in a word all the titles that attend you in the first page, are your individual Lackeys, and do your best, will acknowledge no other Master; I have known men of honest civil dispositions, ere they joined to your sect, but then, as if Satan had entered with the Sop, immediately became proud, testy, hollow-hearted, and whose charity dared nor so much as extend itself to the respects of nature or acquaintance: these in the Children of disobedience might be accounted sins, what they are in you I know not; it may be, as by the access of truth and light, your natures are essentialy changed, so the qualities and viciousness of your actions. But I have mistaken you all this time, it is a Separation from the world in doctrine, not in practice; you intend you are as far from this, as you are from Rome.  
Mean time you bear us in hand you are not Separate (and woes me for it) from the civil state, but are peac●able members thereof, subject and obedient to all good, and just laws, how long they may happen to fit your i●ching humours; go beyond this train, the Laws will be neither good nor just; you must have the power to interpret them, as you have the Protestation, and thereafter obey not them, but your fancy concerning them. Here you bring in your fulminatrix leg●o, as if all we were Pagans about you, what your prayers have procured to us, let these last thundering days witness; the almost ruins of a poor Church by your schisms, will testify it to the succeeding ages.  
The Apostle indeed exhorts us to pray for Kings, your hearers know how you obey this exhortation, when by your prayers you teach them how to suspect their Princes of lukewarmeness and oppression; in your wavering petitions to God for their reformation, their amendment, as Joab did to Amasa, you stab their authority, their reputation, beneath the fifth Rib. But if it were not proprium convertibile with your Sect, to make bold with Scripture, I could fit you better with texts, and tell you of a Miriam, who said, hath the Lord spoken only by Moses, and not by us also? and of a Core of whom you learned your Dialect, you take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation of the Lord are holy, wherefore lift you yourselves above the Congregation of the Lord? But you are worse than both these; no speech by Moses, as by yourselves; not all the Congregation of the Lord, but only you are holy. I will therefore assign you a third, that comes more home to the point, To your Tents O Israel, what Inheritance have we in the son of Jesse? validior est oris quàm operis vox. Let the condition of the times, your defections, your stirs, speak for me the truth of the matter: if the Parliament should give ear to your desires, Royalty might seek a patron amongst the Nominalists; you would soon find that burdensome that is not profitable, and at the last answer the charges of the crown with a Quorsum proditio haec? You make too bold with Domitian's example; blessed be God for it, we have none such; no edicts come out for persecution; but it is customary with you to compare King and people to Tyrants and Heathens. You tell us here of protection and toleration from civil states, what if you shall imagine, as now you do, that this reciprocal duty is not sufficiently afforded you? why then have you not only jus determinationis, but Vindictae, you may judge betwixt you and your Prince, and thereafter your rebellion is but a holy war; for the maintenance of religion you may do any thing. This is a summary excommunication of yours; and the Martyrs of the Primitive times were but Dunces, that could not fall upon it: Kings have no more certainty of your obedience, then of your humours, your mutations, at the first change of the weathercock (and you are no less moving) or information sent you from Amsterdam of a design against the religion, omnia susque deque miscentur, all is turned topsy-turvy. Do not therefore offer us Sugar for your Pill: we are not so purblind, but we do perceive the nail in the one hand, while you carry milk in the other hand.  
Now when you have drained us of all discipline and unity, how proceed you against the fomentation of envy, and faction in the state? you give a bill of divorce to all ecclesiastical, and a seeming power to civil laws: these say you, may take order with transgressors, but with the proviso of incorrigibility: and can there be any such in your exempted Congregations? This is either against your doctrine of admission or perseverance. But let no man blame you before they try you: do you deal so with others? no, that were a suspicion of charity, or a remission of zeal in you: Quod tibi non vis fieri &c. is a precept too practical for your contemplative faith, what accusations from you of apostasy, of Treason, of heresy, upon suspicions, probabilities, and consequents? Hear you of preparation for war? It is to bring in Popery. Of the a ornation of a chapel? it is superstition. Ask you how you know this, you reply, the thoughts and intentions of the men are not upright, and is not this without trial to judge the mind? Whether is this a trick of the Antichrist or not, an usurpation of God's prerogative? but you have made too bold with infallibility to forge this privilege, without this fuel your calumnies (the very life of your Sect) might be soon starved in cold blood. Nay how blame you a whole Church and nation? is there a corner in all this 〈◊〉 of yours which is not stuffed with accusations of a total apostasy and profanation against her? Her doctrine is Idolatry, her discipline Antichristianism, her religion at every turn, compared with heathenism: b●t the eye that mocketh his father and despiseth the government of his Mother, the Ravens of the River shall pull it out, and the young Eagles eat it.  
That old stratagem of Satan, you have executed handsomely this year against the Bishops, and with as great moderation as he whom you name did, Nero: they poor men, are by you made the gate to disburden the people of their sins; and will that slaughter on too if you can accomplish your ends, but it is their, and our comfort, that he who hath let you loose can cast a hook in your nose, and chain you again, the devil cannot so much as enter a heard of swine without permission from Almighty God, you tell us the gospel, that novum Evangelium of yours, will kindle coals and stir up debate, and for all this the civil power may not cast you out, nor can without much fasting and prayer, you then (it seems) and religion are convertible terms, but see how you deal with us here; shall we seem profane to you, you must separate from us, shall you be troublesome and contentious to us, we not from you? This is your legerdemain, your Hocus Pocus whereby you delude the people by this you intend to blindfold the state, and toss the whole kingdom (with reverence be it spoken) like to an old bear tied to a stake. Kings you will have none, unless they be made by yourselves, as he at Leyden: a one may give you, the sons of the Church, that which is yours, the fat of the earth for others, they are children of Belial, all both Prince and People have forfeited their right, their dominion in the Creature, and never as yet restored, because not of the Reformation, only you whom the ●onventicle hath assured to be of the faithful, have the liberty of the gospel. you may therefore freely, and with a safe conscience reject your King, and deceive your neighbour, and think it no more sin, than when the Israelites revolted from Pharaoh, and borrowed the eate-rings of the Egyptians; your bondage hath been the same, and your warrant as particular, if we may believe you; nor do the coals you talk of burn no higher; you are as peremptory in granting rooms in heaven, as you are in giving peace on earth, to them you are pleased to call heretics; and yet not the less for all this, the state must nourish you in her bosom, though your ●rrand be then to suck out her heart blood.  
For your next doubt, that your perfection will be envied, it is of your own making; there is none who knows your conversations, can Justly charge you with popery, that you intend for heaven by good works: but if you had not added purity (which with you is only Speculative) to your perfection, I might have suspected you of the three vows, which falsely march under that name; though your many wives, and large usury may serve to purge you from that of chastity and poverty; and for that of obedience you may very well take it in the negative. You call your way of devotion Christ's sweetness; spare, I entreat you such appropriations; your works must not ever pass as the works of God: lest as you else where make him the author of sin, so you may thrust (with all reverence be it spoken) violence or dissimulation upon him; and is not this to lay a ground work for atheism, when you preach and practise contradictions? and yet will have your credulous hearers (who have pulled out their eyes for you) conceive, that all you speak is from above?  
Now fall you down again upon the parishes, and maintain a necessity to separate your exempted congregations from them; no minister, you say, will be so unchristian as to envye this: pereunt civili vulnere fratres; each of you hath his sword in his brother's side. When will you agree among yourselves? it seems you are erecting the Babel; you so much talk of; if the confusion of tongues, hearts, and opinions be suitable to the work; one calls for an elder, another brings a widow; one will have a parish, another a family; one for the separation another against it; This man that the Doctor is an office-bearer, this that he is not, he for a diaconisse, he against her: one says the Doctors may excommunicate, another contradicts that; he gives the right of prophesying to the inspired-lay-elder, he denies it; another denies all Church superiority and jurisdiction; he maintains it in a presbytery, this man in a parish;— non si linguae centum, oraeque centum— ferrea vox, and yet all of these (mirum dictu!) leaning to the like immediate, the like infallible revelation; neither learning, Church, nor fathers, must assist to find out the genuine sense of Scripture concerning any of these. The Poets tell us that the mistaken History of Babylon, was {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, this in a twofold meaning, may be so. Settle the business among yourselves, and say (you who maintain the discipline and government of the church to be so clearly and particularly set down in God's word) hitherto shall our proud wits (that casteth up dirt and mire continually) come. Then it is possible we may join with you, and that safely too, because you are no more yourselves, if you once but listen to unity and concord; but this were dangerous; agreement amongst yourselves might at the last end in the monarchical government of the Church of Rome; your purity, and peace are compositio incompossibilium; and that is even what you are in your most formal essence, a very notion of the brain, Christ told us in his apology for himself, that the old serpent would not have regnum in se divisum, his poison is yours, not his policy, you are not so far learned yet. In the close of this answer you tell us, that your independent congregations will not plead for tithes: Now you take the title of independence upon you, from church and state; such is the liberty of your family meetings; Nor will you meddle with tithes, this were (God save us) to judaise. It is your custom to ingratiate the people to you by preaching sacrilege, rebellion, and usury; King, priest and people are too cheap sold for your 5. s. freewill-offering. Nor shall you thus avoid the reward of Balaam; your purchase it may be is as good as the set rent of others; to live by the chimney corner is sometimes as profitable as to live by the Altar: Twenty or thirty pounds of collection is a mean reward for some of your household lectures, even for one exhortation, if some godly families about midnight be pleased to join themselves together. That piece of Scripture is practically yours indeed, godliness is great gain; nor must the good women (the conceit of whose devotion is measured by their reward) want their oblation, though they should borrow it from the Pockets of their sleeping husbands, or send their clothes to Long-lane to fetch it: not many wise, you can tell us, these are likely to detect your knaveries, but as rich as may be, they will drop the more oil for your zeal, and you out of your Christian pity will adventure to disburden them of part of their goods that they may have the more easy passage through the needle's eye. your small tithes you gather them ipsa Corpora at your chamber Conferences and long feasts, which you repay with as long graces, praying to the extent of your belly, where not a morsel may pass your censure if your hand be not in the dish; fastings, unless it be with the Manichaes upon the Lord's day, fall not out in your Callendar till the 32 day of the month.  
The Parliament you tell us is about a reformation; a glorious work indeed! God prosper them, and send it us, to the rooting out of you and all who have wrought our unquiet and troubled the peace of Israel: these Convulsions and renting pains, which in a part, you to the horror of every Christian soul do stir up, admonish us what humours, what obstructions are yet to be purged: but under favour you must not prescribe the Medicine, such a measure of acrimony should then be administered, that not the diseases only but the vital spirits might readily be exhausted: you are a part of our consumption, and in such a case strength not weakness is to be studied, whereby the kingdom may work out the malignity of the sickness. But what reformation do you conceive? when shall you make a stand? must every year produce you a new religion? every month a new faith? nor shall the rabbis of the next moon, be content with what you do, a new inspired-eldership upon a new pretended revelation will perhaps demolish this platform: you have indeed reached home to the first, the patriarchal, each of them were Priests to themselves, so you; thus is was before the law, before ceremonies were in custom and therefore is the only means for you, who are without all law, to reclaim the Church your household from Ceremonies.  
You persuade yourself, the Parliament will remove that government you name hierarchical, and we hope it will not; you indeed labour what you can to throw sparks in the flax to put the kingdom in a flame, that you may see to find out Popery, or rather the treasure and revenues of the Church, hid up in the time of darkness; hence your zeal is active, yea so hot, that it is strange that it melt not the plate, the bells, the very lead of the Church into coin. But those of that honourable that religious judicature are lately taught by your madness, that essentially to change the present state of things, were no less present death to the state, then to open a vein and disable nature in the height the rage of a fever, If in the time of your seeming interdict, you have been so excessive, how should we find superlatives to express your carriage, if the Church Government were totally removed? sure no more difference, propriety, nor distinction of person, things, and conditions, should be left amongst us Then if that dream, that Idea of Plato's were made real, did you imagine these noble and conscientious Pilots of this great body would resign their present tranquillity, for the fancies of you, distempered Humorists? nay though they should (animpossible supposition) God himself would preserve some order amongst us, lest the Harmony of Nature should be dissolved by you, and all reduced to the Mother, Chaos. Go therefore with this your conceit to New-England, there convert the Americans from Popery (every thing beside your own opinion is so to you) we hope never to see this confusion of Government, this parity of beings, this annihilation of laws and Magistracy, you bring along with you, received with any thing but laughter and derision in this kingdom. It is true you have some reason & no more to brag of your connivance hitherto; not is it wonderful (that is without a known cause) though you would bear the world in hand, that as your knowledge, so your helps are immediately from heaven: it will be possible to tell you, what angeli ●otores, what great agents have turned the sphere, and racked their heads, if not their consciences (these I know they have, I doubt if those) to advance your ends, for their own; I speak no mysteries now, blindness itself hath gotten eyes to see it. But the never sufficiently admired Parliament by the hand of wisdom and providence will a midst all these distractions pull off your Mask, and having made you visible to the world, either reduce you to a nonentity, or restrain you within the limits of your proper vocations, no more to intermeddle yourselves with Church and state. Do not you too much rejoice over the (perhaps deserved) afflictions of others: If Judgement begin at the house of God, what do you expect? the brim of the Cup may purge, may refine them; the dregs, plague and confound you; and such fierce scourges as yourselves, after their just chastisement, may be (if your proper element can punish you) thrown into the fire.  
That a national Church hath no pattern, no direction in scripture, is false and scandalous; and because no less repugnant to the position of Consistories, then of Bishops, I leave you to their just censures: If you loved peace half so well, as you pretend to love truth, this expression had never dropped from your pen: that olive branch, I am afraid, shall not be brought home to us, while it please God by a mighty wind to abate and dry up your waters.  
You would gladly purge the universities and schools; non amonimium diligentes: this vomitive of yours may be the evacuation of their Learning and livelihoods; I pray God the houses themselves may obtain favour at your religious hands, whose piety extends to the very extirpation of your own enemy knowledge, and a single life; that argues your simplicity, this your wantonness: nor shall you want pretext; this is monastical, that vain philosophy; either paganism, or that which is worse, Popery. But since already, the name of a scholar is no less odious to you, Then that of an academic to Paul the second, and that to know but the titles of schoolmen, and in what language the fathers have written, is for that to be suspected of heresy, for this of superstition. 
— ●ro miserere laborum  
Tantorum, miserere avimi non digna ferentis.   
For generosities sake, envade not your enemy under the cloud, but leave us the title page of two universities, that the after ages may know, we had once religion and civility amongst us.  
You come at the last to a strange position, it is indifferent to you what ever liturgy or Ceremonies or discipline are left to accompany this national government: is this you that told us all these are popish? it is true you did, but it is the imposition you only complain of, let you enjoy your Christian liberty at home in your parlours, and let mahomatism reign in our cathedrals for you; now let your blinded followers themselves judge whether it be prejudice or reason, your malice or its misdeserving hath so inflamed you against the present Church government; give freedom to you, you crave no more; it is therefore not the Crimes of the episcopal office, but because it curbs your passions, your vagaries, that hath stirred your humours against it. if the judicious reader shall take the measure of your whole body by this your foot, he shall find that it is nor your purity but your peevishness is in the issue betwixt us: our camels shall be but gnats to you, if a way may be found to dispense with your obedience, and make you something betwixt a King and a subject; by this outward pulse a man may find the inward motions of your heart, how unequal these are and how this aguish and preternatural heat of yours forespeaks a sweat from my heart; I wish not that of blood.  
You add, that a dangerous error stiffly maintained, is liable to excommunication: I am glad you grant a possibility of error; now there is some hopes you may be instructed since your presumed infallibility permitts you to think, you can think amiss, the acknowledgement of a sickness is the first step to health, but how your excommunication from other Churches and your exempted independent congregations can be soadered together, I profess I understand it not; to me they seem as contradictorious, as independent, & not independent: your heresy divides itself in so many cross ways that it must sometimes thwart, and the more, that your extemporary conclusion, know neither premises nor deliberation.  
In your last words you seem to cast a smile upon the civil power, and give a hail to your Master, by granting that in a reflexive way it may punish the oversights of the s●aternity; but if hypotheca impossibilis aequipollet simpliciter neganti, this is no grant at all, so you speak of such crimes as cannot possible fall upon any of that sanctification, such as the root of apostasy, and the errors derived from hence; nay if they did, such falterers were no more of your society, because you are obliged in conscience to separate from them: so it is then that the Magistrate hath not only no power in Ecclesias●icis (this is to you directly Antichristianism) but in Civilibus, neither to censure any member of your exempted and independent Congregation: this is the Gideon's fleece that must never be of the Common dependence and condition of the rest of the kingdom. See now what necessity his sacred Majesty hath (Unless he would sell all his possession) to buy your pearls to curb this feaster of yours; do not flatter yourselves, his authority and yours cannot breathe under one climate your pretended freedom is wholly incompatible with his due obedience, (Witness these sad eclipses, these late storms, these clouds that yet threaten a tempest) either that, or this, withal loyalty I speak, it is not of God; nor deal you more favourably with Parliaments; how much you regard the power, the integrity of that most honourable Court this your discourse can best give evidence; if you once carried the business, you have professed it, that no Law no statute shall oblige you further than you find convenient to your exempted Congregation. And how have you suited your respects to the better times? that light of redress hath only served to make your jet the blacker: what horrid Monsters, quot Africa non caperet, hath a too favourable beam of toleration, raised out of the mud and clay of your ignorant presumption and drossy wits? how is the pleasant land become a wilderness. 
Infelix lolium & steriles Dominantur avenae;  
Pro molli violâ, pro purpureo Narcisso  
Carduus, & spinis surgit paliurus acutis.   
And why do such bats and owls as you screech about our Churches? enter, you may not for pollution) as if the ruins and desolations of Babel had already seized upon us? the spirits of all good men do already groan under your spiritual Democracy, and do suffer a forehand, when their tenderness represents to them the rubbish (Unless your violence be prevented) of a demolished Church and state; it is true you are of flint, and the politicians of the times who do use you as their stalking-horse from whence to shoot their prey, abundantly furnish tinder, but our prudent King and most careful Parliament shall quench your ignis fatu●s & not suffer you to consume us all to Ashes: you have been spared hitherto either to try the length of your arm how far these your designs would reach, or that the Kingdom had not yet collected itself out of that amazement, which by your sudden irruption as that of many rivers, you had caused: but it is now high time to throw full buckets of water upon your fiery heads, to take the matches from you, and either to send you hence, or prescribe you bounds; lest that the combustible body about you (all are now of Gunpowder) take hold of your sparks, and burn up all to the extermination first of order, than of religion, and last of humanity itself. These are the prayers, and these the fears of all them that with more real sighs and groans, than you, to the hazard of your buttons employ in charming of your hearers, love the prosperity, and long after the peace of Jerusalem.  
FINIS.