A THEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE OF THE LAMB OF GOD AND HIS ENEMIES: Containing a brief Commentary of Christian faith and felicity, together with a detection of old and new Barbarism, now commonly called Martinisme.  
Newly published, both to declare the unfeigned resolution of the writer in these present controversies, and to exercise the faithful subject in godly reverence and dutiful obedience.  
Speak these things, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority, let no man despise thee: saith S. Paul to Titus c. 2. v. 15.  
PATERE ET POTIRE.  
SURSUM  
LONDON Imprinted by john Windet for W.P. Anno. 1590.   

TO THE MOST NOBLE and virtuous Lord, the Lord Robard Devoreux Earl of Essex.  
RIght Honourable my very good Lord, your favourable affection hath been ever so evident and your bountiful hand always so open unto me, that I can never willingly come unto you without some schollerly exercise or other. The readiest at this instant, though perhaps not the fittest altogether is a theological treatise or divinity Discourse upon the chief or rather only point of christian Religion, which I here offer up, if percase your Lordship will at the most favourably admit it into your study, or at least affectionately allow it as one small part of my duty and thankfulness, for which only cause I present it, not in any other respect, even upon former premises heretofore since your Lordship's being in Cambridge to this day, not for any future consequents hereafter, the Book desireth not your special patronage, it is not worthy of so honourable a speciality, neither may I trouble your excellent Lordship with Theological peculiars and proprieties further than as they belong generally to all noble and true Christians; In defending and maintaining the religion of their God, and faith of their country, as the principal ground and very root of all their own politic defence and maintenance. Herein I remember the common voice of scholars and soldiers, of citizens and yeomen, of gentlemen & their betters: That the Noble Earl of Essex is behind none, but afore the rest, ever ready and more forward than the forwardest in Gods battles and his Prince's quarrels with horse and spear to overthrow & overrun God's foes and her enemies, even in their own gates, even in Portugal itself a gallant kingdom & the most venturous place of such enemies, even at their most populous and royal city Lysbon, approving his virtue, with as much and haply more felicity, absit assentationis suspitio, neque enim soleo auribus verba dare, than ever Alexander himself did his valiancy at the city Malla. (Q. Curtius l. 9) never unready with good words and magnificent deeds, to honour his Prince or ennoble his country, when God and Right shall employ him; never unready to help any man, no not any common man, no not with hazarding of his own person in common sight which I trust is guarded with good angels and in truth no hazarding, and now lately by unhorsing himself he mercifully saved a poor wounded soldier from the mouth of the sword, therein equal or somewhat comparable with the foresaid great Alexander in right manly nature and honourable disposition, that so graciously relieved and revived a silly frozen soldier in his own chair at the fire; (Valer. Maximus l. 5. c. 1.) but assuredly even beyond him adsit bonus candour bono lectori, in brooking the rough sea water at Peniche near Nova Lisbona, more easily all day than he did the gentle river Cydnus at Tarsus in Cilicia one half quarter of an hour. (Q. Curtius l. 3.) When I remember these & such Honourable famous reports commonly delivered of my worthy good Lord, among many other men of Superior quality, I am right heartily glad, to see my lot in so fair a ground, as to own duty & thanks to that Noble good Earl, which is so courageous with his years & knowledge and so courteous with his knowledge and years, which more and more increaseth that most excellent opinion ever heretofore conceived of him for moral and martial proceed, which with prosperous & now renowned virtue fretteth envy in pieces & never teareth himself; I pray God He may always with all blessed increase be like himself, that for action is naturally borne All heart of his Noble Father, for Instruction since his death is artificially made All Studious of his careful Tutor, for higher direction & counsel hath made all notable choice, for joyful success will assuredly prove All Happy by Gods divine assistance. But I must not seem long without cause, less I become tedious without effect: Now therefore I most humbly beseech my Noble good Lord, only to receive this little Pamflet for an unfeigned remembrance & infallible proof of my continual duty & thankfulness, desiring no further regard or reward any way, than his Honour in wonted favour shall think good, seeing It is old enough & best at leisure to speak for itself, upon any contingent of confutation or disliking that may ensue. With which duty I daily still and still recommend your virtuous studies & valiant acts, to all good and admirable success, even beyond the impeachment or compass of doubtful and deceitful fortune through the blessed son of God, the blessed lamb of God, our blessed God, our blessed Saviour, to the full fruition of his grace evermore redounding in your worthy and noble mind.  
Your Honours in all bounden duty R. H.   

T.D. Hexasticon, sive gratulatio in Theologicon R.H.  
Cedite sectarum primates, cedite puri,  
Harueius patriae seruiet atque Deo.  
Non curat fatuos, non christomastigas audit  
Non credit placitis principiisque novis.  
Perge, liber, certa ingenii praedictio recti,  
Et patriae, & populo, principibusque place  
Vnio gemmarum Regina.  Mat. c. 9 v. 37, 38. Luke c. 10. v. 2. 
The harvest is great but the labourers are few, pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that he would send more labourers into his harvest.   

A THEOLOGICAL Discourse of the Lamb of God, and his Enemies.  
IF I should reason about the choice of a text, to examine which is most fit for us: then at the first, this joyful and marvelous peace in our days setteth before mine eyes that sentence of Christ in the gospel by S. john c. 13. v. 35. By this all men shall know, that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to an other. And then this whole realm, which no doubt is in high favour with God, for having fed so many zealous confessors and constant martyrs of righteousness, as even some of ourselves may remember, and the godly book of Monuments will ever witness, layeth open unto me this saying of Christ in the gospel after S. Matthew c. 10. v. 39 He that looseth his life for my sake shall save it. These and other good causes of like effect call for other tenors and texts of Scripture. Yet, because peace by long quietness bringeth security in our carnal natures and natural bodies, & security by forgetfulness breedeth a cold or cool faith within us, and cool faith by continuance maketh us stiff and half dead with sin, and altogether unfit to be our own martyrs in affection, or other men's in example; let us, beloved, stir and raise up our fainting souls to a lively & zealous faith, let us good Countrymen, quicken our senseless senses with good words and good works as effects of good faith, that we be not stark dead in sin: and rather seek the salvation both of our souls & senses, that lasteth for ever, than the delight & pleasure of either, that vanisheth away like a smoke, that wasteth like a snail, that withereth like grass, and never continueth in one stay. Then where shall we seek this salvation, but in the book of life? and in which part of that book is it sooner found, then in the gospel the law of grace? & what guide or teacher in the gospel can show us a better pathway, than john-baptist, who was sent from God, as the forerunner of the Christ, saith S. Mark in his gospel, c. 1. v. 2.3. to tell us the way, the truth and life, the eternal word jesus Christ. For jesus is the way, because his doctrine and precept telleth us the right and ready way to everlasting life: jesus is the truth, because without error he may always, and in truth must always be followed in all our judgements and consultations, that we may walk in the light, not in darkness: jesus is the life of our lives, because without him we are as dust in the wind, and straw in the fire, and by him we pass through the greatest difficulties and even the very seas of all deadly dangers and temptations; which S. john speaketh by a metaphor, & metonimy of the effect for the efficient, c. 14. v. 6: in him we pass safely from the first day in the beginning of all, yea & before all measure of times, even unto this day, as S. Augustine writeth largely to Deogratias against Porphyrius in his 49. Epistle. Wherefore in these and other respects, hear and read I beseech you, beloved Christians, what the blessed and right honourable Prophet, that most noble preacher john-baptist hath taught us of jesus Christ in the gospel according to S. john c. 1. v. 29.  The next day john seethe jesus coming to him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. 
This text is short, but sweet and weighty, as the sun in heaven seemeth little, but is great and mighty in operation: all bodies die without the sun, and all souls and bodies perish without the effect of this Scripture. Philosophers think, that the sun and a man maketh a man, but divine philosophy will think & speak and conclude, that this son of God, the sun and light of mankind, maketh and saveth and crowneth man with glory, in that he wipeth out and washeth away the sin of the world: the sun is the heart of heaven, the captain of the stars, the eye of the world: this word is the heart of the Bible, the chief of all words, to which our ears must give ear, and on which our eyes must always look. For in this verse are contained, the laws of Moses and Israel with the prophecies of all prophets both great and small, in that john calleth jesus the lamb of God, and the fruit of the new Testament both in the Evangelists & Apostles springeth and groweth from this ground, in that he is said, to take away the sin of the world. Then was Simplicius but a hellish judge, to count the tales of Egypt and the tables of Moses alike; and Galen was but a profane humorist, and Lacuna his shadow little better, to mislike the creation of man, and misreport the wonders of the red sea ignorantly: then are the Pelagians perverse and miserable disputers, which deny and evacuate the baptism of infants, because Christ alone washeth and purgeth them, like them which would hinder the beginning of a thing, because it shall at last be made perfect, or say, you must not use an instrument because there is a principal, or warm yourself at a fire, because the sun is the chiefest workemaster of heat & warmness. But to let pass all dilating & comparative amplifications of words & sentences, together with other necessary occasions of discourse: Mark, beloved, what is here written with the finger of God & pen of the holy ghost, the next day john seethe jesus coming to him, and saith, and tell me, if ever you heard a more loving, a more gracious and comfortable saying, behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. O bountiful jesus, o sweet Saviour, o merciful anointed of God the Father, what is man that thou art so mindful of him, or the son of man, that thou so regardest him? our bodies are brim full of sin & wickedness, as the stables of oxen & asses overladen and overcharged with dung and filthiness: the goodness of our souls is like a menstruous rag, as Esay witnesseth, c. 64. v. 6. whose word is as an inviolable seal & a sure bond. What is then within us worthy of thy love, o Christ? or what is without us worthy of thy liking, o son of David, o son of God, o sun and light of heaven & earth? we look upon thee with john-baptist, o that we could always look upon thee; we see thee come to us, as did john-baptist, o never turn thy back upon us, but ever come to us & stay with us ever; we rejoice in thy name, that thou art a lamb to us, and a lion of juda to the enemies, that thou dischargest the debts of the righteous and leavest the wicked in the debtbooke, to be arrested and imprisoned, till they have paid the uttermost farthing; we look on thee with joyfulness, o jesus, as infants look upon a light, the wicked see thee with dazzled eyes, as the Sodomites groped in the dark, Genesis c. 19 v. 11; we walk in thy sun-light and are comforted, we are black and sunburnt with walking, we are black, o jesus, but lovely before thee, the wicked are parched with thy beams, thy heat maketh their heads to ache, their hearts to pant, their spirits to fail them, that they may, as it were, call for butter out of a lordly dish, & milk out of a bottle with Sisara, or some other delight which their sensual souls long for, and afterward be nailed to the earth with the hammer of one deceitful jahel or other close enemy in their sleep and security, or come to such like sudden and vile death. And this in effect is the general sum and chief purpose of this text. Of the joyful estate of the godly by seeing Christ, and, The woeful fall of the wicked by turning from him. Now to proceed in the plainer exposition of every portion and particularity of this verse, we see in it both a brief History, and a blessed Doctrine. The History is, that when john saw jesus coming to him, he gave out among the people his judgement of Christ jesus the doctrine is his judgement, that Christ is the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of all men and women, of all maids and children, of all babes and sucklings, which are all saved by grace, by mercy and imputation. Concerning the parts of the history and narration, they are delivered in three circumstances: the time when, the place where, the persons by whom, and to whom, and of whom this sentence is given. The time is the next day after the Inquisitors of the Pharisees had been questioning and arguing with john-baptist. The place is Bethabara beside jordan, where john baptised. The person which gave this holy verdict and ripe judgement is the Baptist, so named of baptizing, who speaketh to the people & his disciples which were at his baptism, that they may learn how to think truly and speak uprightly of jesus Christ. As for the branches of the doctrine, it containeth both the humanity of Christ and his divinity: his humanity appeareth by the title and appellation of a Lamb, which is visible and corporal: his divinity is signified by the effect and office of this propitiatory and satisfactory sacrifice for sin, which is an invisible and spiritual satisfaction conceived only by faith and love. And of these two parts, the one historical, the other doctrinal consisteth the real true matter and essential substance of this text.  
To return to the consideration of the time, some make it uncertain and indefinite, and read thus: On a certain day, or thus, Another day, and because they would seem to be sharply eyed and mystically conceited, they paraphraze and gloze upon it in this order: john signifieth gracious or penitent, as if he were joänan, who in respect of his gracious repentance and repentant grace may rightly be said, not to have seen the face of Christ the first day, but the day following his sorrow is turned into comfort, and he looketh up and seethe his saving health coming unto him, and then, the former day with them shall be the old law, when Christ was absent, the next day must be the new Testament, where Christ is both spiritually and corporally present. Thus it pleaseth those verbal and tropological schoolmen, Nicolaus Lyra, Hugo Cardinalis, Guilielmus Minatensis, and the rest of that sect, to do what they list, without ask leave of God's word, the only and chief square and touchstone of all Divinity. Alas what vain conceits & frivolous imaginations have been grounded and builded upon such disguised allegories and tropological constructions, so far fet and hardly extorted, as a man may sophistically infer Quidlibet ex quolibet, or hypocritically intrude quid pro quo. God knoweth, such fond, absurd and ridiculous allegorizing hath been too highly esteemed & eagerly haunted in former times, but now in such light of the text, such darkness of the gloss is at last worn out with the wisest and learnedst, God be praised; such double taking of simple meaning, such allegorizing without cause, such moralising without effect, such tropological & scholastical dalliance is worthily abolished. Histories are histories and must have an historical interpretation, allegories are but tropes of Rhetoric and continued metaphors, and must not be unnaturally forced or unsatiably conceived, but only artificially and morally resolved, where they are artificially and morally applied. Herein it shall be no audacity in me, but lawful mediocrity, to dissent from Hyperius a man about my age, when he writ his book De Theologo, where he giveth a superest of the use of allegories. L. 2. c. 32. To allegorize when the text allegorizeth, lest we speak vainly and from the purpose, which he termeth necessity that cannot be hindered, this no man of judgement ever doubted, or when the doctrine cannot be profitable without allegorizing, which is all one with the first, or not allowable in that example which he citeth. For when I read the history of jacob the patriarch, how he was deceived by his uncle Laban's words, I learn to take heed, and make no covenant without witnesses, writings, and seals, for more certainty; as God himself did not only promiss a blessing to Noah, but also gave him a token and seal of a rainbow, a fit seal for so almighty a God, Gen. c. 9 v. 13. and so he dealt with Abraham by word, by fire, & smoke. c. 15. v. 17. neither dealt he otherwise with any other of his children at any time, but with his word & his deed. How he took Lia for his bedfellow by night in steed of Rachel, I learn not to admit the bride by dark but by light, seeing the object is now come to sensible proof and past imagination, specially if I be in a strange country as jacob was, where all eyes are few enough; and as blind Isaac would not trust his hearing so much as his feeling, c. 27. v. 21. so I cannot believe my feeling so much as my seeing, specially in an object belonging properly to the eye; How he served Laban seven years more for Rachel, I learn not to forsake one whom I love in heart and honesty, so that by any honest labour and travel I may fulfil my mind, seeing all pains are easy and pleasant to a willing and loving mind; how by laying peeled rods with white streaks in the watering places of the sheep, they brought forth young of party colours, I note that in carnal mixture the senses are opened, and so the conceits greater, and so the fancy stronger, and so forth, as Physicians note the force of fancy in this physical text, neither is Grison or any cavalliere ignorant of this matter, which he and Porta noted in jacobs' life; neither will I ever judge it, as Hyperius doth, a text of deceit, of fond love, of covetousness, without an allegory, seeing men may use their knowledge for their benefit so far as God will bless it: and as for his philosophy Lia, and his divinity Rachel, the comparisons agree not, I count him clean out of the way, saving that he was then in a youthful way by his own report. Was not Lia eldest? philosophy is not. Was not Rachel youngest? divinity is not▪ in which respect the allegory falleth down, seeing the law of God, & the law of Nature are very Gemini of like eternity for beginning & ending: Philosophy in itself is not blear eyed, though her students be so, as Divinity herself is clear eyed, though her professors are sometimes purblind, and herein he faileth of his similitude, seeing in like argument there is like consequence, And he is but a blind Martin in Logic, that sophisticateth from a few to all, from the second coniugate to the first: jacob serveth seven years for Lia, and seven for Rachel; now shall a student take as great pains in Philosophy as in Divinity? or shall he be sure of both after fourteen years labour, whenas neither can be gotten in that time surely, so that a man may be able to say, Habeo, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, I am in full possession, no man can take my right rightly from me? the octonarium of Ramus, and the sesquiamus of Freigius, and the method of Thessalus may well encourage and help forward, but they cannot furnish a man thoroughly, in so much as themselves come short of their promises. Lia had one maid to attend upon her, but Philosophy must have Grammar, Rhetoric, Logic, these three general instruments of all learning at the least: Rachel had but one waiting maid, whereas divinity must have all arts and maids to serve her in her harvest and vintage, as Hyperius and all doctors have decreed: jacob despised Lia in comparison of Rachel, but no wise divine can or will contemn the helps & furtherances of philosophy, that deserve to be loved and regarded for there Ladies and service sake: God made Lia fruitful and Rachel barren, but he never loved philosophy or blessed it more than divinity, and of the two, in his vain, Rachel seemeth to be philosophy rather than Lia: and when the impostures of the world and the flesh which Hyperius calleth Laban, shall at their pleasure have the bestowing of philosophy and divinity, then will Harvey believe his word, that this History hath little or no use in it without an allegory.  
Therefore let those subtle tropological commentators and such conceited scrupulous interpreters say and essay what they will, let them please themselves in there glozing and dreaming, we are to make neither more nor less of a true narration than it is in truth. As for the uncertainty of time, here is a certain time appointed, and the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, and the Latin word Postero die, and our English word are all one signification, unless perhaps some Syriack tongue can do more for them, than Tremellius could, who translateth it The next day, neither can the Carthusianisme of Dyonisius Rikel amend him, a writer most learned, as learning was then accounted, saith Pantaleon.  
For if we remember that the Evangelists are historians, and that the historian ought always definitely to set down the certain times, if he speaketh of times, the certain days where he speaketh of days, the certain years when he speaketh of years, to keep just reckonings in times and seasons, & avoid confusion in annal, in Diaries, in Chronologies, they cannot or dare not say, that this holy history hath strayed aside, which hath in it the warrant of God's spirit, or delivered that after the fashion and phrase of our vulgar fables, On a time there was, once there was, & such rude stuff, which is most artificially & regularly enroled by the wisest artificer & doctor in the whole world: for where is a better and more infallible register then the book of God, the book of books, and therefore by a Synecdoche Generis pro specie named, the Bible, more full of precepts than the turks Alcoran, more certain for doctrine than the jews Thalmud, more religious every way than Abetilis of the Aethiopians or Preto-Ioanans, more divine than all libraries beside? Therefore as the form of an history confuteth this deformed interpretation, so the matter & substance of a history overthroweth their typical exposition▪ for one and the same history is not two histories, as there is one truth, not two truths of one and the same thing, & in this word of their making, the gracious and penitent seethe at last with the eyes of his mind his saviour coming to him, is a general doctrine and note of all mankind, and in this word of God's writing, the next day john seethe jesus coming to him, is a special history and sight of john alone▪ so that unless all men's sight and one man's sight be all one, and but one, this exposition cannot hold, as may otherwise appear by this instance and like comparison. If the text saith, Christ rideth on the foal of an ass: Math. c. 21. v. 5. And these profound clerks say, the godly Christian rideth on humility; If the text saith, Paul shaketh the viper from his hand, Act. c. 28. v. 5. & they say, God's children cast the vice of murder out of their hands, can both these be probable without a simile or a mitigation of the metaphor & parable, seeing that against all logical consequence either of divine or human reason, they set down that for text which is not in the text, & add to God's word, (a damnable & presumptuous sin) & out of a particular report they gather an universal against nature, out of a certain and necessary proposition, a contingent and unnecessary, which is sometimes false against art, as the murdering of the Egyptian by Moses can show for the one, Acts, c. 7. v. 24. and David's vaunting himself in numbering his soldiers for the other. 2. Kings. c. 24. v. 2.10. Then let us leave our own devices, as S. Jerome did his allegorized Abdias in his ripe age, to bring other by his example from their fabulosities and fooleries in weighty and sincere matters of religion, and content ourselves with the holy writ of God, neither mending nor patching that which is sound and perfect, less our mending be marring, and we prove ourselves more witty than wise, nor pull or detract one title from it, as clippers and counterfaiters of that inestimable coin, which in God's church and among God's people ought only to be currant. If the Evangelist writeth, the next day, we must read, the next day: if he saith, john seethe jesus, we must say after him, john seethe jesus, and neither make a day the years of all ages from the creation to the latter day, nor change john and jesus, which are personal and sensible men into accidental and intelligible qualities of penitence and comfort, as it pleaseth those glozing allegorizers and quod-libetaries to descant▪ for the example not the thought of john can do us good; and God send grace, that his example here may be sincerely delivered, attentively read, diligently practised, and constantly maintained both of all hearers and speakers in convenient time.  
Is it not told us, that john-baptist, notwithstanding the judicial apprehension and strait examination of the jews going and running immediately the day before, uttereth boldly his demonstrative profession of Christ? but why doth he hazard himself so confidently and courageously among such as went about so subtly and dangerously to entrap him? because he loved God's message more than he feared man's, a blessed and godly zeal. But the jews will hate him and bring him before their rulers: yet the love of God is above their hatred, he is the rule and ruler of all rulers, a heavenly and undoubted wisdom. But the Pharisees are learned men & will suspect him of vanity in affecting singularity, and accuse him of secret sedition in perverting the discipline of the state, and condemn him for an erroneous and counterfeit messenger of the Messiah, who shall not, they say, come these many years? Yea verily, they say no more than they think, and john will say unto them: he is already come, and this is the promised Messiah which I commend unto you, even I sent from the wilderness, as Esaias hath told you, c. 40. v. 3. and I commend him of conscience uprightly, not of any affection fond and partially; in regard of mine own duty and office, not of any worldly affectation, as you carnally and worldly suppose; I will preach the law, whereof the Lord hath commanded me; Prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths strait. A notable sign of true obedience and harmless simplicity. He is sure to pay the best joint of his body, except he leave to sing this song▪ but neither life, nor death, nor present power, nor any cause shall remove him from the love of God, which he hath in Christ jesus. A resolution no less good, then constant, and therefore reverently and religiously to be resolved of us, according to Gods own truth, not according to man's fancy. Wherefore he telleth them yesterday, and to day, and to morrow, that jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to day, and for ever, and that he must testify this of Christ, to day, and the next day, and for ever, as he did yesterday: for the time of his prophesying was almost at an end, & therefore he would ply his business, while he might, which began in the 15. year of Tiberius Caesar, when Christ began to be about thirty years old, & was finished ere the same whole year was expired Luke c. 3. v. 1, 20, 23. So wonderfully grew the word of God, that in so short a time increased so greatly.  
And albeit the Baptist taught thus freely, & preached thus vehemently and loudly like a crier in the desert, for that was his surname ab officio, yet he did not willingly and wittingly thrust and throw himself into danger, as many hot and unskilful harebrains use to do, & few or no wise godly men ever did, except they were extraordinarily sent from God, as he here was, (for Elias fled from jezabel: 1. King's c. 19 v. 3. and Obadias' hid an hundred prophets of the Lord. 3. King's c. 18. v. 13. and Paul alone fled from Damascus, at a window in a basket, through a wall: 1. Corinth. c. 11. v. 33. then he and Barnabas fled from Iconium to the regions round about Lycaonia: Acts c. 14. v. 6. & Christ himself conveyed himself out of man's company; Luke c. 4 v. 30. for he knew what was in man: and thus it becometh us all to be wise as Serpents, and save our heads from the wounds of death: seeing that by Moses law certain cities were appointed for refuge, to save innocent blood: Deuter. c. 19 v. 9, 10. and by Christ's own rule, when we are persecuted in one city, we must fly into another: Math. c. 10. v, 23.) who being innocent as any dove, & as it were let out of God's ark, to fly into the wide world, could not choose, but bring this Laurel branch, I mean, this divine sentence in his mouth, in token of obedience and zeal, yea though it were the next day after his strait examination, saith Gualther, even in the heat and fury of that jewish tempest, when, after a sort, the raging waves of superstition and a deluge of wilfulness had overflown that blind country, and the surging billets of the Pharisees had risen aloft, to overwhelm him▪ the proverb is well known, Quisquis benigno navigabit numine, Is vel saligno navigabit vimine; who so worketh in God's name shall not miscarry.  
It is not the blindness and frowardness of the jews, it is not their rage or outrage, it is not any imminent or present danger, any persecution, any extremity, or execution, that can terrify john, or stop his mouth: a prophet will be a prophet, an apostle will be an apostle, a good preacher & crier will be a good preacher or crier, whatsoever peril seemeth to threaten him, or howsoever the world frowneth upon him. john will be john, say the Scribes and Pharisees what they will: the Baptist will be the Baptist, do hypocrites, do worldly potentates, do tyrants what they will or can; zeal is not tongue tied for fear; true devotion is not overawed; right godliness respecteth & dreadeth God more than man; it is not misled or disguise upon by occasion; no heat of persecution can exceed or overcome the heat of zeal; he little knoweth, what a prophetical, or evangelical, or christian spirit meaneth, that goeth about to daunt or quail it for fear of punishment: faith is a free-woman, no bondwoman; christian liberty is a brazen wall, an invincible for't, an impregnable castle; fire in the bosom cannot be smothered, it will burst out, it will show itself in the likeness: true zeal is the right fire of the spirit, it cannot, it will not be concealed and smothered, it will out in spite of all the tyrants in earth, yea in despite of all the devils in hell; john hath a prophetical eye to see, and john hath a prophetical ear to hear, & john, say or do the world what it listeth, maugre the malice of the world, will deliver and deliver boldly what he seeth & knoweth. Philosopher's could say, that danger and peril is the object of virtue, and Poets could after their manner consecrate the palm & bay tree: I will not stand to amplify or exaggerate the matter; the truest philosophy teacheth the truest virtue, and the truest virtue lest dreadeth the greatest peril, and all palms in the world will sooner yield than the palm of faith, planted and engraffed in a right christian heart, which seethe and believeth, as john seethe and believeth, and therefore speaketh and crieth boldly, as john speaketh and crieth, even the next day after trouble, even the day and hour before trouble, even the day, and hour, and moment of most present trouble.  
Then if the trumpet soundeth alarm to day, we must to day display our banners, and fight invincible under Christ's banner; if God calleth us four times in one day, as he called Samuel four times in one night. 1. King's c. 3. v. 8. we must arise every time, and go to our God, as he did to Ely, and say, I am here, for thou callest me. Bid us then speak thy truth this day O God; and we will speak thy truth this day. Call us the next day to thee, o Lord, & we will come to thee the next day▪ for if a Centurion saith to his soldier, go, the soldier goeth, if he saith to another come, the other cometh, if he biddeth his servant, do this, his servant doth this, Math. c. 8. v. 9 or else, he that heareth and knoweth his captains will and neglecteth the charge, shall be beaten with many stripes, Luke c. 12. v. 47. or abide the peremptory discipline of Martial law, even present death: but thou art the general in our armies, o king of heaven, thou art our chief captain, o God of Ingland; bid us thy soldiers go, and we will go, God grant, we go and run the way of life; bid us come, and we will come, I pray God, we come not out of the way; command us thy servants to do any thing, and we will do any thing with all our power, and give us after this Battle, which we daily maintain and wage against the devil and his two great Bassas, the world and the flesh: that hire and those wages, that are provided and ready told out for all them, that fight a good fight under thy ensign for thy Church, yesterday in the field, to day in the City, and to morrow in both, till they die to themselves and live to thee; Esai cap. 40. vers. 10: o how happy, how right happy, how only happy are they, which live with thee this day, and the next day, and for ever? Thus much of the circumstance of time, contained in this word, The next day▪ the first part of this history.  
The second part is the circumstance of the Place, where the baptism of john-baptist was celebrated and published among the jews: in which respect and consideration I may reason thus: In matters of greatest importance and weight the manner of historians is, to set down the place of the action and actor, to make their histories credible, seeing all that is done, is done in some place: but the baptism of john is a matter of greatest importance & weight: and therefore the place of the baptism must be named: and so it is named in this chapter, and called Bethabara in the verse going before. Yet chrysostom in his 16. homily upon this gospel, turneth both verses into one, as though it were necessary to join the verse of the place with the verse of the speaker▪ but to omit this grammatical point, of joining & parting verses, S. Jerome in his translation, if that translation be truly fathered upon Jerome, miscalleth the place Bethania▪ for Bethania is not beyond jordan, as this place is said to be, neither is there any other Bethany but one. Suidas inventeth a new place Thabara which is not seen in all that country▪ besides this one proof or rather reproof P. Martyr addeth another sure one, and concludeth, that the place of john's baptism was near unto jordan, but Bethania far from that river, yea & so much farther from the desert where john baptised. Then seeing Bethania is but 15. furlongs, that is, two miles within one furlong southward from jerusalem, as is specified in this gospel. c. 8. v. 18. it cannot be the desert of judaea, which is at the nearest by Stellaes' map 80. furlongs, that is, ten miles eastward from jerusalem, where john-baptist abode: seeing Bethany is on the foreside of the river and Bethabara on the far side, the gloze cannot put the one in the others room, unless it can put twelve miles into one hem; seeing Bethany is the town of Martha and Mary, whether Christ went and lodged, c. 11. v. 1. and Bethabara a plain field beyond jordan, except we turn a field into a town, we must read Bethabara not Bethania, and so doth chrysostom read, so doth Theophilactus read, and so doth Origen read, so do our best old and new doctors read. Wherefore avoiding that old error in Chorography, we rightly name the place of john's baptism Bethabara which is beyond jordan. This place is the common highway and passage from Syria to Palestina by ferry, and therefore a most populous and much frequented place, saith Gualther: this is the place, which the Israëlites went through right over jericho with their puissant & triumphant captain josua, while the water of jordane was miraculously driven backward on the right hand and on the left, and therefore a famous and wonderful place: josua c. 3. v. 16: this is the place, where the inhabitants of mount Ephraim took the princes of the Madianites by the appointment of Gedeon, both Oreb and Zeb, and therefore a victorious and renowned place: judges c. 7. v. 24, 25: a place both for the former excellency and present use most fit for john's baptism, whereby we enter the highway to heaven, in which we tread the path that leadeth us against our spiritual enemies, & by which we overcome the kings of this world, and the chiefest in the ways of the air.  
These and other like causses might be providently foreseen of the Baptist▪ besides these, he knew that he ought to teach his doctrine in the promised and holy land. Luke c. 1. v. 16: that his discipline chief respected the jews, where Christ should come after him: that his cries should be most heard in the desert of judaea: that the more he persuaded the Rabbis of jerusalem, the more his doctrine should prevail, and as it were take root among the people: that the nearer he kept to that famous city in some open place, the further he was from suspicion of corner opinions and schismatical conveyance▪ for heresies being in a sort inward maladies and cankers: 2. Timoth. c. 2. v. 17: go like a sickness from house to house, from door to door: but true religion seeketh no starting holes, saith S. Bernard, and wisdom standeth without, in the high street, in the enterings of the gates, in the tops of high places, saith king Solomon, and lifteth up her voice in the plain of Bethabara. So God sendeth his word, as he giveth other his good benefits, the light of the firmament, the dew of the element, the springs of the waters, the fruits and gifts of nature, and the insitions or grafts of grace are universal and common to men, he openeth his hands and filleth all things with plenty, saith the kingly prophet: Psal. 145. v. 16: And as the Baptist preacheth here in an open & great auditory, so did other saints of God and ambassadors of the Almighty at other times, both to resemble with their whole imitation the property of God, whose cognisance they carried in their hearts, and to make this one good the better by parting and dispensing it among a multitude, for in no place were the acts of the twelve Apostles & the seven Deacons more seen, then in open synagogues and on festival days: Acts c. 2. v. 6. c. 3. v. 6, 7. c. 4. v. 10. c. 5. v. 12. c. 7. v. 2. c. 8. v. 12. etc. the Prophets call the heaven and earth, not one parcel or corner of heaven and earth, to hear their prophecies and instructions: Esai c. 1. v. 2. jerem, c. 6. v. 9 c. 22. v. 29. Michae. c. 1. v. 2. And jeremy again is commanded to cry in the ears of jerusalem, to awake them from their sleep of sin, that all the city may give ear; c. 2. vers. 2. God speaking to Ezechiel, calleth him son of man, as if in him he spoke to all mankind, c. 2. v, 1, 3, 6, 8. etc. Oseas and Amos, and the rest call all the Israëlites, c. 4. v. 1. c. 3. v. 1. jonas is sent to all Ninive, c. 1. v. 2. other men of God call upon whole towns, whole provinces, all nations at once. joel c. 1. v. 2. Abdias v. 1. Nahum c. 1. v. 15. Sophony c. 2. v. 1, 4, etc. Zachary c. 2. v. 7. God giveth his law in the open face of mount Sinai. Exod. cap. 19 v. 16. Christ when he taught the eight beatitudes went up to a mountain. Math. c. 5. v. 1. a city that is set on a hill cannot be hid; a candle must be set on a candlestick, to give light to all that are in the house; ye are the light of the world; ye are the salt of the earth; let your light shine before men; hide not your talon in a napkin; lay not your treasure up in the earth; all things are created for man's use; let God's water run over God's land and stop not the fountains; deal thy goods among the needy; hoard not up thy corn in time of need; he is my neighbour that doth me good, though he dwell in Samaria; love the godly for his virtue, & the wicked, to win him to God that made him; while we live, let us do for all men; and this communion we all acknowledge both evening and morning in our Creed and Lords prayer, whereas in the one we believe the communion of saints, which is, with one mind and agreement in mutual concord to serve God in hearing his word and receiving his Sacraments, and in the other, when we call God our Father, and pray him to forgive us our sins, to give us our daily bread, to deliver us from evil, not to suffer us to be tempted, praying every one for the whole catholic church of God, not each one for himself. For, if the ungodly join together to strengthen themselves, much more ought the righteous to be one heart; and if the Macedonians see before them a hill full of enemies, that seem big and terrible a far of, they will be in a readiness for them all together, and though in proof they find them to be but apes of Imaus, yet they will remember to go together much more than those apes; and if Nabuchodonosor the king of confusion willed his herald to cry aloud: be it known unto you, o people, nations, and languages, nobles, princes, judges, dukes, counsellors, receivers, officers, and all the governors of the provinces, that when ye hear all the instruments of music, ye fall down and worship the golden image in the plain of Dura. Daniel c. 3. v. 1, 4. than shall the Baptist sent from the Emperor of the world, to whom all the earth is as a pin's point or moat in the sun, take the voice of all waters, of all thunders, of all earthquakes, of all winds, of all trumpets, of all voices, and speak to all the plain of Bethabara, to all the hills of Canaan, to all the birds of Asia, to all the trees of Europe, to all the beasts of afric, to all the fishes of America, to all reasonable and unreasonable men, to all godly Christians & ungodly Pagans: Attend all ye countries, kingdoms and empires of the wide world, attend likewise ye principalities celestial, that when ye hear the voice of God's Ambassador in the desert, or out of the desert, ye fall down prostrate upon your faces, and with every inward and outward part of mind and body, reverence, magnify, and adore this pure and undefiled Sacrament of Baptism, ordained of God, and ministered first by me, and worship this Christ, the visible image of the invisible God, which is able to save you, and ready to crown you in the day of his great visitation. But confounded be all they, that worship and fall down to carved or molten images, and delight in vain Gods, worship him all ye Gods. Delphos shall be as Sodom, and Dodona as Gomorra, the brains of Chaldees shall become rotten, and all juggling of the East shallbe forced to cry out with Thamus the Egyptian pilot, Pan is dead, and Satan is dead, and the lively gospel of jesus is preached to the jew and Gentile, to the bond and free in this time of grace and peace.  
This might be the voice of john-baptist in the wilderness, and in effect this was the message of God's crier in Bethabara, whether any one may come, and pay no money for coming in, where all may hear without loss of time, and get endless and unspeakable treasure for going only for it, the way is plain, the passage is not stopped, Bethabara is the joy and hope of sinners, it is a common for all women's children to come to, for all children's children to abide in, and be fed with the bread of life which is better than Manna, and drink the water of everlasting life. Then let all come from the North climates and the South to be baptised, let all gather themselves together which dwell in the East & the West, to be purified in Baptism, not only with the baptism of john with water to repentance, but with Christ's baptism with the Holy-ghost and with fire to immortality. So they shall revive that were dead in sin, they shall be graffed into the true olive, which were wild branches, they shallbe freemen of God, that were bondslaves of the devil, they shall be endued with all goodness, which were imbrued with all naughtiness; so good is our God that shutteth no man out of doors which waiteth on him, so loving is our Lord, which refuseth none such as are ready with their oil of good works and lamps of good faith burning in their hands and hearts prepared. 2. Peter c. 1. v. 5, 10.  
Now, beloved, is any one of us unwilling to go, where we may go so easily and so pleasantly? where we may abide so safely and happily? the dull ass, even the ass which is so dull will run through thin and thick, through water and fire, to save her young foals, saith Pliny l. 8. c. 43. and shall not God's people and pupils be quicker in love then a dull ass to save their own lives and souls? If john had baptised in the midst of the fiery and sulphurous lake Asphaltites, or in the noisome dungeon of Panium, from whence the river jordan floweth, as the latest Hydrographers have judged, Sabel. Ennead. 1. l. 2. and Munster l. 5. Cosmogra. neither the heat of the one, nor the smell of the other should have scared us at all: and shall we for shame not gird up our loins and speed us apace to so open a place as Bethabara is? O come unto me all ye that are black and red with sin, saith the spirit of john, and I will purify you, as Naaman was cleansed of his snow white leprosy with washing himself obediently (after a proud pause) seven times in jordan. 4. King's c. 5. v. 14. O Christ, we come to thee in our baptism, by thee we cast of our old skin and old man in baptism, o son of God, even as Naaman washed of his foulness in jordan, therein prefiguring our holy christening▪ therefore, as that river jor and that river Dan concur and join both together in jordan, and make the stream bigger, so we beseech thee that both the powers of our bodies and the powers of our souls may by spiritual infusion of thy grace come together in thy holy sacrament of baptism, and each of them help other in faith, the one as instrumental, the other as principal, and increase it greatly in abundance of godly works▪ and because such is our corruption, that we are all over dead flesh and fainting spirit, give us in mercy that grace for thine own names sake, as may not be hindered with the lusts of our fleshly natures, but pass freely and flow plentifully in all our actions, as the river jordan runneth through those miry lakes Samachonitis and Senezar, and yet remaineth undefiled at Bethabara, though it mingled itself before with defiled waters, (a parable of a regenerate man) it findeth the laudable water again which was missing for a time, it riseth & runneth from the corruption whereby it stayed a time, & it breaketh company with those infected fens, and never feareth the words of Solinus, of Sigonius, or any other controller any more, being now a perfect convert in Bethabara, and now by Gods will not the worse for that former ill company and neighbourhood. O Lord our governor, how excellent and wonderful are thy works in all the world? Psalm. 8. even the God of Israel, he shall give power & strength unto his children; blessed be God. Psal. 68 yea if they walk through the valley of the shadow of death, & seem to die, as a shadow looketh like a body, yet will they fear no evil. Psal. 23. for every valley shall be exalted. Esai c. 40. v. 4. Much might be spoken comparatively of this river, to the comfort of sinful and miserable men; but it is sufficient here, to note in a word, that the farthest side of this river from jerusalem, is named a place beyond jordan▪ so the Evangelist writeth by a prosopopoea in the person of one dwelling in jerusalem, and in his own person abiding at Ephesus, when he wrote this gospel, and accounting contrariwise the bank of the river which is nighest the city before jordan, because they of jerusalem and of the West countries went over and beyond jordan to john's baptism. Thus much of the circumstance of place, the second part of this history.  
The third part is the circumstance of the person here mentioned; and is either judging and judged, or hearing and standing by the judgement is given by john, it is given of jesus, and received of the jews, which stand about him▪ of john it is written, he seethe jesus; of jesus it is said, he cometh to john; and of john it is said, he said to his disciples, and the rest▪ so that the whole assembly in Bethabara, and all other which heard his saying ever since that day to this, or shall hear it to the world's end, were, and are, and must be auditors of the Baptist, and witnesses of his blessed word. In the sight or object of john, as it is here set down, two considerations are worthy the marking: one is, the phrase of speech, the other is, the certainty of the history: for nothing is more certain in actions than that which is seen, neither am I so sure of that which I know by another, as of that I know of myself. Pluris est oculatus testis unus quàm auriti decem, Qui audiunt audita dicunt, qui vident planè sciunt, saith Plautus in his Truculentus against those bragger's which will be credited by telling of warly acts that they never saw, among them that are as wise as themselves; though Apuleius in the entrance of his Florida would turn that sentence another way, and make one ear worth ten eyes, in discerning a man's wit more by hearing him speak, then by seeing him move, because Socrates said to one, Speak man, that I may see what thou art; yet hear to the ear borroweth of the eye his word of knowledge and certainty, and I warrant them both, they trusted their own experience more than other men's; and with this certainty S. john approveth his doctrine. 1. Epist. c. 1. v. 1, 2, 3. and thus doth S. Peter reason for himself. Acts c. 4. v. 20. and thus in questioning de facto no better answer then, I saw it: so Dares Phrygius a Trojan of Antenor's faction is more credible than Homeronida made about 280. years after the war: so that Autopsia of Dioscorides is more credited than Pliny's great Acroamaticals: and Sallust writeth the more effectually of Numidian wars between jugurth & the Romans, because he had travailed the country and viewed the places of their conflicts: and to omit Thucydides, Caesar, and other which did the like, S. Jerome writeth to Rogatian, that he went to jury and walked through it, that he might more easily perceive the Acts of the Bible in a surer sort, according to that ancient rule; without eyes we can have no Chorography, or Chronology, and without these two History is stone blind being properly named of seeing, which the greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. The phrase hath it in an enallage or exchange of time, by putting the present time for the time past, (for this was not written when john saw jesus, but threescore years afterward at the least) john seethe, videt, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉; which propriety and idiom hath a great and lively grace in a history, while we suppose that to be in present doing which is already done and passed▪ it is a man's nature commonly, to mark and perceive things presently object to our senses with more integrity & less doubtfulness, then either to remember things overpassed, or foresee things to come, even as the functions & duties of the body are more easily performed then the duties and offices of the mind. Thus it pleaseth the spirit, to apply his phrase to our capacity in this text and many other, and chief to descend in matters of knowledge and of faith, in attributing members and affections and actions unto God, in describing the joys of heaven, and the pains of hell, as all doctoral Fathers write, and as it appeareth in all art and reason; less if he should ascend and speak proportionately to the immeasurable proportion of his wisdom, we could no better understand his own proper phrase, than these our eyes can look into the sun: as a good and gracious prince will talk plainly and simply with his plain and simple subjects, and a loving teacher perspicuously to his young scholars.  
Concerning the use of the history, john first seethe and then saith what he ought to say, To teach us, not to speak at adventure whatsoever cometh to the tongues end, but to tread and try our ground circumspectly, & do that we ought in reason and right, not what we list in affection & dalliance▪ let thy eyelids direct thy ways before thee: Prover. c. 4. v. 25. the wise man's eyes are in his head, saith the Preacher, c. 2. v. 14. Look with john-baptist and then speak with john-baptist, unless you will spreaken you cannot tell what, and be like those mighty new wits, that would be doctors of the law, and yet understand not what they speak, neither whereof they affirm. 1. Timot. c. 1. v. 7. but have erred from all law of religion and honesty, and are turned unto vain jangling and even very piperly scurrility; like that cursed Cham, from whom all wicked sects began, or worse than he toward their reverend Fathers and spiritual Lords, delighting to see and lay that naked, which blessed Sem and good japhet in all modesty desire to cover from their own and others eyes: Genes. c. 9 v. 22, 23. Of which kind of creatures those inward cynaedi, S. Paul warneth all godly christians; and not unlike those loathsome mannermongers, that count it fineness to note filthiness, and thinking others senses worse than their own, will not stick to say, look here, smell there, foh, feel or see I pray, did you ever know the like? whereas they should say, smell not unto it, look not on it, or rather not once note it; of which thankless remembrancers and needless inquisitors their good master Galateo biddeth them in the authority of his greyheaded courtiership not to take example, like hogs that run from the herbs to a new muckhill, for fear of breeding offence to no purpose: as I would be sorry to breed disliking in any elderly, learned, well spoken man, be it Aretius' probl. theol. de Matrimonio. or Bishop Ponet. c. 6. of his Apolog. or other his friends, for naming the author that here saith well, and elsewhere perhaps amiss.  
Then see and touch with Thomas the apostle, and then believe with Thomas the apostle, who was so ready and resolute, to go & die with Christ his Lord; john c. 11 v. 16. and yet too would provide to stand on a sure ground when time was for all that resolution, and then became more incredulous and scrupulous than other in his happy foresight, until he had a manifest answer in seeing and touching, which might stop all Antichristian objections in latest times. Many have desired, to see and touch Christ in the flesh, to see their intelligible felicity in sensible proof, as namely S. Augustine did, like a good hearty subject, that wisheth to see the Prince of his country, of whom all good men speak, and himself thinks most honourably: yet blessed are all such, as speak, and believe, and have not seen; john c. 20. v. 29. the rather, because they which report this unto them, report no more than they have seen and heard, Acts c. 4. v. 20. The Apostles eyes were the eyes of Christians, God grant our eyes may be as clear and steady as their eyes were: their ears were our ears, o that we could shut them from vanity and open them to verity, as they did; that the word of Esai be not found in us; they shall see with their eyes, and not perceive, they shall hear with their ears, and not understand, c. 6. v. 9 but that first we may see him, and then like him, and then love him, and then know him within & without, Intus & in cute, his deity and humanity, and convey the image of his countenance into our hearts by the most quick and hot spirit of his word and law, that our veins and marrow, and so consequently by them all other parts may be fired and inflamed with this light of man, & Morning star, and Sun of the day, & lodestar always, even jesus Christ, and make us in colour and nature like to himself, as one neighbour grape taketh colour of another, God being the husbandman, and Christ the vine, and Christians the branches, and their works the grapes, Vuaque conspecta livorem traxit ab vua, saith Juvenal. Satyra. 2. The ghostly and bodily forefathers desired to see this day, and they lived and died in this hope: Luke c. 10. v. 24. the prophets foresaw his coming, both Esai c. 2. & 7. & 9 & 11. & 35. & 42. & 49. & 53. & 60. & 65. and also jeremy c. 31. v. 33. c. 32. v. 40. c. 33. v. 20. and other: and they which go afore him, cry and say, Hosanna, thou son of David, blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord, hosanna, thou which art in the high heavens: Mark. c. 11. v. 9, 10. and all such as are true in heart, shall be glad, and say, Save us we beseech thee, O praise the Lord, Hosanna, Alleluïa. Thus was blind Bartimaeus glad, to hear him, by whom he might receive his sight, and by and by he saw the light of heaven. Mark. c. 10. v. 49, 52. thus was Simeon glad and willing to die, when he had seen this salvation and consolation of Israel, which was prepared to be the glory of all people. Luke c. 2. v. 30. Thus the angel of the Lord bade the sheephards' go to Bethleem, and see their Saviour, & with him an army of heavenly soldiers that praised God & said, Glory to God in heaven, and peace in earth, & goodwill toward men, so notably they were stirred up and even ravished with this blessed sight, v. 12, 13. thus the wisemen of the East, even where all men are of quick and winged wits as Herodianus judgeth lib. 1. and most of all other, the wisemen selected from the rest, with great wonder saw the star of Christ, which was never seen in their Vranoscopies before, and went even from Persia to Bethleem, to see himself more divine than the star, not caring for all those parasanges & furlongs that were between their own country and judaea, but still and still feeding upon their heavenly meditation, at last came unto him, and worshipped him with joy and gladness, with their miters in their left hands, and their presentments of gold, of myrrh, and of frankincense in their right, Myrrham homo, rex aurum, suscipe thura deus, saith Claudian in his Epigrams. O man take myrrh, o king take gold, o God take incense. Math. c. 2. v. 2. Thus the famous queen of Saba, and all the world in those days came from far countries to hear the wisdom of Solomon. 1. King's c. 10. v. 1, 2, 24. and behold a greater than Solomon is now in Bethabara. Thus jacob the son of Isaac saw a ladder stand upon the earth, the top whereof did reach to heaven, and he called that place the gate of heaven. Gen. c. 28. v. 12, 17. but we see not in a vision, as he did, we see in the noon day the son of the highest before us, we see apparently the son of God before our eyes, Cuius aspectus decens, saith Solomon in his Song. c. 2. v. 14. and whose aspect is more happy, may England say, than all the trines, and sextiles, and conjunctions, and fortunate aspects of the benevolent stars.  
To be brief, in this one word, seethe, is the fond and fantastical heresy of Marchion with the heresy of Manes, manifestly overturned and condemned for ever, of which two, Marchion thought Christ's body a fantastical one, that is, like such bodies, as we seem to see in our sleep, which are but thoughts: Epiphanius haer. 42. l. 1. tomo. 3. The other as fanatically imagined his body to be airy and ethereal: Haeresi. 66. l. 2. tomo. 2. But because his body was visible flesh, and he did eat visibly, and hunger, and thirst, and suffer on the cross sensibly, it is senseless madness, and mad imagination, to account it cogitative or aëry, neither of which two can be seen with eyes of flesh.  
Thus much of the first person john-baptist who seethe jesus, and beholdeth him joyfully, and is no less glad, to see his bodily presence now, than he was to hear the voice of Mary Christ's mother, when he leapt for joy extraordinarily & moved strangely in Elisabeths' womb long before. Luke c. 1. v. 41. a wonderful and most rare work of almighty God, that an embryo of six months old should express the affection and passion of joy, and leap for joy in his mother's womb; not all the wisemen between Indus and Nilus could then match this example with the like. But, as he then rejoiced like an infant in leaping, so he now showeth his gladness like a man in speaking; as before, mutus etiam Christum loquebatur, saith Brentius, so now, ignotus ignotum de facie monstrat digito, saith another upon that text▪ two most notable and excellent miracles in john-baptist, which never before, nor since that day were known by any other▪ we cannot judge of him, whom we never saw, as he did; we must hope the best in Christ jesus, we must believe, and unfeignedly believe in him, & look for the chiefest sight of sights, by his, and in his, and through his means; the sight of his wonderful divinity, the sight of his glorious majesty, the sight of his everlasting and most sovereign throne, the sight of his high court in heaven, and the light of the highest heaven, a sight that maketh us contemn and refuse all other sights, a sight in comparison whereof all sights beside are but vanities and follies, yea triumphs, amphitheatres, and coronations, and all the pictures and dies of May and june, are but very gays and gugawes, but very dust and mist in our eyes. See to this sight, beloved brethren, have an eye, have a daily eye to this sight, let other vain and momentany sights pass by as fast as they come by; look into heaven with S. Steven, and look upon Christ jesus sitting on his Father's right hand with S. Steven. Acts c. 7. v. 55, 56. and because his bodily presence cannot be had, we must see him & behold him with our spiritual eyes most intentively & speculatively, exceeding that Platonical Phrontistes without comparison, by looking on him with the eyes of true love, true faith, and true zeal, both now & ever lifting up our hearts above all visibles in the earth and in the skies, being carried upon the wings of prayer, of angels, of christian persuasion: and then see how our God almighty sitteth most gloriously in unspeakable majesty above the starry heavens, and worship him accordingly; see how our Saviour almerciful in his most effectual divine eloquence pleadeth for us before the tribunal seat of God, & worship him accordingly: see how innumerable and infinite millions of Angels in all humility and reverence await and attend upon him, and worship him accordingly, even with reverend fear of so holy a temple and judgement place; see, how on every side seats are built up from the beginning for the blessed children of God the father, and labour to enjoy one of those happy seats in God's kingdom: see, how all things beneath here tremble & prostrate themselves before this throne of heaven, and desire day and night, hours and minutes of hours, desire with fervent prayer and faithful works of the spirit, pray in season and out of season, at all times, no time amiss, that we may see & continually see the sanctification of Christ's name in heaven, see his kingdom come in heaven, see his will done in heaven, as we have seen these three in earth, and enjoy that kingdom of kingdoms, that power of powers, that glory of glories for ever and ever.  
The second person named here is jesus, who cometh from Galily the lower. Math. c. 3. v. 13. from the city Nazareth, Mark. c. 1. v. 9 his own city. Luke c. 2. v. 39 where he dwelled. Math. c. 2. v. 23. whereby he was called a Nazarite of his friends in his life, & of his foes upon the cross. In which respect without king Hyrams' leave and Nathanaels' too, we may rightly call it Galily, by a fairer name than Cabul is, and say boldly, that all our good without any question cometh from Nazareth, and that all tongues of the Phaenicians cannot make Galily sound displeasantly in christian ears. 3. King's c. 9 v. 13. Then whither is thy best prophet gone, o Nazareth? whither is thy best beloved saviour gone, o region of Galily? whither is thy mightiest prince gone, o Zabulon, which canst handle the pen of a writer? are not these things noted and registered in thy book? He is gone by mount Tabor, he is gone over the river Chison, & it is like he is passed by Salem into the tribe of Reuben beyond jordan, to go to the meek, to the poor in spirit, to the peacemaker in the valley of Bethabara between jordan and the river Arnen, the meek john-baptist, even the greatest & least among women's children. Arise Zabulon and wait upon him, and thou Isachar prepare thyself and follow him, ye Samaritans & Rubenites give your attendance, and all ye states of all cities rejoice in the strength of your salvation, but specially let Benjamin and juda go forth and welcome him that is the perfection of your rulers and kings, make hast ye citizens of jerusalem, and strew olive branches in the way, for all virtues, all wisdom and happiness accompanieth him: let little Zachee climb up into the trees, and see him a far of, and let all christian souls rejoice at his coming, as it were the cheerful rising of the warm bright sun after a long stormy and dark winter night. The Atheists see him come, & bid him stand back, the Papists see him come and turn their backs, all men see him and they look aside, unless they be the little flock, for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the world and his people with the truth. What? but cometh jesus and saith not one word to his people in so great a company? Yea verily, he openeth his mouth to speak all the way, his lips drop like honey combs, milk and honey are under his tongue, his talk is comely, his pace stayed and soft, his hands are spread abroad like the curtains of Solomon: and to the weldisposed mind he saith comfortably, I come to thee and bless thee, Exod. c. 20. v. 24. to the faithful heart he speaketh mildly, Come and see the works of the Lord, Psal. 46. v. 8. to the elect people he crieth out strongly, Behold your redeemer cometh, Esai c. 62. v. 11. to the poor Publican and wretched sinner he calleth aloud, Come to me all that be weary and laden. Math. c. 11. v. 28. and to all mankind he saith generally, All that have any zeal, come after me. 1. Macha. c. 2. v. 27. Then let us all, for we are all sinners, let us answer him with one heart & voice, thy kingdom come, even so Lord jesus come quickly, come upon the wings of the wind betimes, that we may the longer behold thee, come into thy garden, and gather myrrh with spice, and look to thy vine: even so my God make no long tarrying, even so Lord jesus come speedily and tarry not. Behold he is coming, saith john, I see him, and now he is even come, see you to it, and behold, seeing I have preached him many a time, and have now almost made an end of baptism▪ then why was this time chief appointed for his coming? that john's judgement of him, whom he had not seen before that day, the one dwelling with carpenters, as the pure sunshine is otherwhile in a corner, the other in the wild desert, might not seem to proceed of kindred or acquaintance, saith Musculus, but from the integrity of a sincere mind?  
But, to what end and purpose should Christ come to john, whose work was the baptism of repentance and remission sins? shall he come to be baptised, whose pureness exceeded the purity of all Sacraments? though by doctrine he should not come, and be taught, as it were his own book, yet by discipline he vouchsafed to come to baptism in his manhood, as he allowed circumcision in his childhood. Luke c. 2. v. 21. and upon this consideration the Baptist saith unto him; I had need to be baptised of thee, and comest thou to me? but jesus answered, by the reason of permission, not of duty: suffer me now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness, & though it be not necessary, yet is it requisite for me to be baptised, seeing this is one rule of divine justice, and I must not break mine own rule: beside it is my father's will, that in this time of my humiliation with men I should be wholly like one of my brethren, and because the Father and I are both one, his will and mine are both one. For if john which came from God alloweth baptism, how can I the Son of God disallow it? if I cannot mislike it, then is it verily a good and godly institution▪ if it be good, what should hinder me from receiving it? and therefore marvel not, if I come for baptism, else what might the people say? Can he bid us do any thing, that himself can not do? shall we take that which our teacher refuseth? thus the people is slender and tender in faith, it is movable and removable, it maketh every straw a block, it is offended with smallest things, and that they may not conceive any thing amiss, I am come to this baptism, & thus it is fit for me, to fulfil this righteousness. Math. c. 3. v. 14.15. How can we hear these words of our Saviour and not mark them diligently for their truth? how can we mark them, & not examine them fully for our instruction? how can we examine them, and not learn these lessons duly for our actions, even lessons taken from Christ's own example, the surest precept of all precepts, the true prince and prelate and precedent ever of all examples? For, if jesus who was john's good Lord and master, and john by his own confession not worthy to unlatch his shoe, disdained not the order of his servant john, as afterward he humbled himself unto his Apostles, c. 13. v. 13. Where nevertheless he pronounceth himself to be their Lord, not with desire of glory and insolency, but of edifying and instructing them, saith Musculus (for the authority and reverence of Lordship is one furtherance to persuasion) what a worthy Caveat is this for all christians, if they will deserve the name of Christians? not to think scorn of taking good by any Christians their inferiors▪ are inferiors not so wise as they? neither was john so wise as jesus very wisdom itself▪ are inferiors poorer than they even? so was john poorer than jesus▪ are inferiors less gracious than they? this pre-eminence of favour & all other had Christ of john, and yet is he content and willing to submit himself to the participation of john's baptism, as princes receive the ministry of their ecclesiastical subjects, because it is the appointment of God whereunto they likewise are subject with their ministers. If Christ equal with God humbled himself thus unto his servant john, what exceeding great humility must we use toward God almighty the great Lord of all? when as both our duties bind us to his Statutes, and the least neglect of them is a grievous hindrance and stumbling block to the weak ones, to breed a misliking in us, or a suspicion in themselves. Thus it seemeth good to our gracious & merciful Messiah, to teach us the ways wherein we must walk, to set a lantern by our paths, and to guide our feet into the way of peace and meekness. God grant, this proverb may be heard in our dwellings, such a saviour, such saved, such a prince such people, as the Lord Christ is, so are the servants of his family, that we may be like him in charity, in faith, & humility▪ charity with truth, not with falsehood; faith with the godly, not the wicked; humility with God's chosen and anointed people, not with the reprobate scorners and Mammonistes of the world. Seethe no stones; wash no nigroes; cast not pearl to beasts. So not only the prophet's foresight shall be verified in his coming, not only the Evangelists history will prove him to be come, but the very expressed image and resemblance of his virtues & graces in his scholars and professors will conclude, That he is come to keep with us and keep us, to feed among us and feed us, never to forsake us in this life, or in the life to come. Where then may the jews sentence appear but in the court of untruth? where ought it to abide but in the synagogue of all abomination? which of their faces can freely show itself without shame? what Rabbin of their schools dare once put forth his head and say? that Christ is not come▪ or if the stiff-necked jew, or other jewish proselyte will once say thus much, to try us, let us pass by the reasons of Athanasius in his book of the Incarnation, & such other treatises of like end and effect, and look into the gospel of S. Matthew, the gospel of God, and from the 11. c. v. 5. bring this infallible reason and proof against him: By whose power the blind see, the lame go, the deaf hear, and other diseases are healed, and the gospel it preached to the poor, he is the true Messiah; But by the powerful words of jesus the blind see, the lame go, the deaf hear, and other diseases are healed, and the gospel is preached to the poor; Ergo, jesus is the true Messiah, neither can we justly look for any other. Concerning the proposition, or prophecy of Esay, c. 35. v. 5, 6. it must need be true in both parts, because it came from God himself, as may evidently appear by the distance of time between him and Christ. No man could tell afore by any possible art of men, what should come to pass 800. years after, unless he had withal been supernaturally and incomprehensibly inflamed and informed by the divine influence and breath of God's holy spirit. As prognostical sciences may foresee, and stand upon probable grounds & necessary too sometimes, so God can by his omnipotency turn the adiwant & mediate causes as he turneth the waters in the south, & hath the hearts and thoughts of kings, and governance of all things in his hand, to throw them at his pleasure on every side, yea and overthrow them, when he thinketh best, ever still holding his word upright & making it infallible as himself. So that not all the impudent lies of Mecha, Mahomet's country, or of Medina Talnabi the place of his Sepulchre, not all the magical feats of other men reckoned in Picus Mirandula, in Cardane and other such, can once prevail against this argument, seeing that as some men in physic have wrought some like cures, yet never any one performed them with a word of his mouth only, as our Messiah did in most wonderful manner incomparably, whereupon that old proverbial verse was rightly made: 
Christus vim verbis, vim gemmis, vim dedit herbis,  
Verbis maiorem, gemmis herbísque minorem.  Christ gave a power to the stone and the flower in works of physic, but his almighty word is more powerable than all herbs and stones. And this is one of the three corner stones of our building and faith▪ for that antichristian fabulous report of Vespasians miraculous cure is but a dreaming devise in honour of the idol Serapis, it is answered in itself, and even judged by the authors Suetonius own words, a very toy: vix fides, & ne auderet, & tentavit, by the words of Tacitus, irrideri, & aspernari, & metuere, or a delusion of Satan the fire of deceits, like that in pharao's Magicians, Exod. c. 7. v. 11. and that in the counterfeit crank at Saint Albon in Hartfordshire, deluding many with feigned woonderments, till Humphrey the good Duke of Gloucester descried him; neither doubt I, but that Cythraeus Mone-alethia of Suetonius is most false herein; and the rather, because Tacitus in his 20. lib. Annal. as forward and more hot in Antichristianisme then Suetonius, telleth the strange healing of one man blind, and another withered of one hand, by Vespasian, but Suetonius of a blind body and a lame of one leg; neither doth his manu aeger, and this debili crure agree better, or prevail more with an advised Reader, for trusting their report, which beside disagreeth with itself in the agent, not only in the patients, while Suetonius saith nicely, how he healed the leg with an only touch of his heel, calce contingere, but Tacitus grossly, with stepping and treading upon it, pede & vestigio calcaretur, than the witness of the two false Elders against Susanna, prevailed with Daniel & the Israëlites, when one Elder accused her of whoredom committed in her garden under a Lentisk tree, the other telling the same tale, answered, that she lay with the young man under a Myrtle tree, and by dissenting from themselves, were judged to die the death which was appointed for her, and were justly stoned.  
To leave this common place of comparisons, the second proof and groundwork may be squared and fastened in this sort: That the Prophets' word foretelleth, which is Gods own word, when it proveth true, must be reverenced as the truth: for God is only true, and in him is no manner or shadow of falsehood. But the Prophet's word foretelleth which is Gods own word, that the Messiah shall come within a time appointed, & this proveth true: for Daniel c. 9 v. 25, 26. writeth thus: After 69. weeks, that is, 483. years, the Messiah shall be cut off; reckoning a week not of seven days, but of seven years, as it is used in Genesis, c. 19 v. 27. and in Leviticus more plainly, c. 25. v. 8. in which time thus definitely appointed, & shortly after, Christ came in the flesh, and lived & died in the flesh, as is easily proved in this or the like computation: from the second year of Darius Longimanus, when the king's commandment went forth, to bring again the people, and to build jerusalem, Esdras c. 4. v. 24. Agge. c. 1. v. 1. to the beginning of Alexander's Monarchy were 144. years, according to the account of Metasthenes the Persian: & from the beginning of Alexander's reign to the incarnation of Christ were 309. years, by the judgement of josephus; and from Christ's incarnation to his baptism, were about 30. years, c. 2. v. 23. of S. Luke. so in all, from the prophecy of Daniel to Christ's baptism, are 483. years, after which time, for by the text it must be after, not then, as some great Clerks have judged amiss, Christ was cut off from his people, and suffered death upon the cross: Therefore Christ's coming in a time appointed, must be reverenced for a truth; and unless the jews will obstinately and perversely, both against their own knowledge and conscience, resist the authority of truth in this agreement of daniel's weeks & Christ's years, which is invincible, they must by force of all reason be constrained, even against their selfe-willes, with shame and confusion to confess & acknowledge, that their, and our, and the world's Messiah is come in the flesh. For who cannot see that this prophecy of Daniel is most infallibly true in the effect, seeing Christ lived and died among men in the compass of the years of this divine prophesy, in some sort prefigured by jeremias 70. years, c. 29. v. 10. After which time God promised delivery to his people, and not unfitly resembled by our sunday called septuagesima, which is about 70. days before the passion of Christ the true Easter Lamb, after which passion we were delivered from bondage.  
Besides these two apparent proofs there is a third, which for truth may go with the first: and is grounded upon the foundation of Gods own word, Genes. c. 49. v. 10. and spoken by jacob to his sons upon his deathbed, where wonderful words are heard otherwhile: When the Sceptre shall be taken from juda, than the Shiloh cometh, and bringeth all felicity in his name and acts: But at Christ's coming the Sceptre was taken from juda, and given by the Lords Romans to Herod a Proselyte, who vexed them, and slew them most grievously 30. years before his coming, abrogated their laws, made them woeful and miserable captives, so that a man could not say, the Sceptre of juda, or the lawgiver of judaea: therefore Christ is that Shiloh, because the effects of the jewish thraldom, and the effects of Christ coming are so jointy met together, according to jacobs' prophesy. But this argument is allowable with the whole number of the jews, who in their shameful overthrow felt the assumption so true, to their perpetual and endless grief, that they cannot deny the proposition, from which it is derived and borrowed, or rather with which it is so necessarily and inviolably linked in this manner: The jews overthrow and Christ's presence must meet at one time; but here is their overthrow, therefore here is Christ's presence. Why then do the jews so furiously rage together in battle? and why do the people of that Country imagine a false and vain thing? Their Captain Akaba standeth up, their great thalmudist Eutoliba taketh counsel against the Lord, & against his anointed▪ they choose to themselves a new Messiah of their own mint and stamp, Cochab is the man's name, and all the jews must say unto Cochab, Thou art our star and Messiah; they gather their strength together on every side, they muster their valiant men, and sound lustily against the Romans: they undermine Trajan the Emperor with the best military deceits and inventions they have; one of his captains by mishap fly before them; little poor Bethoron the town is vanquished by force, and now they imagine all the world is little Bethoron, which is not worthy to be called the sister of any City. God looketh on them from heaven, he beholdeth their blasphemous apostasy, and arrogant ostentation, he repenteth him of his long suffering, and now he draweth his two edged and two handed sword out of the scabbard, he smiteth Akaba on the loins, he killeth Cochab with his Idolaters, and giveth Adrian victory in battle. Bethoron is recovered of the Romans, an hundred and threescore thousand jews fall on the right hand, and again, forty thousand able men of war are smitten on the left hand, besides those great numbers which perished in Alexandria. Thus their star Cochab was extinguished that shined so bright, their starry glory was no better than a fiery meteor, and falling star▪ now themselves laughed at him with heavy cheer, and agnominatively named him Cozab, which was a true right name for so false and crooked a Saviour, that became to then-ward, and to himself, a savour of death unto death. Expectavi Zadaka, saith Esay, c. 5. v. 2. & ecce zaaka: I looked for grapes, and gathered wild vine: you must not read Cochab, but Cozab, saith a rabbin, both because his pretended miracles were not admirable, and because he was slain as one of no value with the multitude. Euseb. l. 4. c. 6. Eccle. hist. Luterus de judaes'. So perish all thine enemies, o God, and such as work against thy son the only Christ, to set up nominal annointeds and no saviours, shall come to a most vile and shameful end: but guide thou the just, which believe in one son of God and no more, that came once in the flesh, and will come again on Seraphins and Cherubins, to judge both the quick and the dead. Even so Lord jesus, come quickly, and make us ready for thee, vigilant and careful to awake at thy coming, circumspect and provident in every hour, to receive the bridegroom into our houses, and keep him with us for ever and ever.  
To conclude this matter, let us seal up these three proofs with that blessed name the name Emmanuel, by which God would have us see and confess, that God is among us, Deus nobiscum, among us in the earth, and among us in the flesh, saith Lactantius l. 4. c. 12. De vera sapientia. And thus much or thus little, of the coming of Christ, who is the second person set down in this text. The third person are the jews and disciples of john, to whom he speaketh for our learning that come after, as all Scripture is written for our instruction▪ but why speaketh john of jesus being present, when as it is the property of a Prophet, to speak of future things? S. chrysostom answereth with this distinction of preachers; Some tell of things to come, as did the prophets, some of things already past, as did the Apostles, some of things present, which is the middle time, as john-baptist was between both, greater than a Prophet and less than an Apostle▪ but why speaketh john so little of jesus and no more? the same reverend Bishop answereth, that he speaketh much in a little room, intending only by this word, to make the people hearken unto Christ (no better prologue to Christ's gospel) knowing for a certainty, that when they had but once tasted of his sweet doctrine, they would never willingly let him or his doctrine go▪ for albeit Christ was sufficient in himself, & needed not that john-baptist should testify of him and exalt his name; yet because the patriarchs prophesied of a promised seed: Gen. c. 3. v. 15. and Moses had told Israel of a great prophet which the Lord should send among them of their brethren: Deut. c. 18. v. 15. and other prophets told him of a Christ and Messiah to come: Psal. 2. v. 2. Daniel c. 9 v. 25, 26. It was expedient, that this promised seed, this great prophet, this Messiah being now come, should as well at the last as the first be declared unto his people with the testimony and word of john-baptist the great▪ for, as Christ himself was the greatest that ever came in the flesh, so was it necessary that his witness should be the greatest, and what witness was ever greater than the Baptist, who was a perfit pattern of a perfect witness? If you require authority in a witness, there was never any mother's son greater than he. Math. c. 11. v. 11. if you desire truth in a witness, he was a man sent from God, the only truth. john c. 1. v. 5. c. 5. v. 33, 35. if you will have constancy in a witness, he is no reed shaken of the wind. Math. c. 11. v. 7. if you look for knowledge in a witness, he is the infallible prophet of the highest, and more. Math. c. 11. v. 9 Luke c. 1. v. 76. if you require gravity without vanity, he is covered with a garment of camels hair, and girded with a leather girdle, he feedeth on Locusts and wild honey, and is not carried away by levity or folly: Math. c. 3. v. 4. This is the witness of Christ, saith S. Ambrose, such a one is the pattern of all witnesses, even Christ's chiefest witness S. john-baptist. Not all the patriarchs, not all the prophets, not all the Sibyls, not all the witnesses of all men are more forcible or greater any way, than the only testimony of the Baptist, so particularly and properly elected and sent from God almighty for this only end and purpose. Then let not the jews or other john's auditors either look for a greater witness of Christ, or a truer truth then this of jonh, this one truth, unless they hope beyond all hope, to correct the truth with falsehood and a lie, which can never stand upright: they must not think to excuse themselves with had I witted, their wilful or unwilfull ignorance cannot keep them from blame and shame before God, seeing he came apparently into the mids of his own, and his own received him not. But, be they hot or key cold, be they careful or careless, be they God's friends or the devils fiends, be they one or other, or neither, or all, john preacheth to them all at once, and teacheth one with another, excepting against neither, and accepting of all as of one: he will graft this science of Christ into the true olive, and if the body cannot nourish it, he will remove it into the wild olive tree, he offereth them the savour of life, the Saviour of the world, but if they refuse him he turneth to the Gentiles: if the children of the family will not eat their bread, give it to the poor that cry out for hunger at the doors, if the true and next legitimate heir be dead, raise up another heir by adoption; if the common directest path be stopped up, all is plain ground & open way in the valley of Bethabara, and God is not tied to any man, or to any way, unless he be his man and it be his way▪ for if once he be Gods chosen servant and once in God's book of life, if God shall once say, Thou art my son and I will be a father to thee, then if every hair of his head were a cain, and every poor of his body a Nymrod, though every drop of his blood be an Ammon, & every blast of his spirit the seven spirits of Mary Magdalene, his hairs shall be washed, his pores cleansed, his blood purged, his spirit purified, and all his inward and outward man made a lively sacrifice of a dead, a holy oblation of a defiled, an acceptable and gracious savour of a putrefied and noisome smell: and in a word to God's children chief is this doctrine appertaining which S. john delivereth here, behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, to them specially is it spoken which are written in Gods eternal Register, whose faith is ever lively, moving, working, never idle. A foundation surely grounded is not easily removed, but a building upon sand is soon overturned: that is bred in the bone will never out of the body, but an outward malady is soon cured; a jewish father maketh a jewish son, as the scholar is taught so he believeth, as the blind is led so he walketh; an own counteth night as day, and the jew loveth his own darkness more than the light of Christ, and the fault is not in the day, but in the owl; when Gods holy spirit forsaketh a man, he goeth and wandereth he cannot tell whether, but is compared to swine that tread upon pearls, to beasts that perish; the jew will be obstinate in his superstition and wilful in his blindness, as the Aethiopian will ever be black, and the devil a liar at every hand; a reprobate sense may be reproved, but never amended; a perverse opinion will very hardly leave a perverse and crooked mind; superstitious premises always draw after them superstitious conclusions; jewish and uncharitable presumptions make jewish judgements; unkind and unchristian thoughts beget unkind and unchristian censures; a prejudicate mind can never determine rightly; a purposed invective is commonly more affectionate than reasonable; though a voice from heaven approve Christ, the jewish voice in earth will reprove him and his, by hook or by crook, probably or impudently, even Martinlike; if the devil once set in his paw, all the whole house will smell of his rankness; one morsel of leaven leueneth the whole lump of dough, then beware of the leaven of the jewish Scribes and Pharisees, that writ unrighteousness and boast of leese: Historians say, that the crow and the ape suppose & presume, their younglings are fair, and so perhaps they are in their kind, but who else will say so besides the crow and the ape? Mercury in his method imagineth self-love to walk in a gallery beset and hanged with seeing glasses, wherein she may view and vaunt her own peacock feathers.  
I cannot stand now upon this common place, of wilful and jewish obstinacy, mixed with haughty and jewish self-love; the truest history and poesy in the world, is the history and poesy of the Bible, that teacheth the truest and surest belief, and the truest belief never refuseth the right sentence, or hopeth for more truths than one; faith tempered with charity pierceth the clouds, and love among brethren is a sweet smell in God's nostrils; the love of jesus is more sweet than the love of all women, for he shall never repent himself of his love that loveth jesus; he came to us as a friend, he dwelled with us as a brother, he died for us as a mother in travel, he rose for us as a God, he ascended for us as a Captain, a captain to lead and defend his christian Soldiers, to load and oppress his jewish enemies, & must therefore be loved with the love of all friends, of all brothers, of all children, of all creatures, of all servants and soldiers in the whole world, from the first day to the last. There is but one world, but one sun, but one king, and but one Messiah and Saviour, greater than the world, clearer than the sun, stronger than king, great without fault, clear without spot, strong without change, the world of joy, the sun of righteousness, the king of peace: let us go out of this world, and dwell in that world, walk in that light, obey that king, but first follow the counsel of john-baptist, and behold, behold the lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world, and then dwell with him, walk with him, and obey him. Thus for upon the first part of this text, which is the history.  
Now followeth the doctrine, which the wicked hear and mark not, or if they mark it, they soon forget it, if they remember the word, it taketh no root in their hearts, or if it be rooted, it rotteth and withereth at the last, and scarcely bringeth forth the least tokens of regeneration, but giveth leaves and no fruit, and is therefore cursed with Christ's own curse, as the Figtree was cursed for bearing no figs, Mark. c. 11. ver. 13, 21. Who then must chiefly weigh and examine this sentence of john-baptist? Let all those that delight in their salvation behold this lamb of God with loving eye, and constantly persuade themselves, that he taketh away the sin of the world: let all such as love their own lives, consider this sentence thoroughly & deeply, from which all meditations and prayers are grown, and upon which all the books and volumes of holy writers, and godly learned fathers, are builded & written, for as all their works belong to the two testaments, the old and the new, so the two testaments are singularly belonging to this one sentence. But to leave the longest and largest observations, it shall suffice to set down a compendious, and if God will, a fruitful exposition.  
Behold saith the Baptist, behold with joy, awake and stir up yourselves, and behold; sleep not, nor slumber not, but behold; look not at a glance, to look aside, but behold advisedly and steadfastly; behold not as men in a musing or twilight behold a thing, and perceive it not; but have your hearts fixed in knowledge with David, and both your eyes together fixed in hope with him that sat at the gate of the Temple called Beautiful, and behold with a fixed eye and fixed mind, with a loving eye and a loving mind, with a watchful eye and a watchful mind, with a perceiving eye and a perceiving mind, the lamb of God. They that have ears to hear, let them hear this word, and they that have eyes to see, let them see this sight: you that have not seen him, behold him much rather than a new star in heaven, than a new mountain rising out of the earth, than any news which is most to be wished, and that you most desire: you that have seen him behold him again and again, as the wonderful, the incomparable, the incomprehensible miracle of all men, as men are the miracles of all other creatures, even the perfect God and the perfect man, never seen before or since in any other, the creator in the creature without circumscription, the mystery of God himself, not only of godliness▪ he that once seethe him will ever seek him, he that looketh on him now will like him ever after, you that here behold him well, will every where hold with him and of him till you die and without end▪ mark him earnestly & forget him not, look on him advisedly and remember this object while ye live, the very perfection of spiritual optics, the true physic of the eyes, more clear than any streaming fountain, more durable than any steel glass, more pleasant than all great meadows and green plains▪ the night is passed, the day appeareth, the sun is risen, the mist is gone, the air is bright, look not about, but strait forth before you, and behold him. God hath given you eyes to serve him herein with true eyeseruice, and God hath taken that gummy glue and the scales from your eyes which came with looking on and after ill sights, and God hath here sent you a perpetual preserve, a special eyebright, a general collyry for the eyes, and chargeth all that have eyes to behold him, and all that will see to themselves to see him▪ take heed of all these unkind and ungentle enemies that make war with the eye, and by too much heat or dryness offend and consume it; the eye is a tender and gentle part, it cannot abide extremities in any case, and herein somewhat a kind to the Lamb of God▪ be learned therefore in such good things and simples, as are at peace with the eye and by moisture or coolness refresh and strengthen them▪ for the eyes are like two Archbishops or two Consuls in the body, to oversee all and rule every member thereof, and herein somewhat a kind to the Lion▪ that we may be able to look on the Lamb of God with love, and on the lion of juda with faith, it standeth us in hand to be circumspect always in looking to our eyes as to the chiefest of our senses, the better to be ready to behold the chiefest antiquity & novelty in this world▪ all things are made to serve God, but the eyes are made so movable and quick within, so sure and safe on every side without, even to be quick in beholding and sure in marking this blessed object the Lamb of God. You shall not see only a Lamb of God, for every child of God is a lamb of God, but you shall see also the Lamb of God, the Lamb that is more worth than the offerings of all lambs since the first creation, and as I may truly call him, the Lamb of Lambs. For so the spirit of God by S. john giveth him this notable mark and emphatical difference, & saith, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, agnus ille, the Lamb▪ other lambs were lambs with their fellows, agni cum agnis, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, but Christ is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, ipse agnus, the lamb alone, one lamb for all, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, this is he, to which all other offertory lambs had their relation, and in which they had their consummation and Omega. Now no more killing and offering of other lambs, jesus Christ is the satisfactory lamb once sacrificed to all, yet the lamb that was slain invisibly from the beginning, and is now offered visibly in the flesh, and for his passion called a lamb, as Ignatius writeth to the Philippians, not herein counterfeited, though elfwhere suspected of pseudopigraphy▪ for as the lights of candles are put out when the daylight is come, so ceremonies which are but candles in respect of that light they represented are abolished at Christ's effectual oblation of himself as of a lamb. Yet why is he rather called by the name of a lamb, them of a calf, or of a goat, or of an ox, or of other sacrifice mentioned in Moses law? It must needs be that this name is given him, because it is most meet and fit for him, and no other so significant to express his nature and office▪ among all the figures, and types, and shadows of the old Testament, the lamb did most nearly, & the Paschal lamb most properly premonstrate & prefigure jesus Christ▪ the lamb most nearly in these comparative respects: the lambs wool covereth our nakedness, Proverb. 27. vers. 26. so Christ by his soft mercy hiddeth our shame: the lambs flesh is very nutritive, so Christ by his great power is the staff & bread of our life: the lamb was offered every day both in the morning and in the evening; Exod. c. 29. vers. 38, 39 so Christ is a daily and eternal sacrifice for our sin: the lamb is simple, and simple and innocent without harm, not armed with any natural munition or weapon that may hurt, like other beasts: so Christ opened not his mouth before the shearer, saith Esay c. 53. v. 7. when he was reviled he reviled not again, when he suffered he threatened not saith S. Peter 1. Epistle, c. 2. v. 23. he was as gentle as a lamb, yea & no lamb can be so harmless as Christ was▪ the paschal lamb more properly in this similitude: that lamb was chosen without blemish, Exod. c. 12. v. 5. so was Christ without all spots of sin▪ the blood of that lamb upon the door posts made God pass over, and not smite the houses of the Israelites, so the blood of Christ upon the cross, causeth God not to condemn the godly with the wicked, but to spare them▪ so that in these & such other like applications john calleth jesus the lamb of God, sent from God to pacify God's wrath and put the godly out of fear. Herein appeareth the spiritual rhetoric & wisdom of john in S. Chrysostom's judgement, in that he applied his speech to the small capacity of the simple auditors, and used the ordinary means of all persuasion▪ for as he told them before of Christ's power and honour, in confessing himself unworthy to loozen his shoe, v. 27. that he might make them stand in awe and fear of him (the best way to move some kind of natures, which must be constrained and compelled by authority and shame, or else cannot obey) so now he commendeth the goodness, the mildness, the meekness, and merciful love of jesus, to allure and draw the rest unto him by fair means; and as the proudest Pharisee should reverence him for his glory, so the poorest Publican would embrace him for his clemency▪ yet cannot the Pagans, or enemies of jesus take from this poor title any occasion of contemning him, and disdaining his government, not any second julian, or Lucian, or counterfeit Martin, (for that true Martin Luther, and that truer Martin Bucer, and that Saint Martin the Bishop, and that Martin Chemnisius, were learned and good men of God, and full of zeal, they were set and planted against Baal, and Bell, and Antichrist, by imitation of Elias, of Daniel, and the rest) can despise this lamb of God, with confocations, and paltripolitanes, and pitomes, and pistles, and such cacozelies: he is utterly deceived, he enterfires, and over-reaches too much. The Practice, or the Fox of popish prelate's, and the lives or lamb of Christian Prelates, are as far asunder as the tales of mort Arthur and the books of Moses, as the golden legend of Iron Saints and the Acts of the Apostles, as the scenes of Daws and the Psalms of David, as the writings of Martin & the works of an honest man that is sober toward the world, and godly in respect of heaven, I say, no art, or mart of such husie-bodies, mote-spiers, can justly neglect and abase this lamb of God, because he is the lion of the Tribe of juda, Revel. c. 5. v. 5. because he is the ruler of the world, Esay, c. 16. v. 1. because a thousand thousands of Angels, and four and twenty Elders fall down before him sitting on the Throne, and ascribe all wisdom, all riches, all strength, all blessings to him for ever and ever. Revel. c. 5. v. 12, 13. yea even that famous and renowned golden fleece of jason, were it the Philosopher's stone, or the treasures of those countries, or the goodliest art or thing in the world, is vile and abject as dung in the presence of this eternal lamb, though those jolly heathen galoping wits magnify it never so stoutly. And the least proximity of his bodily, much more of his ghostly virtue and savour, is more effectual and sovereign against the heat of sin and flesh, than all Agnus castus of Galen in the world, ministered in leaves, in decoction, in powder, or any way else, to work an effect like the name. The calf in Dan, and the calf in Bethel hath been broken, now jesus is himself that fatted and prepared Calf, which is slain to make them good cheer that will repent and return to the Father▪ the Memtiphical God the bull Apis which those calves imitated as some think, is destroyed from Egypt, and the mighty prince of Nilus & his regions rejoiceth in the blood of king David's offspring, and in the spirit of Peter and Paul, and all Paynims idols and every other beast must give place and praise to this best and living lamb of God: let the mountains leap like lambs, let the little hills skip like young sheep, seeing God hath sent so mighty and gentle a lamb among us, which is a lion to the wicked and impenitent resisters, & a lamb to the godly and humble souls.  
Then what doth this lamb, seeing he is so mighty and marvelous, and what good cometh to us by his goodness that he is so good? he is a lamb whose offering is our justification, he taketh away the sin of the world, and herein consisteth our sanctification▪ in that he died for us, we are just and free from the curse of law, in that he acquitteth us, we are holy and blameless in God's sight, whose eyelids try the children of men▪ he hath taken our weakness upon his shoulders and hath sustained our grief, saith Esai c. c. 53. v. 5. he hath cast our sin into the bottom of the sea, saith Michaeas, c. 7. v. 19 He hath himself borne in his body our transgressions on the tree, saith Peter 1. epistle. c. 2. v, 24. he is the full propitiation for our sin, saith john, 1. epistle c. 2. v. 12. he is our advocate to the father, our mediator, our intercessor, in counseling us, in guiding us, in defending us, he is ever and only to be loved, feared, obeyed: loved, because he hath bought our love so dearly: feared, because he may in equity forsake us: obeyed, because none can direct us more safely.  
Then what huge and monstrous sin was that, which the son of the immortal God could only bear? what a vile and excessive, what a deadly & fierce, what a damnable and heavy sin was it, which jesus alone was able and none other to take away? Adam might say, he taketh away sin, Noah might say, he taketh away sin, all ages before Christ and since Christ might say with the Baptist, tollit peccatum, that is, saith calvin fert and aufert, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, and Schoolmen confess, that he only doth this, by forgiving us that is past, by helping us against present sins, by bringing us to heaven where sin hath no place, & they should not deny, that tollit belongeth to all times, not only to the supper of Christ, or any one time, seeing in true faith he was the lamb ever, as in true sense he was the lamb once▪ for every time is present with God, and eternity is but to day with him, who begat his son from everlasting, and yet said this day have I begotten thee. Psal. 2. v. 7. and tollit, not tollet, saith Theophilus, Quasi semper hoc ipso faciente, as if it were the nature of Christ, to purge sin, as of Helleborum to purge the head: which natural history like all other is always written in the present time: so Angelica preserveth from the plague at all times, and jesus taketh away sin at all times: so Herbagrace driveth away venomous serpents, and jesus driveth away devils: so Christ said of the future time as if it had then been present, I lay down my life: john c. 10. v. 15. And as every thing hath his definition in the present time, to signify a perpetuity of that property, so this definitive word of the lamb of God is delivered and received by the present time, as the inseparable effect and property of the lamb, always abiding and always present, as is the present time▪ for Christ was an high Priest, not after the order of Aaron, which was for a time, so long as he which offered lived, but after the order of Melchisedech which continueth a priest for ever, without beginning, without end, offering himself in stead of a lamb, having power to leave his life and take it; john c. 10. v. 18. Hebr. c. 7. v. 3, 23, 24. Wherefore our sins shall not bruise us and press us to death by their importable weight, whilst jesus easeth us of that burden: an endless comfort. Our sin cannot accuse us and condemn us to death as law requireth, because jesus hath canceled the detbooke, disannulled the acts that Satan objected, and given out a sufficient quittance and warrant for that payment: a blessed penny, and no Saints, but Christ's penny, coined in the third heavens, and beset with this posy or emblem, mercy, not merit.  
Nevertheless, this caveat and exception must ever be ready in our hearts and lips, to judge and confess, that sin remaineth in us, and is not taken away, seeing we are a very lump of sin and heap of offence, but worthy to feel the fire and hammer in jeremy, ca 23. the punishment and reward of sin is taken away▪ the plagues appointed for sin are swept and carried out of the way: and what is the plague or reward of sin, but everlasting death, but perpetual torments in hell, but infinite woes and miseries in the bondage of the devil, but continual affliction of the mind, but insufferable vexation and anguish of the body, but most horrible confusion, and most lamentable execution of body and soul for evermore.  
Such is the fruit of our sins and transgressions, which we commit daily, this punishment is due for the sin of the world, and worldly men, Rom. c. 5. v. 12. john. 1. Epist. c. 3. v. 8. etc. Can our ears hear this, beloved Christians, and will not our hearts tremble? shall we see and not perceive; hear and not regard; and be little better than dead senseless idols? you see we are attainted and arraigned of high treason against God, our hands accuse us of bribery, our arms of violence, our hearts of ungodly and profane thoughts, our whole bodies of ill dealing with our neighbours; the brain and eyes complain of wantonness, which wasteth them; the veins and marrow cry out upon idleness and gluttony, which rot them; the whole world layeth all abuses and outrages to our charge, the abuses of all creatures, and the outrages committed against our own friends, and our tongues that can only speak and plead for us after long counsel and deep advisement, confess, and deny not, and with great sighs answer, guilty: the judge of judges, even God himself pronounceth this terrible sentence, & giveth out this dreadful doom against us: Seeing you have abused all things both living and dead; in leaning to your own wills; in leaving my commandments; in making your flesh quick, and your spirit dull; in fight for the earth against heaven; for vanity against verity; in esteeming humanity above divinity; your ways above my ways; hypocrisy more than faithfulness; in holding my religion, even my religion and service for a fashion, and your own pleasure for a law; your moments for eternal joys; your mammets for Saints; your portion and inheritance must be with the grandfather of these abuses, that old Serpent, that hellhound, that ramping lion, Belzebub the grandfather of these vices and abuses, with whom you have deserved to live and die without all help.  
Now what shall we do in this case? to whom can we appeal when all the world accuseth us, and God himself condemneth us? I will tell you to whom we must appeal, and how: Thou art displeased, o Lord, thou art displeased with us, o chastise us not in thy fury, neither cast us off in thy sore displeasure; be merciful unto thy creatures, o God, and then we appeal to thee, be not angry with us, o Lord, and so we will appeal to none but thee; we appeal from God when he is offended, unto God when he is contented, o be well contented with thy servants, o Lord. All the world is against us, but thy mercy is greater than all the world, o thy mercy is sweet and infinite: thy servants, o God accuse us, and behold, thy word is above thy servants: thy subjects and inferiors are about to hurt us, but thy omnipotent superiority can overrule them: that which they do, thy majesty can undo: that they bind, thy wisdom can loosen. And though this bounty be too great for us, yet is it little in respect of thee: let thy goodness, o Lord, be still our defence, thy mercy and loving kindness in jesus Christ thy dear son, our salvation, let thy left hand hold up our heads, and thy right hand embrace us; embrace us the work of thy own hands, & as thou didst once make us of earth, like thee, so make us by restoring now thy image & similitude in us, of prodigal sons & outcasts, partakers of thy table, and heirs of thy kingdom; & because thy word hath condemned us, holy father, mighty judge, & pronounced us to be without all help, let thy blessed son jesus be our hope, whose virtue is beyond all help of man, & in whom we have help, when we cannot help ourselves; let him bail us, and reprieve us, and get us a pardon for our sins, that with our souls and bodies jointly, and either of them severally we may serve him in holiness all the days of our lives, and sing Psalms to thee, o thou most mighty according to thy worship and renown. shall the dead praise thee, or tell of thy truth in the night and in the dark? shall thy noble acts be known in the grave, and thy mercy in the land where all things are forgotten? up Lord, and help us o king of heaven when we call upon thee, which s●●itest hell upon the cheek bone, and savest Israel from his enemies▪ save us, o God, for thy mercy sake, o save us and that right soon, for we are in ourselves brought to great misery; salvation only belongeth to thy name, and thy blessing is upon thy people, but we are thy people and the sheep of thy pasture, o preserve us from the snare of the hunter and from the noisome pestilence, the snare once broken we shall be delivered, and thousands shall fall on both sides, but it shall not come nigh us, or if it come, it shall not hurt us, or if it hurt, thou art our Physician to heal us, to assuage our ambustions, to pour oil into our wounds, to bind up our maimed parts, & carry us to thy everlasting Inn, to board and dwell with thee for ever. Why art thou then so heavy, o my soul, and why art thou so disquieted within me? o put thy trust in the lamb of God, that daily and hourly taketh thy sin upon him, and carrieth it away, and burieth it, where it can never revive and spring again. jesus hath redeemed us neither with silver nor gold, but with his most precious blood and water once offered upon the cross, and he bringeth us from the prison of sin▪ he can do it by his power, and he may do it by the just claim and title and interest he hath in us▪ he can do it, because he is stronger than Satan the prince of the night, who like a tyrant holdeth us in manacles and fetters, he is stronger than this jailor, stronger than his prison, stronger than his bands, and can redeem us, and his will alone is greater than all treasure, to pay all fees and ransoms whatsoever▪ and as he both can and will, so he may redeem us, by the law of propriety, and the law of propinquity▪ for as by the law of propriety ● king may redeem his captivated subjects, and a master his servants: so may Christ redeem us which obey and serve him, o jesus make us thy true men: and as by the law of propinquity a father may ransom his son, and one brother another; whether they be fathers or brothers by blood or religion; so may Christ in the same respects of consanguinity and affection ransom us, who by a loving protection is our father, & by his familiar kindness our brother: o jesus, feed all duties and loves in us.  
Thus the first and principal causes of our delivery are just and lawful in Christ, as the means and concurrent causes are allowable in ourselves, according to S. Chrysostom's collection, That our sins are taken away by confessing them to God; Esay c. 44. v. 21, 22. by forgiving injuries to men; Math. c. 6. v. 14. by alms and liberality; Dan. c. 4. v. 24. by continual prayer; jam. c. 5. v. 16. by fasting and turning unto God; joel. c. 2. v. 12, 18. Yet these are but apprehensive and declarative causes of our justifying and sanctifying, and Christ alone is the consummative and perfective cause of all, as a learned writer distinguisheth briefly and subtly, because he is sufficient, and our goodness but straw without him, as Luther termeth it, for so I may best take that word Stramineam, which Bredenbachius casteth so fiercely in his teeth, Sententia de dissidijs Ecclesiae componendis, fol. 35. and perhaps taught Campian to make his gloze. Seeing then we receive this great and incomprehensible benefit by Christ, even the benefit of our delivery, what kind of delivery is it which we enjoy? Is it a delivery by voluntary manumission? not so, for neither the flesh, nor the devil are of that nature, to surrender up any thing with a frank and willing mind, but they are covetous, and must be constrained. Is it a delivery by exchange and commutation? not so, for Christ will never leave or give any hostages to the devil. Is it a delivery by a price and payment? so it is a delivery. But this price is paid to God our king, not to Satan God's jailor▪ you are bought with a great price, saith Paul, 1. Cor. c. 6. v. 20. with the precious blood of Christ, saith Peter, 1. Epistle, c. 1. v. 19 and without shedding of blood is no remission, and without death no testament, being without force so long as he that made it is alive. Heb. c. 9 v. 17, 22. Is it a delivery by force and compulsion? so it is a delivery as when a strong man keepeth a house, and a stronger than he cometh in, and taketh what he will out of the house, Luke c. 11. v. 22.  
Thus we were in the Lion's mouth ready to be devoured, but jesus broke the jaw of the Lion asunder, as David saved his sheep, 1. King's c. 17. v. 36. thus we were bondmen, but now are we free men, as Israel came out of Egypt, Exo. c. 12. v. 41. thus we were woeful & miserable, but now are we joyful and blessed in our salvation, as joseph came from prison, Gen. c. 41. v. 14.38. Then, for whose sake hath he redeemed us but for his own? for if we live we are Christ's, if we die we are Christ's: if we are his, then must we live after his will, not our own will: if we are his, then must we serve none but him that saved us: Be not the servants of men, saith Paul, 1. Cor. c. 7. v. 23. if we are his, it becometh us not to judge our brethren: who art thou, saith the Apostle, that condemnest another man's servant? he standeth or falleth to his own master, not to thee, Rom. c. 14. v. 4. So we are Christ's, for he hath bought us, not to reign over us, but that we should live under him: In that he bought us, he showed his love: and in that he stayed so long ere he bought us, he approved his wisdom. He came in good season, in the fullness of time, saith Paul, Galat. c. 4. v. 4. in the last days, saith Esay, c 2. v. 2. in the latest times for our sakes, saith Peter, 1. Epistle c. 4. ver. 20. for by that time the greatness of sin which had so many years in growing, made plain the corruption of man's nature, to make man humble▪ by that time the immeasurable mercy of God appeared, which spared the livers of so many ages, to make man thankful: by that time the faith of the godly was thoroughly sharpened, and their hope at the highest point after so long a trial thereof, to make man constant: by that time the disease of sin was so rank and desperate, that man's knowledge and foresight being at an end, the glory and majesty of God might more abundantly be seen, in curing such a malady, and so vast a sin, to make men obedient▪ yet must we not be too busy in searching out those things which God will have secret, but take heed of climbing too high, of wading too far, of too much diligence, lest we be smitten as Vzzah was for touching God's ark, and die as Vzzah died for being too bold, 2. King's c. 6. v. 7. The secret things belong to the Lord our God, saith Moses Deut. c. 29. v. 29. and S. Paul teacheth our extreme Quaestionists a good non plus, whereof they shall never be ashamed, Rom. c. 12. v. 3.  
What need we any more determinations and conclusions upon this commendatory sentence of john, & effective property of Christ? If jesus only taketh away sin, how can the Church say, I forgive sins, and give absolution, seeing the Church is the expositor and messenger, not the Lady and correcter of the scripture? she may bid us hope for remission of sins by faith in Christ, she may warrant us, that if we repent & believe, our sins are forgiven us, but there lie her bounds, and that is all she can do, unless she dareth arrogate to herself the work of the holy spirit of God. I omit some conclusions purposely: if Christ be a lamb, herein we acknowledge his humanity and bodily substance, or else he cannot be called a lamb: and so doth his incarnation, his nativity, his growing, his eating, his drinking, his sleeping, his weeping, his groaning, and other his actions and passions prove and conclude him to be a man. The word was made flesh, saith john, c. 1. v. 14. made, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking the manhood into God, for so his divinity is joined to his humanity by an unspeakable conjunction, that both of them keep and retain their own natures, yet in such manner, that of two natures is made but one Christ, not two Christ's, one a God-christ, the other a man-christ, as Nestorius thought, neither is his manhood extinguished by his Godhead, as Eutychetes dreamt, but both Godhead and manhood make one jesus.  
Lastly, if Christ take away sin, herein we confess his divinity, seeing none but God can forgive sin, & that we may know, that the lamb of God is God, the Baptist preacheth in the desert, that he taketh away sin, and burieth it. Wherefore if Christ were Man and God, than neither was his soul without reason and sense, as Apollinaris judged without all judgement, neither was his body without a spirit, as Eunomius defended most strangely and erroneously▪ what may the jews than think, that have such a one in the mids of them? how much may they account themselves worthier than other, and superior to all their neighbours, that have such a one only in their company? Be not high minded, o ye jews, saith the Baptist, but fear and stand in awe of him, for he not only taketh away your sin, but the original sin of Adam your forefather, the root and body of sin, the life and essence of sin, the beginning and maintenance of sin, not this kind of sin, and that branch of sin, and the sin of this and that nation, but sin itself, sin in general, all sin with all appurtinances, with all differences, with all properties, with all qualities, with all fruits and effects whatsoever, the sin of the world; he is not only among you, but with all men that are gathered together in his name, not ubiquitarily, but divinely, not corporally, but spiritually, yea and as effectually with them, as in the land of jury in those days. The world was cursed by means of the first Adam, so it was blessed by the second Adam, 1. Cor. c. 15. v. 22, 45. his disobedience was amended with Christ's obedience, his arrogancy corrected by the simplicity of jesus, his lust subdued by Christ's love, and Christ God's lamb destroyeth the original and cause of sin, to destroy the effect even sin itself▪ for if the blood of bulls, and goats, & the ashes of an heifer. Levit. c. 16. v. 14. sprinkling them that are unclean sanctifieth as touching the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, which through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge our conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Hebr. c. 9 v. 13, 14. Yet, let us beware, that we tempt not the Holy-ghost, let us take heed of presumptuous sins, lest they get dominion over us; let us not say within ourselves, go to, and cease not to sin, because our sin shall not be laid upon us: for he that sinneth willingly, and offendeth with his conscience wittingly, shall neither be forgiven in this world, saith Christ, nor in the world to come. Math. c. 12. v. 31, 32. make rather your light to give light to other men, and strive to enter in the narrow way, that leadeth to heaven; watch with carefulness, and pray with zeal, that you be not taken unawares: your best good, and good work in itself is altogether unprofitable, and then the worst must needs be abominable: glorify the immortal God in your mortal bodies, & make not the house of God a house for sin to riot in: serve God daily for his blessings, and praise him which gave you all that you have, for his goodness endureth for ever; he sent his prophets, to teach you his statutes, for his goodness endureth for ever; even john-baptist his chosen servant, for his goodness endureth for ever; to tell us the glad tidings of his gospel, for his mercy is everlasting; to show us the lamb of God, for his mercy is everlasting; which taketh away the sin of the world yesterday, to day, and for ever, for his goodness & mercy endure for ever and ever. Now consider I pray you, now I beseech you consider, and let us always consider the sum and effect of this most gracious and sweet text. We were all, even every mother's son of us, even every son & daughter of old Adam miserably plunged, most miserably plunged, and drowned in the horrible gulf, and most woeful ugly pit of sin, which hath also plunged us, most miserably plunged and drowned us in the horrible gulf, and most woeful ugly pit of hell, and so made us most miserable and damnable creatures, even in the state of very desperate hellhounds and rakehells, to be everlastingly afflicted and tormented in that unquenchable endless fire, where is continual weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth world without end. Behold the lamb of God, lo the blessed lamb of God, mark, mark, see, see, now I beseech you, see this most happy and heavenly lamb of God, that taketh away this sin, that redeemeth us out of this pirte, that cleanseth our filthy and abominable corruption, that sanctifieth us for a more holy place, that storeth up everlasting joys and unspeakable beatitudes for us, that bestoweth all felicity, and even heaven itself upon us, where himself is the lamb of God, the son of God, God himself, our only glorious and omnipotent god, our only saviour and redeemer, our only final joy, and comfort, and felicity for ever and ever, our only most sacred, most blessed, most triumphant lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world, and blesseth the world world without end, who is therefore blessed and glorified world without end. So ye now see the right cause of the right effect, the right tree of the right fruit, the right sun of the right light, the right saviour and redeemer, and Lord & master of his right people, the right lamb of God, that rightly and righteously taketh away the sin of the world, the sin of the wicked and sinful world.  
Behold then the right lamb of God, the right lamb of perfect divinity, the right lamb of true Christianity, the right lamb of pure and sincere religion, of pure & sincere faith, of pure and sincere hope and charity, the right lamb of innocency, of integrity, of uprightness, of very goodness and godliness, of perfect and absolute virtue, the right lamb of true piety and devotion toward God, of true charity and honesty toward men, of true love towards God and man, the only lamb of the only sacred and blessed gospel: to conclude, the right lamb of all our comfort in this world, of all our happiness & felicity in the world to come, of all our sanctification, & salvation, and blessedness both now & ever.  
Behold the very right only lamb of God, the very right only lamb of heaven, that leadeth us the very right only way to God and heaven: then what need, or what use, nay what abuse of other counterfeited and disguised lambs, of other superstitious and idolatrous lambs, of other antichristian and diabolical lambs? such as are commonly called Agnus Dei, but are in truth Agnus diaboli, lambs of the Pope, lambs of Rome, lambs of the devil, lambs of hell, the very creatures of the devils great vicar upon earth, the very impostures and counterfeits of the devils in hell, devices more hotly, then either wisely or religiously used among us of late years in the Popish bootless and godless business? Alas miserable vanity, alas poor folly, alas blind devotion, alas heathenish idolatry, alas hellish blasphemy, call them what ye list, call them Agnus Dei, call them indulgences, call them pardons, and as ye list, these are no lambs of God, they are lambs of the devil, these take not away the sin of the world, they foster & drown the world in sin, they hasten the world to damnation, they carry the world headlong into hell, they are capital enemies and archrebels to the lamb of God, to the blessed, and heavenly, and sweet lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world. Many like enemies, and many like rebels there be to this lamb of God: all the sons and daughters of sin, all the masters and apprentices of sin, all the teachers and scholars of sin, all the trains and practices, and enormities of sin, all the transgressions and ways of sin, whatsoever they be named, or howsoever they be practised against God or man, against the first or second table, all such ways and means of sin, are secret and open enemies or rebels to this lamb of God, that taketh away sin, that abolisheth the sin of the world, that notwithstanding so infinite many legions, and huge armies of so strong and mighty enemies, of so obstinate and obdurate rebels, still and still taketh away the sin of the world.  
Sin & sinful men may strive, but they strive against the stream: the flesh and fleshly men may kick, but they kick against a brazen wall: the world and worldly men may rebel, but they rebel against the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the conqueror of conquerors, the almighty overthrower of all rebels and rebellious attempts; the devil and devilish men may rage's, but they rage in vain, they rage against him that hath power to master and tame all the devils in hell with a word, that hath already prevailed against hel-gates, that hath vanquished all the force, all the might and main of Satan, that hath triumphed over sin, the flesh, the world, and the devil, and hath gotten the victory, the most glorious, the most blessed, the most happy & triumphant victory over his enemies, over all his enemies, adversaries and foes of all sorts.  
Behold this lamb of God, this puissant, this mighty, this almighty lamb of God, this only victorious and triumphant lamb of God, that maugre sin taketh away sin, maugre the world redeemeth the world, maugre all the spite of Belzebub and all the fiends in hell restoreth his elect to their God, & prepareth them for heaven and heaven for them. O almighty goodness, and all good mightiness, o wonderful and unspeakable mercy, o exceeding most heavenly compassion, o most loving, most dear and tender, most bountiful and merciful lamb of God, that takest away the sin of the wicked world, that easest us of this grievous and intolerable burden, that payest our huge debt and ransom, that in exceeding singular pity didst vouchsafe to suffer those most horrible and unspeakable passions and agonies, that we in our own persons were corporally and spiritually to abide as most wretched & damnable sinners; that of so woeful and miserable creatures makest us thine own brethren, sons of God, fellow lambs of God, heirs of God, inheritors of his kingdom.  
Behold this lamb of God, still and still behold this lamb of God, let us all altogether, both now and ever, and always, and ever behold this blessed most sweet lamb of God, unto whom we are so infinitely beholding, in that he hath generally taken away the sin of the world, in that he hath particularly taken away our sin, even the sin of you, and me, and of us all, who therefore continually is evermore to be glorified of you and me, and of us all. O what an ineffable heavenly act was this, o most divine incomprehensible mercy of mercies, o the very greatest effect of God, the very greatest effect of man, the very greatest divinity and humanity of God and man. Can we sufficiently, could we in any measure of sufficiency consider our former most miserable, most woeful, & most damnable state, and accordingly compare that most wretched state with the most blessed state wherein we are now established by the exceeding incomparable goodness of this most blessed lamb of God: Lord God, what should our lives be, what would ourselves be, but lively sacrifices and oblations of continual most zealous praises, and duties, and thanks world without end? with continual most hearty endeavour, to reform and frame ourselves to his gracious will, for his everlasting glory? to whom we own all obedience, all glory, and all dutifulness world without end, who therefore with the father and the holy ghost, one almighty and only wise God, be continually more and more praised and glorified with all praise and glory for ever and ever world without end. Amen.  
Parasceve autoris ex Augustini epistola 106. ad Paulinum: Quae enim potuerunt magna & acuta ingenia cogitare, aut inopiae est tacendo vitare, aut arrogantiae contemnendo praeterire. 
I Have in that measure of God's spirit & grace, which it pleased him of his merciful goodness to bestow upon me, uttered so much out of this text concerning the lamb of God, as I thought convenient and requisitive for the very plain, true, sincere, effectual, and christian explication or exposition of the same. As I pray God, even God the lamb of God, make me ever more and more able, out of the same scripture, and every like scripture still and still to preach the lamb of God, the same blessed lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world. In the handling and declaring of which text, both for the History and the doctrine with other circumstances thereunto appertaining, my whole treatise hitherto hath been demonstrative or declarative by way of plainest confirmation and commendation. Now more fully to prosecute this matter, I purpose by God's help, to enter into a more schollerly discourse by way of Confutation or Reprehension, as commonly in cases of doctrine & discourse this invective or elenchtical is to follow that other demonstrative or declarative manner of proceeding, as one great part of confirmation. I would to God, many young youths, and some other had no more need of this kind of confutation than I could wish, but seeing I fear me there is great need thereof with some, I trust my good purpose will be the better liked of the better sort, unto whom I wish myself near both to hear and see them, as Lactantius did because he could not be one of them, c. 1. l. 3. adversus gentes; and I hope some of the rest, as it may please God to work, may reap some good thereby, as I heartily pray to God, they may. S. john saith, behold the lamb of God, and so I still and still say, and so must all good christians and every good christian ever and ever say, and not only say with the mouth, but ever and ever think, even with the very heart, even in the very bowels of all christian affection and zeal, behold the lamb of God, that was before the world was, that was mystically and as it were in a holy reverend vail or shadow prefigured in Moses. law, that was in abundance of divine spirit lively and zealously foretold by the Prophets, that was certainly and effectually preached by the Apostles, that is assuredly and infallibly described by the Evangelists, that in the whole word of God, in the law and the gospel, in the old and new Testament, ever hath, and is, and ever shall be preached from generation to generation, as the only true lamb of God, as the only true saviour of the world, as our only true mediator and redeemer, even jesus the righteous true God and true man, by whom, from whom, and in whom only we have whatsoever good we have, otherwise without him remaining in the most wretched, most woeful, and desperate state of utter damnation both of body and soul. Therefore we that believe the law of God and the Prophets of God, the gospel of Christ & the Apostles of Christ, the creation of the world and the salvation of the world, as God forbidden, but we should all believe, as it becometh the people of God and all good christians to believe, we that believe the Canonical scriptures and desire to be members of the Catholic church whereof Christ is the head, must faithfully and unfeignedly acknowledge this lamb of God to be very God himself, to be the promised Messiah and only jesus, to be the only son of God that taketh away the sin of the world. We often repeat our Belief, of the creation of the world by God the Father, of the salvation of the world by God the son even the lamb of God, of the sanctification of the world by God the holy-ghost, one true everlasting and only wise God, who reigneth in all and above all for ever and ever▪ this we often say, and should always think, as we are in all christian zeal, and with all perfect hatred to abhor those that say or think the contrary.  
Alas, a thousand errors, and heresies, and blasphemies, and idolatries, and impieties, have overflown the world, and wickedness hath stretched out a long arm on every side, from the East to the West, throughout the world and round about the world: yet Christ still hath numbered his elect, the great Shepherd knoweth his sheep, there wanteth not a visible or invisible congregation of the faithful, to make up Christ's militant Church: there are many true Christian soldiers ever ready to fight under the Ensign & ancient of the lamb of God, that never bowed the knee to Baal, that never committed any heathenish or profane idolatry, that never were defiled or corrupted with the filthiness of the whore of Babylon, that never either devoted themselves to false gods, or denied the true living God, or said in their hearts with the ungodly and godless fool, there is no God, that cry daily and hourly, and ever sincerely and faithfully, Behold the lamb of God, o Lord jesus come quickly, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven, thou art God, and there is none other God but thou, a just and a saving God, as the Prophet Esay saith c. 45. v. 21. O let us all cry thus, let us all set ourselves against all that writ, or say, or think otherwise. Students read many things, even of God, and of Christ, and otherwhiles against God and his Christ, as for God & his Christ, here they must follow the direction of a godly judgement, here true christianity must overrule false paganism, and desperate atheism, here the spirit of God must confute and confound the spirit of the devil, the spirit of Antichrist, the spirit of false Prophets, the spirit of deceitful heretics, the spirit of worldly hypocrites, the spirit of blasphemous and impious villains, that care neither for God nor the devil, that measure all by present profit, or pleasure without any regard of posterity, and either acknowledge no God, or else make them their gods that feed their own humour most, or most advance their wicked purposes: Without this direction of God's spirit, and without this godly discretion and Christian judgement, to discern between the truth of God, & the falsehood of the devil, alas how soon may students most of all other be misled and seduced by many writers of much account among them, who had no sense or feeling of this lamb of God, or any such christian doctrine, but in the abundance of their own carnal humour, and in their gross worldly sense took upon them to judge of all matters, as well spiritual as corporal, by the only direction of their natural reason, or rather fantastical conceit, which otherwhile carried them headlong into all error and blasphemy? I will pass over those old Atheists, Diagoras, Protagoras, Democritus, Philosophers, Aristippus and Epicurus, Courtiers, the 288, sects of heathenish scholars, which S. Augustine mentioneth out of Varro, l. 19, de Civitate Dei, many of the heathen Poets, both Greek and Latin, and such like, whose godless and unchaste opinions are too common among the common sort of Students. I would to God Aristotle's sensual natural philosophy, in his 3. books de anima, of the immortality of the soul, which that small abstract of Athenagoras doth sufficiently overthrow, to omit Aeneas, and other of greater labour herein; and his moral philosophy of man's perfect felicity, l. 1. c. 10. Ethec. l. 10. c. 6, 7. were not sometime for vain disputations sake, or I wots not how, more hotly maintained with leave and liking, than were convenient in our christian schools and companies, seeing such other matters of less importance have with the same Schoolistes been so earnestly and eagerly disallowed, but if Cassianus be judged of his angry children, they will out with their penknives by and by, and have their pennyworths of him that was once over them; young unskilful physicians count bodies sometimes past hope that have as much life in them as themselves with all their inspectives; the wild heart would not have arrested the sheep of debt if the wolf his enemy had not been judge; he that maketh an error and the report thereof both one, cannot recite it against another but he shall therein be against himself; one ear and one tale can never do the judge honesty, and how can he determine, which knoweth not the controversy? which heareth but one part? which maketh suspicion a proof? he is extremely partial that winketh at a filthy life, and will not abide a homely word, as if a rhetorical rule were more precious than a moral; neither Irenaeus, nor Epiphanius, nor other old or young scholars are blasphemous for repeating the blasphemies of written heresies; he that knew Alipius well, did not once think him guilty of theft because he studied in the place, and by chance handled the hammer and other tools that a robber left there, S. Augustine would not accuse him more in his confessions to God, than those hasty fellows which took them out of his hands, and handled those instruments more than he had done; he is strangely wise, that feareth shadows and yet taketh his enemy by the hand; that straineth at a gnat and swalloweth a camel; that condemneth an heresy in one school and yet commendeth it in another; that thinketh no man's gown whole cloth but only his own, as Aristotle judged all writers erroneous beside himself.  
He was without doubt in some points an excellent philosopher, but sometimes even his natural reason faileth, and our common sense confuteth his common sense▪ but the particulars of his questions and disputations, wherein he transcendently exceedeth other men are not very fit for this place. Come to supernatural and divine matters, and alas what are his metaphysics, where he maketh any mention of god or gods, but either absurd Paganism or intolerable Atheism. If we doubt hereof, let us search better, l. 12. metap. c. 7, 6, 8, 9, 10. and not fond go about to excuse or salve the matter, by distinction of a Philosophical truth, and a Theological truth, or by any like fruitless suttilty and quiddity of the schools: there is but one perfection & truth of one & the same matter, & that truth must be fet out of the divinity and highest schools even into the philosophy and lower schools, wheresoever heathenish philosophy is contrary or contradictory to Christ's divinity, as Vives speaketh more instantly, l. 5. cor. art. Beware, less any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, and after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ, saith S. Paul Colos. c. 2. v. 8. We must not be miscarried with the plausible name of Aristotle, or Philosophy, no more then of Therapontigonus of Pyrgopolynices, or such, but must christianly consider what becometh Christians to believe, & most christianly defend that which may be warranted by good christianity, whereby in our infancy we were incorporated into the church, and in our last end hereafter shall be received into the triumph of heaven. Aristotle no doubt had a notable & high reach in many controversies of common reason, notwithstanding his errors of the number of spheres, the order of planets, the saltness of the sea, the cause of fountains, the time of the rainbow, the Salamander's quality, the proportion of man's body, and other particulars noted by Vives, Grevinus, Albertus, Bessarion, Bodinus, & the rest, but Christ knoweth, how far he was from the true knowledge of a regenerate mind & a more perfect reason, directed and reform according to Gods own philosophy in the only fountain of all truth concerning matters of belief & the very perfect truth itself▪ for they which knew not God nor his word, that is the bread of life & understanding and the water of wisdom, without which none can live saith jesus, c. 15. v. 3. nor glorified him as God, became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was full of darkness, filling their hungry scholars with swine's meat in stead of the children's bread, Luke c. 15. v. 16. as Gabriel Biel applieth that text, in his initial oration against philosophical curiosity and ignorance, and for christian profession, to his prelections de canon missae; when they professed themselves wise they became fools, saith S. Paul that great Doctor, Rom. c. 1. v. 21, 28. But no marvel though before Christ's coming, the heathenish Philosophers having no conference with the people of God, & preferring Athens before jerusalem, and the kingdom of Macedonia or Persia, before the kingdom of Israel, no marvel though such Philosophers before Christ had no sense, or but very little feeling of God and Christ, considering how many great Scholars, and famous writers, even since the incarnation of our Saviour Christ according to his humanity, even since this Christian Philosopher S. john cried out, Behold the lamb of God, have either blindly of ignorance, or spitefully of malice, or devilishly of impiety and wickedness, not only not acknowledged this lamb of God, or any such salvation or redemption of the world by this lamb of God, but also denied, and defaced, & blasphemed this most innocent, and most righteous lamb of God. I let pass the rabble of Scribes and Pharisees, and jewish Rabbins, and other hypocrites, that not regarding Christ's unmatchable star, or Gods irrefragable voice from heaven, either with hand or with heart did conspire the bitter most intolerable passion of this most innocent lamb of God, and so unjustly and unmercifully crucified the most merciful Saviour of the world. We are taught by S. Paul, not to take heed of any jewish fables, or commandements of men turning from the truth, Tit. c. 1. v. 14. He that readeth of their Thalmud or doctrine, may soon see their blasphemies against God, in feigning him every day to weep once, to be angry once, & then the crest of the cock is white and pale: in accusing him of sin, when he made the Moon less than the Sun: of a lie, when he calleth the Sun a greater light, and the Moon a less: against Christ, in supposing that the temple of jerusalem was not so razed and destroyed, but that three or four cubits were untouched, and those stones left one upon another, where a rabbin might sit, and study the Thalmud: against heaven, by devising a hole in the North-parts, which is unfinished, to try by way of challenge, if any can match God's work, and make it up. Whereupon certain new builders, with new wits, have set a Chapel with the high end to the North, that their faces being turned that way in prayers time, God at their humble suit may himself make up that hole after so many years trial of other defective efficients. Now they said, all evil comes from the North, because that part is open, which being stopped, the evil may perhaps be stopped, and thus they builded. If our Emanuel like well of this dedication, who may or dare call it miswent, or mis-set? and what new founder will not follow this pattern, by the counsel of that Quidam in Munster, he that seeketh riches, goeth and looketh toward the North, perhaps hereby to obtain an increase of yearly revenues, by praying that way for daily bread, or to be contrary unto Mahomet, whose face is toward the South, as other Christians are contrary to the jews in looking towards the East. O happy times, and happy men, that revive Homer and Averroes, and other renowned Pagans, to make them builders and Architects in Christ's Church? we are too common and vulgar now, but they are so peerless, that we may hope for new arts, new manners, new worlds, to prevent arctical hyperboreall harms, and to win goods by the sons of Arcturus, whom perhaps they can guide by their learning, and answer the question in jobs book, cap. 38. v. 32. against the Moon, in sending her to God her creator, to complain of the Sun, for keeping the light from her at his certain times: against innocent Adam, by giving him both natures of male and female in Paradise before Eve was made, and telling of his engendering with the beasts of the field: against Noa the Preacher of righteousness, by reporting of the crows jealousy toward him: to let pass many such impudent fictions, unreasonable impieties, senseless things. But the jews credit is little worth with Christians, and themselves are wearied and tired with looking so long for a new Messiah, whereas they had the right lamb of God among them, and most horribly slaughtered him without all pity or mercy, even according to the spiritual visions, and divine predictions of the Prophets, that every scripture might be fulfilled, and no jot of God's word pass vnaccomplished, Act. c. 4. v. 28.  
The first coming of this lamb in humility is as certainly passed, as his second coming in majesty & glory is not far of. God grant we be found ready at the great coming of the great bridegroom, with the five wise virgins that were so well provided with oil in their lamps. Math. c. 25. v. 7, 10. As I have lightly passed over the light and vain jews, so I hope I may also do with the Turks, considering that the very name of jew and Turk are alike odious among good Christians. The Alcoran and Mahomet's whole heap of learning is not unknown to some students: where Mahomet is made a greater and a mightier prophet than Christ, because he had a greater body and was girded with a sword; where the lamb of the devil, or rather that wolf of hell is preferred before the lamb of God, because the beast wrought more wonders than jesus: where God is said, to be but one only single God in person, without any wife and therefore without any son or daughter, or any such issue, because God is not able in his extraordinary power to beget a body without ordinary means: where divers notable histories and special parts of the bible are fabulously delivered & strangely corrupted, because otherwise they serve not his purpose: where the finger of the devil hath encountered the finger of God, and the spirit of Belzebub opposed itself against the spirit of Christ. This horrible & abominable book, although it be read of some men, yet I trust, there is not any christian, that maketh any better account thereof then it deserveth, though Leo Nardus gather out of it a certain Confirmation of our gospel in his tolerable unnecessary devise, being in truth the very book of the devil, under pretence of worshipping the one only true God, whereas no man cometh to the father, but he whom the son leadeth and guideth, as many texts of scripture might be alleged to that purpose. john c. 14. v. 6. Math. c. 11. v. 27. etc. In this book Sergius a false monk and a Nestorian heretic had his hand, therein thinking to go beyond all Antichrists in oppugning and defacing the divinity of Christ. Sabel. l. 6. Enne. 8. but I hope there shall not greatly need any long confutation in this place, either of Mahometists, or of Nestorians, or of any like heretics, that denied the deity of Christ; they have been materially and thoroughly confuted by the best divines of all ages from time to time, even since the primitive church to this day, and these Sergianks and Alcoranks cannot endure long, but they shall be stopped up as wells without water: and they are carried about with a whirlwind and tempest; and to them the black darkness is reserved for ever. 2. Pet. c. 2. v. 17.  
God be praised, this poison hath not greatly at any time infected this church of England or any special members thereof, but hath always been reckoned among the most venomous schisms, the most horrible apostasies, & the most abominable heresies of other erroneous churches: and little better account may justly be made of Scaliger, that subtle master of late years, subtle as a spinner's web full of cunning and simply good for nothing, and therefore hated of right wisdom which the heathen miscalled Pallas, as the moral physician Petrarke writeth; l. 1. dial. 7. who either in the pride of his name julius Caesar, or of his wit, or militarship, accounteth the ministers of holy things in all countries and places, like those mahometical impostors which deceived the king of Moluccae with their Manucodiata a bird of paradise, for dreaming and feigning many matters, thereby to lead the people into vain hope and maintain their opinions or sects; Exercit. 228.5. And little better account hath been made of josephus the writer of the judaical history and himself a jewish priest, who reporteth of jesus but as of another good wise man, or a good prophet at the most, because he could say no more than he knew, or would not seem to be wiser than his countrymen, from whom both the turkish and all other ungracious violent doctrines had their beginning. l. 18. c. 4. antiq. Some other places of christendom have been more touched and plagued with these corrupt inventions of judaisme, Nestorianisme, Mahometism, & such like execrable apostasies and heresies, robbing Christ of his divinity, and themselves of their salvation, in denying him to be the lamb of God. I pray God, we may ever continue clear in the universities and cities, which are to be the nurseries of true doctrine and seminaries of true religion▪ the tree of apostasy and heresy must not only be hewn down, but plucked up by the very roots, and burned in unquenchable fire. Math. c. 3. v. 10.  
Certain ancient fathers in the primitive Church were troubled with confuting the wicked ruffianly apostata julian, Carion saith l. 3. who desperately opposed himself with might and main; with have among ye my masters the Nazarites, during that short flourish of his empire (which vanished like a mist, even as Athanasius had prophesied of him) against the holy one in Israel, the blessed lamb of God, and not only fought against Christ with the tyrannical arms of a bloody Emperor, but also with the sophistical weapons of a broken rhetorician, ever ready aswell to martyr the zealous confessor with the one, as to confute the most zealous doctor with the other. But himself in the end was stricken with an arrow wonderfully, as Achab was, & constrained to cry out in a horrible and woeful agony, Vicisti galilaee, o galilean, thou hast gotten the victory, o Christ, I must needs confess myself overcome, and so he gave up the black ghost, Theod. l. 3. c. 25. and certain fragments of his glorious and blasphemous style are yet extant, sufficiently confuted aswell by many learned christians, as by that ancient Greek bishop Cyrillus, whose purposely undertook that labour▪ tom. 3. the lip of truth shall be stable for ever, Prover. c. 12. v. 19 great is the truth, mighty is the truth, and it prevaileth. 3. Esdr. c. 4. v. 41. The like tragical success in effect had those other Emperors his companions, who went about to set up Apollonius Tyanaeus against Christ, and to prefer his strange wonderments before the divine miracles of Christ, as if greater divinity had appeared in the magical impostures of Apollonius the vain Pythagorist, then in the heavenly miracles of jesus whose name is wonderful, Esai c. 9 v. 6. according to that saying in the gospel; false Christ's and false prophets shall arise, & shall show signs & wonders, to deceive, if it were possible, even the elect, Matth. c. 24. v. 24. whereas both themselves, those Antichristian Emperors, as Bullinger writeth of Tyrant's tragedies, c. 20. and their great juggler or magician, or impostor, or Philosopher, or whatsoever the devil he was, soon vanished into smoke, and had an end answerable to their beginning, notwithstanding the manifest applauses of sundry smoothing parasites toward the one, and the goodly fine devices of some glozing Rhethoricians for the other: as the book of Eusebius Caesariensis against that false Philalethes, showeth plainly, and as Herodotus and other Gentiles in the light of nature only can say, that no injustice hath ever been unpunished, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, in Terpsichore, a voice in a vision by night sent to Hipparehus a tyrant before his death.  
I cannot here forget either Hierocles, or Philostratus, or Dion Prusensis, or Libanus the Philosopher, or Lucian, or Eunapius, or the rest of that Greekish conceited crew, who vainly and impiously whetted the edge of their fantastical Rhetoric and Philosophy, against him that reigneth in heaven, while they like desperate hellhounds most woefully gnash their teeth in hell: commending to such natures the sentence of Aulus Gellius, l. 12. c. 11. taken from the mouth of that grave and constant Philosopher Peregrinus surnamed Proteus, whom they so lustily and bravely contemn. Not to sin upon hope of being hid, because no corner is hid from God and time▪ where is the wise? where is the Scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made the wisdom of this world foolishness? but we preach Christ crucified, unto the jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks' foolishness, but unto them that are called we preach Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God, for the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men, 1. Cor. c. 1. v. 19, 20, 22, etc. Ah wretched Lucian, justly surnamed Atheos', thou blasphemer and whelp of Arrius, no jot inferior for impiety to Lucian the Marcionist, that didst in thy Peregrinus requite the most grievous, but most happy passion of the blessed lamb of God, with so blasphemous a scoff, and so damnable a phrase, as to call him, o devil as thou art, the crucified Sophister and hanged impostor, whereas thy damned self now dost with the Apology of Mycillus about thy neck, and all other must hang in hell, that are tickled with any such hellish Rhetoric, or whet their delicate wits upon him, that is able to bereave them of all wit, and can utterly confound them with the least breath of his mouth.  
Alas, what is Rhetoric or Philosophy, or any good gift, either of tongues or knowledge, of speech or reason, if they be abused and perverted to a bad use? O man what hast thou that thou hast not received? If thou hast received it, why dost thou boast and vaunt thyself, as if thou hadst not received it? 1. Cor. c. 4. v. 7. One writeth of Lucian, that as trim a fellow, and as fine a Rhethorician as he is, a student were better not read him at all, then read him all, meaning that horrible outrageous part against Christ, named Alexander Pseudomantis, like a very plaguesore in a living body, a perilous part for young wits to deal withal, that be not fully catechized and christianized aforehand. It is not unknown to some, how this devilish imp and scoffing rakehell for a time became a Christian, but soon revolted, saith Volaterranus, and after his most execrable apostasy was wont to say, that all he gate by his Christendom, was the addition of one syllable to his name, being before called Lucius, but then christened Lucianus, like one made only to jest, a very animal risibile, as Eunapius reckoneth of him, or rather, which turned the grace of God into wantonness, ordained before to this condemnation, as saith S. Jude v. 4.  
He might have at least sported without harm to himself and not have been condemned by his own mouth; and to jest with a jester, if he had said, that his baptism lifted him from ima, and gave him life, or the first syllable of anima, it had not been very greatly amiss: but like enough the gentleman was in such a kind of laughing melancholy, as a countryman was, against the great archbishop of Collen, when he turned his raw dutch jest on the worst hand very proudly & rudely in this sort; If the archbishop goeth with such harnessed men, because he sustaineth the person of a Duke, not only of a Bishop, I pray, when the devils carry the Duke to hell, what shift will the Bishop make? whereas he might have said with as much reason and more obedience, for aught I see in Fulgosius and Duärenus the reporters hereof, when the good angels shall carry the Bishop to the joys of heaven, what should the Duke be afraid of his end? but than he had not been a right Germane clown; no more had Lucian been antichristian, which name he liked best in spite of all good names, as Lactantius judgeth of him, l. 1. c. 9 de fall. celi. and in spite of Traian's and Plutarch's sober virtues, as Vives censureth him, l. 2. de verit. fidei. Lord God, what is man's wit without the grace of God? what is man's reason and learning without the spirit of God? Achitophel may seem an oracle for the time, but at the last for all his exceeding great wisdom he hanged himself. 2. King's c. 17. v. 23. Lucian was but an ape to Achitophel, and therefore the less marvel though he came to an apish death, and were rend in pieces of dogs, as Suidas reporteth, like that cursed starched creature jezabel. I beseech God, rid universities, cities, courts, towns and countries of such apes, which behave themselves in matters of religion, as if they were in a tennis court or vaulting school, without any reverence or regard, and either give them more fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom, or less pride in the flourish of their own wit, which is the end & overthrow of all goodness. As jannes' and jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth, men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith, but they shall prevail no longer, for their madness shall be manifest unto all men, as also theirs was. 2. Timo. c. 3. v. 8. Neither am I only to complain of Lucian, or those other vain greekish wits, as of jannes' and jambres, and such like, and far above any such, but divers learned Romans of much better note when they lived, and ever since reputed very sensible, reasonable, wise men, cast themselves headlong into the same damnable gulf of blasphemy and Atheism. If any man love not the Lord jesus Christ, let him be anathema, and had in execration, yea let him be maranatha, and abhorred unto the death. 1. Cor. c. 16. v. 22. Lord God, what should I say to the two Pliny's, the uncle and the nephew, famous learned men, but alas most wretched souls to God? whereof the one in his natural history, l. 7. not subtly or sophistically, like Aristotle, or his Arabian and corrupt interpreter Averroes, but flatly and resolutely denieth the immortality of the soul; the other, l. 10. reporteth of Christ and the primitive christians of his age, as he listeth, in the abundance and liking of his own carnal conceit, measuring the soul by the body, the line by the timber: these are fleshly, they are makers of sects, they have not the spirit, and therefore they mislike the fruits hereof, as S. Jude saith, v. 19 I cannot deny but Cornelius Tacitus is a grave & wise historian in many points, yet how lightly and foolishly, nay how wickedly and impiously doth he report of Christ and his professed followers? l. 15. wherefore these are no more to be esteemed of us, either for their oratourship or other learning, than Tertullus that orator, and Elymas that cunning man were esteemed of the Apostles: Acts c. 13. v. 10. c. 24. v. 16.  
The like censure I and all good Christians must give of Suetonius in the life of Nero Claudius, of Symmachus in Prudentius works, of Celsus in the books of Origene, & of too many other in that kind, who either reviled Christ in abominable most hellish terms of a notable malefactor and seducer of the people, in very truth no better then hungry ravenous dogs licking up the vomit of the Pharisees, Mat. cap. 27. v. 62. or else acknowledged his only humanity without any christian confession of his deity. Such is the fashion of the world, and such is the guise of disguised malignant worldlings, to rail on the person whom they may see, when they cannot disgrace his virtues which they will not see; to respect the men that are of mean estate; without regard of their stately and excellent gifts to use general reproofs without particular proofs, and rather be content to call him good then leave him out of the Libel; to soar aloft and hover in the air like a spirit of the air, and yet at length to lick dust, and seize upon flies and worms and meanest things; to carry a great name, even a title of Legions, and yet to end but in brutish and hoggish conquests upon the worst and vilest matters. These disloyalties and misdemeanours are too well known among some men, and I would to God they were either less notorious, or more abhorred.  
I confess many books are otherwise of very great importance and worthy the reading, but Christ knoweth how much better it were quite to banish them the Country, then that they should creep into the least credit with us in any such matter of faith and religion; we must not judge of Angels by the devils will, or learn of our enemies how to use our friends, we must have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, of pride, of malice, of blasphemy, but rather reprove them, as S. Paul teacheth the Ephesians, c. 5, v. 11, etc. Men void of the fear of God's holy church, and given over to a reckless sense, seem they otherwhile to the world never so sensible, never so reasonable, never so learned, never so wise, never so hardy, never so subtle, both cast away themselves in the end, and do either little or no good, nay exceeding much harm, without the good direction and reformation of a christian spirit, which buildeth not upon flesh or blood, or upon any goodly show of human wit, reason, learning, experience or wisdom, but even upon that corner stone, and upon that most sound and invincible rock, whereon Christ buildeth his church, that is, a true confession of Christ with S. Peter, and a faithful beholding of the lamb of God with S. john.  
Other good parts, and other good gifts are good in their kind, at least as the world counteth good, and as good goeth now a days, but alas, all other good without this good is too bad. What availeth it to have all the experience, all the policy, all the learning, all the wisdom, all the wealth and plausibility in the world? nay, what doth it profit to win the whole world, and to lose thine own soul? there runneth an old proverbial rhythmical verse among Scholars, notable for the sense, though otherwise not so excellent: 
Hoc est nescire, sine Christo plurima scire;  
Qui Christum bene scit, satis est si caetera nescit.  The greatest knowledge without Christ is no better than blind ignorance: he that well knoweth Christ, it maketh the less matter if his knowledge be the less otherwise. O it is Christian belief, Christian zeal, Christian humility, that leadeth to heaven. Salvation cometh not of thyself, or of thy own wit, thou art damned in the first Adam, and must either remain damned still, or be regenerate and saved in the second Adam jesus Christ, the propitiation of our sins, the immaculate lamb slain from the beginning, and once offered on the altar of the cross for all, the very true right only lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the earth: we may endeavour to sow, or to plant, or to water, or to run, or to do any action, but it is God that giveth the increase and victory. God be merciful unto us, and give us more and more of his mercy, that through his grace and spirit we may grow and increase in his vineyard, still from better to better, to seek still the final destruction of these foxes which destroy the vine, till we inherit that kingdom, and enjoy that crown of glory that is prepared for him and his Angels, for him and his elect, for him and all good Christians.  
We see how thoroughly the devil hath played his part, in opposing so many great scholars and odd wits in all ages against our saviour▪ his craft and malice hath left no way unattempted whereby he may win the world unto him, he continually goeth and rangeth about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. 1. Peter c. 1. v. 8. O he is a wicked and a crafty devil, and is too well learned, to spy his own advantage, and ever ready, to take the least occasion of his gain by our loss, of his strength by our infirmity, of his comfort by our miserable fall and perdition, of setting up his own kingdom by striving to pull down the kingdom of Christ; he wanteth no devilish angels, no ministers, no instruments to serve his turn, such as those leopards soldiers, which troubled and guarded Ignatius, and the better he used them in words, the worse and more insolent they were, as it is recorded in his epistle to the Romans, he hath kings and kaysers, counsellors and nobles, secretaries and writers, lawyers and divines, physicians and many hirelings at commandment, the devilish world is too full of the devil, would to Christ, he had less stroke among the professors of Christ. O generation of vipers▪ how can ye speak good things, when ye yourselves are evil? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Matth. c. 12. v. 34. How can you once think, that you have a true spirit, when neither Moses nor Paul can make you, not to rail upon the fathers and judges of the land, nor to curse the rulers of the people. Exod. c. 22. v. 28. Acts c. 23. v. 5. Yet you that be true Christians lift up your heads, as Stoflerinus saith in the year, 1524. after that he foresaw the changes which were then like to come creeping or rushing into the world. I had thought, not to have proceeded any further in the rehearsal of more examples, but yet behold more wicked enemies of the lamb of God▪ the men are too notorious and their writings are too famous. Italy, in old times the true mirror of virtue and manhood, of late years hath been noted, to breed up infinite Atheists, such as Caesar Borgia was, that using or abusing himself in his life to contemn religion, despised it on his deathbed, as Sanazarius writeth l. 2. epigr. or as Alexander the sixth, or as Leo the tenth, either of the two as irreligious, as beastly & Neronious as Nero himself, as the same excellent poet and knight, surnamed Sincerus for his honesty, & Actius for his industry, hath written: but of chiefest name those three notable pernicious fellows, Pomponatius a great philosopher, Aretine a great courtier or rather courtesan, the grandsire of all false and martinish courtiership, and Machiavelli a great politic. Pomponatius embracing the poisonous doctrine of Aristotle and Pliny, openly disputed before the Pope, and writ a Book against the immortality of the soul, with such force of subtle reasons and philosophical persuasions, that he was thought to bring Leo the tenth then reigning, into his profane and diabolical opinion, as iovius an humanitian bishop saith; a good vicar of Christ, no doubt, and well grounded in the doctrine of resurrection, which is able alone to confute & even annihilate all such books and libels whatsoever, both for the divine and most sovereign authority of the makers and authors thereof, and for the necessity of the word itself, to maintain God's promiss and man's dominion over brute beasts. Aretinus a man, or rather by moral metamorphose a beast of a most viperous & hellish spirit, in all kind of devilish impiety unicus, and otherwise not so, in which respect like enough neither Gesner nor Simler judged him worthy to come into their libraries among other writers, although some Italians his ungracious disciples have called him, divine Peter Aretine, porter of Pluto's divinity, or much like Tully's divine wit of L. Lucullus, or Ovid's, God is in us, and Romish divinity, which may ever have a new stamp from his holiness, and other such Rhethoricall and poëticall lavish hyperbolees, he, I say of all other, was the arrogantest rakehell, and rankest villain, saving your reverence, that ever set pen to paper, like cursed Sodomites, jesting and sporting at that which good men in natural modesty are ashamed to speak of. Gen. cap. 19 vers. 4, 5.  
His horrible most damnable book of three impostors, & his impudent infamous Capricio, or Apology of Paedarastice prove him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, a very incarnate devil you may call it, and one Martin-marprelate of late hath done such a kind of work for very 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, and nothing else. But Aretine spoke ill of that heavenly God he knew not, and perished through his own carnal corruption, as Peter the true Apostle hath deuined, as it were, of this outcast, 1. Epist. c. 2. v. 12. whose delight & venery was his death, as the tribe of Beniamites, not only the city of Gomorrheans, gonorreans was destroyed for this sin, judges c. 19 when God had given him up unto vile affections, whereby he left the natural use of women, he burned in lust toward men, and wrought filthiness with men, Rom. ca 1. ver. 24, 27. a shame it is to name those things which are done of such men in secret, Ephes. c. 5. v. 12. Now God for his Christ's sake keep all students, and all Christians from any such desperate mind, from such monstrous and unprofitable singularity: and out upon all such Satanish books, that are printed I think in the devils name, and go about even like hungry bears, seeking whom they may devour, as it were in very extreme contempt of the lamb of God, of the grace of God, of everlasting truth, of that most blessed union and singularity of true faith.  
Egyptians are a vain generation, and fit to innovate matters then to govern present things, saith Q, Curtius l. 4. the pictures and patterns of our frivolous Atheists and Reformers, both in this point very Gypsies. Yet Machiavelli not so ill as Aretine, yet Machiavelli too ill, God knoweth▪ this unchristian master of policy, raising up Nicolaites now of his stamp, as Nicholas an Apostata did among the seven Deacons, is not afraid in a heathenish & tyrannical spirit, l. 2. of warly art, in the person of Fabricio, to accuse the gospel of Christ, and the humility of the lamb of God, for the decay of the most flourishing and prosperous estate of the Roman Empire, which fell by the own idleness and folly, as himself confesseth l. 7. and as other estates are overturned by it, the mother, and nurse, and wife of all evil, saith my honourable Lord of Essex to his Soldiers, a mother that beareth none but bondmen, a nurse that feedeth none but dulpates, a wife that marrieth none but unthrifts. His discursive accusation is in many men's hands, & I would to God the intended effect of the discourse were not in some men's hearts: howbeit, the same is learnedly confuted, not only by a religious french protestant, whose commentaries are extant, written ex professo, against Machiavelli and his antichristian grounds of government, but also by no vile Papist, much named and read among students, I mean Osorius in his Nobilitate Christiana, l. 3. where it is notably proved by many worthy, divine, and human histories, that christian humility and the profession of the lamb of God, is not any hindrance to the right fortitude beseeming the people of God, but rather a very great and principal furtherance of their valiant and invincible acts, in fight Gods own battles, and seeking not their own glory, but the kingdom of David, the kingdom of Israel, the kingdom of Christ, even as David himself fought most manfully for the establishing of that kingdom in the name of the living God, overcoming valiantly not only mighty champions and huge Giants in that defence, but also vanquishing and subduing his other foes the enemies of God in infinite numbers, before him, behind him, and round him, as appeareth notably in the books of Kings, in the Chronicles, and in his own Psalms.  
And to omit the handling of military virtues, it is most certain, that no man is more careful to do his duty, than a christian conscience, no man more hearty in doing it, than a christian faith, no man more trusty, than christian charity, no man more conscionable, more faithful, more charitable than a true christian man: and that secretary of hell, not only of Florence is forced to confess in some places l. 1. disp. c. 11. upon Livy, and elsewhere, but most emphatically in his poem to L. Philip Strozza, by vehement and zealous interrogation; In whom ought there to be more fear of God, then in a warrior, which every day committing himself to infinite perils, hath most need of his help? A right Italian sentence, a notable word, a fit preserve against the other venims which this Spider gathered out of old philosophers and heathen authors; for that is the wit and disposition of our reformative age, to gather precepts from those things which our forefathers in their learning judged no better than objections, and to study those matters for practice, which were first taught them for their safety, by knowing and avoiding them, and to gather common places of men's certain and supposed errors omitting their virtues and commendations. But I cannot now stand to debate any such particular point or several branch of Antichristianisme▪ he is already confuted sufficiently by the general testimony of all good consciences, and by the universal hearty consent of all godly and manly christians, as it may also please God, at his gracious pleasure to work in many other not yet regenerate, that now account too well of him. Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap: for he that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that soweth to the spirit, shall of the spirit reap life everlasting. Gala. c. 6. v. 7, 8.  
God's works are great, and mighty, and wonderful, and exceeding admirable even above the capacity of the wisest and profoundest mind in the world: yet are his mercies above his works, and the depth of his mercies far more wonderful than the height of his works. O merciful Lord, open the infinite fountains & floodgates of thy unspeakable mercies, and touch the hearts of so many as are not utterly obdurate and reprobate, with the finger of thy holy spirit, even to the final reformation of the prodigal son, and joyful recovery of the lost sheep, so far as it is possible for strayed sheep to have any portion in the sheepfold of the lamb of God. Thy holy servants and prophets assure us of the most happy condition and blessed estate of the kingdom of Israel, the kingdom of David, the kingdom of Christ; o let thy kingdom come, and let thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. As for such uncircumcised Philistines, such blasphemous Goliahs, such rebellious Achitophel's, such unnatural Onans, such wicked and desperate Atheists, as I have named, if any such remain upon the earth, as I fear me there are too many, and haply some among Christians, and haply some among scholars, savouring too much of these ungracious scholars; Lord God, either speedily reform them in the abundance of thy mercy, so far as they have not committed that great unpardonable sin against the holy Ghost, or utterly confound them with the iron rod of thy justice, and teach other by their example to tremble at the mighty majesty of their Lord God. Let them feel the force of the lion of the tribe of juda, that would not see the goodness of the lamb of God; let them taste the insufferable torments & horrors of damnation, that refused to enjoy the most comfortable & blessed estate of salvation; thy mighty stretched out arm is not weakened or shortened; teach them to fear their God, either like good children, or like cursed creatures, dreading the horrible punishment due to their horrible sins.  
It hath pleased God in all ages, by the mouth of his Prophets under the law, and by the mouth of his Apostles under the gospel, to win infinite thousands to unfeigned repentance, and to the faithful worship of the true God, as manifestly appeareth, partly by the ancient histories and prophecies of the old Bible, & partly by the gospel and Acts of the Apostles in the new Testament. In the primitive Church the number of converts, and confessors, and zealous Christians, and martyrs was infinite: paganism, idolatry, blasphemy, infidelity, and heresy gave place to christianity; the mighty power and fiery operation of the holy-ghost is exceeding wonderful; innumerable multitudes were daily and continually gained to the church, as Augustine by the zealous, and eloquent, & devout, and learned Sermons of S. Ambrose, was reclaimed from his heathenish philosophy, and manichisme, and became a good Christian, a zealous doctor, a godly Bishop, a reverend father, as his books of confessions do testify, from the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of the fift book, unto the end of that work.  
I might declare the like conversion of infinite other, but his example is most famous, and the matter itself most evident; the kingdom of darkness stooped to the kingdom of light, Satan yielded to Christ, the world, the flesh, and the devil were conquered by the lamb of God, and great hope appeared of the very universal establishment, and catholic peace of the Israëticall kingdom. But Satan cannot sleep long, he and his hellish angels must play their parts, the malice of the devil lieth in continual wait, to entrap and entangle the soul of man. Satan is a cunning and strong adversary, and ever striveth to increase his Synagogue and rout of infidels, of Atheists, of Giants, of Heretics, of Apostates, of schismatics, in every dangerous and pestiferous kind, that iniquity might have the upper hand. Alas, his malice and craft prevail too much, o God, when thou seest thy gracious time, confound all his pestilent craft and malice, good lamb of God, take away the sin of the world, even this horrible and abominable sin of the wicked world: thy goodness is above all the naughtiness of the world, we are not to limit or restrain thy omnipotency, o good God, be merciful unto us wretched sinners, even where our sins deserve hell fire, and utter damnation. The world is wicked, the flesh is frail, the devil is busy, man is man, and man is subject to all imperfections and vices, to all infirmities and sins, to all lewdness and naughtiness, even to that great and most horrible sin of blasphemy, infidelity, and atheism, it is the only direction of thy grace and holy Spirit according to thy word, that can keep us within the bounds of good order, of good conscience, of good faith, of good christianity, of god zeal toward the lamb of God: without which zeal what are we but the children of wrath, the sons of iniquity, the imps of perdition, the members of Satan, the ministers of Antichrist, very wretches and atheists? We are called Christians, o make us true christians, o regenerate a new heart in us, a right christian heart, wholly and sincerely devoted to the lamb of God.  
The kings of France affect the style and title of most Christian, the kings of Spain have been termed Catholici, our Kings and Queens of England have lately been called Defenders of the faith: o good God, make all good kings, and all good Queens throughout all christendom, and all their Subjects, most Christian, Catholic, Defenders of the faith, and suffer not any, christian or unchristian fool to say in his heart, there is no God, there is no such lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. But above all other, & beyond all other, woe be unto thee Antichrist, thou great enemy of Christ, thou whore of Babylon, thou abomination of desolation, thou holy father of infidelity and reprobation, thou ungodly god of perdition and damnation, being the head of all evils, not for time and influence, as Aquinas distinguisheth, but for that perfection of malice which is in thee by devilish effects. Part. 3. Quaest. 8. Artic. 8. Some think thee to be the Turk, as Melancthon in his common place on the fourth commandment: some the Pope, as Chemnisius in his Examen: some both, Draconites c. 8. Dan and Mayor upon the Epistles to the Thessalonians: some neither, as they which counted Nero, or one of the tribe of Dan, or Luter to be he. But god knoweth, the prophecies of jerem. touching the fall of Babylon in the 5. ca throughout; & the prophesy of Daniel touching the king of lust and self-will, c. 11. v. 36. c. 8. v. 23. and the revelation of S. john touching the same fall, c. 17, 18, 19 and the description of the great whore, the mother of the abominations of the earth drunken with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of jesus; together with that declaration of Antichrists coming before the day of Christ set down by Saint Paul. 2. Thessaly. cap. 2. vers. 4, 8. and other like Texts are by the censure of the soundest judgements, examining all circumstances and appendices of that Text and that Revelation, most sensibly and visibly verified in the See of Rome, and in the Pope the great bishop of that See, whose intolerable pride tyrannising over all the kings and princes of christendom, and exalting himself above all that is called God, is gone before, and whose ruinous shame followeth after, when it shall please God, invincibly to establish the kingdom of Christ, Dan. c. 2. v. 45. and utterly to overthrow & desolate this kingdom of Antichrist, the man of sin, the son of perdition, the adversary of Christ, as God sitting in the temple of God and bearing himself for God, as S. Paul writeth of him in the same epistle to the Thessalonians, Let any indifferent divine not over partially and unreasonably transported with blind affection to that see, uprightly and sincerely discuss the proper effects and accidents of Antichrist, and I assuredly believe, he shall not find the like concurrence of those actions and qualities in any other creature but in the Pope, whose doctrine, discipline, and whole regiment is notoriously known, and whose corrupt lives displayed to the world in that high degree of their intolerable abomination even in the temple of God, reveal a very incarnate Antichrist, whose ecclesiastical supremacy had nigh hand abolished all good ecclesiastical doctrine and discipline.  
But this common place of Antichrist, and the whole anatomy of his ecclesiastical doctrine and discipline, requireth a larger discourse, and may minister plentiful matter, not of one treatise, but of many treatises, and whole volumes, as already hath done to many notable learned men and some divines in England. I for this time am to leave Antichrist with those other profane & devilish Atheists, accounting no better of him then of them, but rather abhorring & detesting him in greater measure than any of them, or then all they together, by how much he hath been a great enemy to the lamb of God, more than any other. I hasten to the rest, yet I beseech you mark what the Prophet Esay saith against the idols of the devil, and for the lamb of God, c. 46. v. 1. etc. Bell is fallen, Nebo is broken down, whose images were a burden for the beasts and cattle, to overlade them, and to make them weary, they are sunk down and fallen together, for they cannot ease them of their burden, therefore must they go away into captivity.  
So far against idolatry; then Christ the lamb of God speaketh prophetically, as it were in his own person, v. 3. hearken unto me ye house of jacob, and ye that remain of the house of Israel, whom I have borne from your mother's womb, and brought up from your nativity. It is I, even I, which shall bear you unto your last age, I have made you, I will also nourish you, defend you, and save you.  
And seeing our last mention was of Antichrist, mark also I pray you, how the same Prophet in the very next Chapter, or rather God by his Prophet, more particularly and specially menaceth Babylon, that is, Rome, v. 1. But as for thee thou daughter, thou damsel Babylon, sit down in the dust, sit upon the ground, there is no throne, o thou daughter of Chaldaea, for thou shalt no more be called tender and pleasant, thy filthiness shall be discovered, and thy privities shallbe seen, for I will avenge me upon thee, and will show no mercy unto thee as I do unto other. Our Redeemer is called the Lord of hosts, the holy one of Israel, sit still, hold thy tongue, get thee into some dark corner, o daughter of Chaldaea, for thou shalt no more be called Lady of kingdoms. I was so wrath with my people, that I punished mine inheritance, and gave them into thy power, nevertheless, thou showedst them no mercy, but even the very aged of them didst thou sore oppress with thy yoke, and thou thoughtest thus, I shallbe lady for ever, and besides all that, thou hast not regarded these things, nor remembered what was the end of the City jerusalem.  
Hear now therefore, thou delicate one, that sittest so careless, and speakest thus in thy heart, I am alone, and without me there is none, I shall never be widow, nor desolate again, yet both these things shall come unto thee upon one day, namely, widowhood and desolation, they shall mightily fall upon thee, and so forth, as consequently followeth in the same chapter, to the same effect, of much trouble, mischief, ruin, and a sudden utter destruction and overthrow menaced against Babylon, for a time the Lady & Empress of the world, that is, Rome. A notable caveat for Antichrist, that is, the Pope and his adherents, if they would be so graciously wise to foresee and conceive their own misery and destruction: but it is said in the very same chapter, v. 10. Thou hast trusted in thy wickedness, and hast said, no man seethe me: but thine own wisdom & cunning hath deceived thee, and so forth.  
And no doubt, even so it goeth with all the members and imps of Antichrist in what degree soever, that any way oppose themselves against Christ, or any way blaspheme and deface the lamb of God, they may seem wise and cunning in their own eyes, in their own stubborn wilful conceit, but extreme ruin, and misery, and perdition, is the final reward of all such wisdom and cunning, even in the mightiest Lords and Princes, and Emperors, and Popes of the world. For every one that heareth my word and doth it not, saith Christ himself Math. c. 7. v. 26. shall be likened unto a foolish man that built his house upon the sand, and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blue and bet upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it. Every one, saith Christ, how great so ever he otherwise seemeth to the world, even the great Turk, even the great Pope, even the greatest of all, amongst the greatest of all. A foolish man, a foolish end; a proud man, a proud end; a wicked man, wicked end; an ungodly and godless man, a wretched and horrible end, full of all woe and utter destruction both of body and soul. Men cannot gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles, saith S, Luke c. 6. v. 44.  
Good brethren, let us actually and particularly apply this general doctrine unto ourselves, whereof otherwise we have no proper use, but a common wandering thought, void of that singular fruit and effect which the word of God is to work personally in every one that hath his name registered in the lambs book of life. Let us give diligent ear unto Christ's word, and follow the same accordingly, lest we be truly compared to that foolish builder. Let us hearken unto him with the house of jacob, and the remainder of the house of Israel, who hath borne us from our mother's womb, and brought us up from our nativity, who hath nourished us, defended us, saved us, taken away our sins, and made us blessed: for blessed is the man unto whom no sin is imputed. Let us unfeignedly & faithfully embrace our redeemer the Lord of hosts, the holy one of Israel, who hath revealed, and shall reveal the filthy fornication of Babylon, as he hath confounded, and shall confound the outrageous pride of that city, and advance his mount Zion above the mount of Esau, or the tower of Babel. Upon mount Zion shall be deliverance, and it shallbe holy, and the house of jacob shall possess their possessions, and the house of jacob shall be a fire, and the house of joseph a flame, and the house of Esau as stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them, there shallbe no remnant of the house of Esau, for the Lord hath spoken it, saith Abdias, v. 17.  
Let us remember, what S. john writeth in his Revelation, c. 17. v. 14. etc. Ten kings shall give their strength and power unto the beast, which ten kings shall fight with the lamb, and the lamb shall overcome them all, for he is the Lord of Lords, and King of Kings, & they that are on his side are called, and chosen, and faithful. Let us assure ourselves, that he it is and none but he, that can and will mightily deliver us from the forenamed mischief and perdition threatened by the prophet Esay and all the rest of the holy prophets. Let us continually call to mind that godly and heavenly counsel of S. Paul, Coloss. c. 3. v. 8. put ye of all wrath, all fierceness, maliciousness, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth, lie not one to another, seeing ye have put of the old man with his works and have put on the new man, which is renewed into knowledge after the image of him that made him, where is neither Greek, nor jew, circumcision, nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond, free, but Christ is all in all. O let us ever and ever meditate upon this and such Christian instructions, o let us ever and ever practise them, and perform them to the uttermost of our endeavour & power in Christ, in whom only we are powerable to do his gracious pleasure, and to make ourselves ready for our inheritance in his most blessed kingdom. Let us daily and hourly look to ourselves, & pray for ourselves, and pray for one another, that we be not led into temptation, but delivered from evil, and namely from the forenamed horrible evil of blasphemy, idolatry, infidelity, Paganism, Atheism, and all such like devilish abomination, the very worst and most damnable effect of Antichrist himself, of Belzebub himself. Let us humbly and zealously pray unto Christ, to make us like that wise man in the gospel after S. Matth. c. 7. v. 24. which built his house upon a rock, and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blue, and beat upon that house, and it fell not, because it was grounded upon a rock, even the word of Christ, the voice of the lamb, the gospel of salvation, true faith with true charity, good belief with the effect of good works, as the good fruit of a good tree, according to Christ's own preaching in his gospel, in the same chapter; v. 17, 18. Let us study, not to be servants and scholars of infidels, but the sons of the prophets, even such sons and disciples of the prophets, as Samuel taught at his school or university at Naioth in Rama; 1. King's c. 19 v. 20. and as the two most wonderful prophets Elias and Elisaeus taught in their cities and universities at Bethel and at jericho. 4. King's c. 2. v. 3, 5. and as such other godly prophets taught in their several schools & towns, and namely the most noble evangelical prophet Esay, who is reported to succeed Elisaeus in that most worthy prophetical function. Let us not believe every spirit, but prove and discern the spirits, whether they be of God or not, for many false prophets are gone out into the world; hereby shall ye know the spirit of God, every spirit that confesseth, that jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God, and every spirit which confesseth not, that jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God, and this is the spirit of Antichrist of whom ye have heard, how that he should come, and even now already is he in the world, saith S. john 1. c. 4. v. 1, 2, 3. where he also addeth this joyful comparison, v. 4. Little children ye are of God, and have overcome them that are not of God; for greater is he that is in you then he that is in the world; they are of the world, and therefore speak they of the world and the world heareth them; we are of God, he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth us not; hereby know we the spirit of verity & the spirit of error▪ thus much S. john in that place.  
O let us still and still, more and more eschew & abandon this spirit of error, this spirit of the world, this spirit of Antichrist, and ever embrace and acknowledge the spirit of truth, the spirit of God, the spirit of Christ. O let us for the love of God, for the love of Christ, for the love of our own souls evermore seek the lamb of God, follow the lamb of God, behold and embrace the lamb of God, look for the health of our bodies, the salvation of our souls, the safeguard of both, not in, or from, or by any other, but only in, and from, and by the only lamb of God, repose our whole belief, trust, and felicity in the lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world, that redeemeth & saveth us wretched and wicked sinners of the world, that with his own precious blood hath paid the great ransom for the release of our miserable bondage and captivity under the yoke of sin, and hath suffered that great insufferable passion due to us sinners, to bring us unto heaven, unto God, unto himself sitting on the right hand of the father in all majesty, power, and glory for ever and ever.  
Thus you have a short confutation of those ungracious worldlings, that either with wilful, or no better than beastly violence, or with witless & desperate blasphemy, or with fond and obstinate self-love, have proved themselves the most indiscreet rulers, the most unskilful writers, the most vile and ungodly sinful men that ever were called men, or ever lived in the world. I mean first those ungodly antichristian hellish Aristotelists, Auerroists Plinians, call them in word as they were in deed, men of more subtlety than surety, which denying the immortality of the soul, accounting it no better than heat and breath, moving and removing the body only, have ignorantly and prejudicially denied the final cause of Christ's sorrowful humiliation and glorious resurrection, which saved our souls from damnation and death in the nethermost noisome deadly pit, the lake of torment, the prison of misery and all thraldom world without end: and defending the eternity of the world, judging it without beginning and without ending (which undoubtedly was fashioned & finished in six days, as we surely prove by the Genesis of Moses, the wonderful prophet of God, the wisest lawmaker in Israel, the mightiest captain of arms, by the Hexaëmerons of divers both Greek and Latin doctors and fathers, by our Apostolic belief most steadfastly builded on God the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, at whose last coming the earth shall melt away like wax, and the heavens shallbe folded up like a garment) have defaced with all their might the majesty of Christ's ascension, and denied the eternity of his last dreadful judgement, both which we reverence and magnify with all godly love and Christian zeal, having visibly and faithfully seen the one with the Apostles eyes, and unfeignedly looking for the other with lively hearts, with spiritual hunger and thirst, with desire to leave this mad and drunken world, to live infinitely & reign with him in everlasting life.  
Then I mean those hypocritical pharisees, those impious jews, and jewish confederates, succeeding the heathenish infidels and pagans in course and time of years, but far before them in all wickedness & sin, in every notorious iniquity and enormity, that did treacherously and sophistically seek to undermine Christ, and to take him in his words, that in the gall of bitterness and bond of impiety, mocked and spit at him, and most grievously and unjustly disgraced him, in spite of heaven and earth, of angels and men, even as God had appointed in his secret ordinance and wonderful providence before the foundation of the world was laid: that in the pride and rage of judaisme, in the height of anger and depth of malice, whipped him like an outcast the son of God, crowned him with thorns like a mad bedlam the innocent lamb of God, nay led and pierced, and wounded him to death like a hurtful beast the triumphant king of angels and men, & mighty Saviour of the world.  
But they soon felt the heavy intolerable hand of God for these so jewish and devilish abominations, and when their brazen faces would not blush, nor their iron hearts relent, the very stones of the temple were riven asunder, the fair vail was rend in twain from the top to the bottom, those senseless stones were more soft and pensive than the jews, the dead carcases were more tenderly and mercifully affected toward Christ crucified at his one and last exclamation in one hour, than the elders of jury were in all their life time, which heard many heavenly admonitions, divers happy promises, sundry blessings and cursings, yet lived and died in their gainesaying, being at last themselves as stones and carcases rejected, thrown out, and trodden upon, having their children and cities utterly destroyed, and their land laid waste, and those mockings and spittings, that thorny crown and vinegar and gall, those nails and that spear, and that cross, and all the rods and crosses that were laid upon Christ, have ever since been laid upon them, being esteemed the most odious abjects of all men, the very rogues and runnegates of the earth, against whom all men have set themselves, even as they oppose and set themselves against all men like Ismaëites and Edomites, more vile in God's eyes then dung and clay on the ground, and all good and godly Christians are invincibly confirmed in Christian faith by the shameful overthrow of those jewish and christians, which is come to pass according to the gospel of jesus Christ, for his kingdoms sake and our endless comfort and instruction, to him therefore be praise for ever.  
Then I mean the Turks and turkish religion, or rather heretical superstition, that in steed of noble prophets on our side hath but one fugitive monk, & but the same one false monk on their part to defend it against our so many learned and constant professors; that hath no history for his defence and in that respect condemneth historians, that could never get any sober and learned orator to maintain his cause, and therefore disalloweth the graces and power of rhetoric; that cannot be defended by disputation, and therefore forbiddeth all disputations; that is forced against his own will & law, to prefer Christ before Mahomet, our merciful king before his bloody captain; for honest and honourable birth, for virtuous and wonderful acts, for blessed and heavenly translation, himself being borne basely, and living viciously, and dying of lewd causes, more like a ruffian of the devil than a prophet of God, as themselves confess unawares in their vain Alcoran and doltish bible. His more than triple Dodecamechany, to the final ruin of that tyrannical kingdom and satanical jurisdiction in Turkey, and to the building up of God's house in new Zion, to the benefit of his householders, his children and servants, if they could once be so christianly wise, to forgive▪ their own quarrels and forget that is past, and ever hereafter serve God & please him by fight his battles, with a perfect love and unanimity among themselves, with a perpetual hatred and magnanimity against such enemies, the soldiers of the flesh, the sons of transgression, now more then half wearied with their religion, and ever remaining in suspicion and jealousy one of another.  
Now God for his own sake make them ever like Oreb and Zeb, and like to the princes of Zeba and Salmana, the God of our fathers confound their huge armies and military powers, that they may fall upon their own sword, that their arms of flesh may be broken, that all their beastly cruelties practised against good christians from Mahu to this present day may return upon themselves, that they go hence and be no more seen, that their name may perish from among the children of men, that we and all our posterity may sing with the seventh Angel mentioned in the Revelation and with those great voices in heaven: the kingdoms of this world are our Lords and his Christ's, and he shall reign for evermore. c. 11. v. 15. but the Saracens shall not overrule him, the Paganism of Sergius shall not devour the Christianisme of the Apostles, seeing the gospel is dispensed in all parts of the earth, as much & more than the Alcoran, howsoever Luter in a furious imitation of Micheas, hath rapt out the contrary, as if he desired rather the name of a Prophet among the infidels, then of a friend to Christians.  
Then I mean the blasphemous highminded swelling Greeks', both julianists and Lucianists, both Emperors and Scholars, both mighty and learned men, whose naughty end hath proved their beginning nought: whose own words of evident treason against God, have judged and condemned them: who are in account among godly wise men, as the poisonous flies, or as dead dogs: who have vanished like a vapour, and been consumed like a smoke to nothing: even as it pleased the Lord, so are these things infallibly come to pass, by whom is reserved for their last sentence, for their ungracious scholars, for their friends and favourites, a lake of brimstone, a gnawing worm, a consuming fire mingled with piercing cold, for evermore▪ for thus were the jews cursed for their malicious blasphemy against Christ in the time of his earthly and corporal humiliation, neither can these and other like them be in better estate, which cry out and rail against him in these days of his eternal heavenly exaltation, as S. Augustine reasoneth truly upon a text of S. Matthew. And what is become of those wicked Romans which I then named, but shame and discredit, reproach and confusion among all virtuous & well disposed christians? they might for their style and phrase have purchased our liking; for their grave and politic gnomes have been in good account among good men, whereas now their malcontentship against Christianity, and their haughty and scornful attempts against Gods anointed, together with their disdainful terms against our Christian profession and professors, have cast their works into great contempt, that might else have been in greatest price, because no honest man will in confcience approve false famous libels, or any grave man can scarcely even in reason believe a liar when he speaketh truth, much less when he tells his own tales: or any man shall not measure but like for like, and upon compulsion compare themselves with their enemies, these sudden slidinges with the others wilful fallings, these suborned reproaches with the others judicial penalties, true convictions, unchangeable executions. If they had been of so upright a nature, or of so civil nurture, to report all well of them, which did nothing ill or hurtful to any, but were innocent lambs of God, they might have otherwise then now they are, been reckoned with the best sort of best writers, and gotten our subscriptions as well as their own friends commendations; but seeing their venom was so great and abundant, to thrust out their stings and spit out their rankness at godly and heavenly minded Christians, they bewray the stock and brood they came from, even the spawn of that old serpent and seed of Satan, and make us all in good consciences freely to denounce and proclaim them, enuyers, deceivers, falsifiers, to brand them with the mark of strong thieves for robbing God's church, to set them in the black book of damned souls, for defying and diffaming Gods own militant teachers and messengers, which preach the truth, which spend their lives in defence of the word, which offer themselves a daily sacrifice unto him that gave himself once a pure and perfect oblation for them and all, which honour both spiritual and temporal fathers without any grudging, because of God's ordinance, and for conscience sake, which study and pray continually for the perpetual glory & honour of God's Church, God's house, God's visible throne, which persuade some, and exhort all men to virtue, to devotion, to love of God, and love of man: which dry up their hearts and brains day and night, even to the decay of their own health and strength, to heal the wounded and afflicted conscience, to confirm and stablish the faith of their country, to abandon uncharitable & disobedient opinions, to bid men take heed of furious & tedious self-will, to remember they are as God's small sheepfold in the midst of a Wolves forest, to be as doves among themselves without harm; and subtle serpents when the adversary cometh, to magnify God for his manifold benefits, and to hold out the hand when he giveth his blessings, and ever to behold and worship the blessed lamb of God, that washeth away the sins of the earth.  
But alas there are many strange errors abroad in the earth, and there are too many headstrong maintainers of old paradoxes and new-fangled novelties, which either renew those antiquated trifles, or give them a colour, a devise and gloss of the makers, which are their crafts masters and bondslaves▪ such men are girded and wrapped in with spleen and brought up chiefly in the chapters De contradicentibus, and so wedded and given to alter all statutes and turkisse all states, that they are become plain turkish and rebellious, unnatural countrymen and unkind neighbours, they do not behold and follow the harmless lamb of God that ever most graciously helpeth offenders, and bringeth them from deadly trains. I have hitherto told of open, known, and professed enemies, I have already confuted those notorious and famous antichristians, such as with a wild and wide throat, or infamous tongue and pen, have without all manner of colourable or shadowed pretence, enhanced themselves and their graceless wits, to deface the son of God, to disgrace the holy one of Israel, that is the only mediator between men and God, and the only peacemaker between God & men.  
Those madmen blasphemers come to our gates, and defy our profession, we see them, we read and hear their notorious blasphemies, we abhor and curse them in the name of our God, as Eliseus that mighty Prophet in Israel looked backward upon the malapert and wanton children of Bethel, 4. King's c. 2. v. 23. or as David detested that uncircumcised Giant the railing Goliath, 1, Kings. c, 17. v. 32, 34. and slew him though he were his cozen german, as Drusius noteth out of Prudentius and Philo, being no better in his eyes then a great wood bear, yet these blasphemers more unlearned and unruly than all children, and more barbarous than all rude giants and bears: this is the way of them, this is their foolishness, and yet their posterities praise their sayings, Psal. 49. according to the prophesy of Abacuk, ca 1. v. 5. behold ye despisers, and wonder, and pearish ye, for I work a work in your days, a work that ye shall not believe though a man should declare it unto you, which word S. Paul confirmeth in his sermon made at Antioch, Acts. c. 13. v. 41.  
But there remaineth yet a monstrous and a crafty antichristian practisser, not already touched to the quick, one and his mate compounded of many contraries, to breed the more confusion in simple vulgar wits, who like Passavantius, is content to be ridiculous himself, so that his envy in any sort make poor Lysetus contemptible, that else perhaps had never been known, he is a boon companion for the nonce, a secret fosterer of illegitimate corner conceptions, a grave orator for ruffianly purposes, a busy bookeman to help the sword, a rebuker of play, and yet making a play of himself and all things, a ravening wolf in sheeps wool, a bloody massacrer and cutthroat in jesters apparel, a post upon hackney syllogisms to have silly ones give him the way, yet like the reasons of Lindanus which may most easily and fitly be returned upon the replier & his faction, with much more force of proof & consequence, a religious pilgrim to gather heaps & rampires of trash, a wily fox in a lambs skin, first jesting at mathematical caps, as if round fashions were not more mensurable and mathematical than quadrates and oblongs, or an ace mean as a quater: then flinging at manners, as if he cared for them which teacheth nothing so much as malignity and detraction; at last fishing with a golden hook which is all predicables and predicaments with simonists, imagining his case and Simon Fish's supplication to be alike, being directly opposite in causes, in effects, in comparisons, & otherwise; he doth not openly and outrageously in set words and coined phrases, despise the lamb of God the saviour and redeemer of God's people, but closely and a far of prepareth his mines, and traps, and snares, playing secretly upon S. john's words, counting them about one's loins a receipt only for the colic: see an imp of antichrist and hell, and reckoning all that he doth unto Christ's flock, as done to lambs, that will not once quetch, that use to take all well, as if they were ordinary, common, woolly and fleshy lambs, and called lambs only of suffering, not of doing, as though all parts and ends of every similitude should ever meet in one, and nothing were written of a lamb, but it must appear in Christ, or any man should challenge that of God, which cometh of his appointment, not our, of his mercy, not our merit, to use rightly, not to abuse. But Calumny in her heat and fury calleth joseph an adulterer, Daniel a rebel, Susanna an whore, and Christ jesus himself a necromancer; yet wisdom is justified of her own children: no greater enemies to virtue then humorists, a man must only be judge of that he knoweth certainly, the carnal Mammonist cannot rule and direct celestial things, they are as far beyond his reach, as his skill is short of them.  
This is the byway of some careless & lawless quidams, which make the holy and most reverend word of the only wise God, to serve their bastardly turns & unhonest inventions and intentions, and will not stick to say with the Gentiles, with the jews, with the turks, and such as are without God; that christians must take two blows and not smite again, that they are bidden, to forgive their enemies, to bless them that curse them, to love them that hate them, to pray for them that persecute them, to be like their Lord and master jesus the lamb of God, not given to anger or defence more than he was, and more than a lamb is given to defence.  
This is the groundwork and postulate of Cartwrighttisme and Martinisme, without which all their doings are undone, and with which Christianisme will soon be vanquished or abridged. Thus they teach other men their duties, but think not on their own duties, they prove, if we must do as God biddeth us, they will not do as God biddeth them: they force a general text, Matth. c. 5. and thrust a rule made for all christians, upon the clergy alone, from our obedience they infer their own disobedience, and thus they stamp a conclusion more against their own Christendom, than the reverence of the church: the Clergy men, those elect men, profess the innocency of lambs, therefore we need not fear to handle them at our pleasures, as though they were not Christians alike with us, by baptism and vow, by doctrine and policy, or ought not likewise to be harmless as lambs among their own christian brethren. Even so that profane tyrant Antiochus reasoned with the godly jews of his time, and argued with them out of their own law concerning the Sabbath day, that they must not defile and vnhallow it with murder, with battle, with violent resistance, because they were better be flapt down like flies, and not hurt his men, then break the law of their God, and incur his displeasure, 1. Macab. c. 2. And thus hath this sophistical reformer perverted God's word, he hath learned the elench which anger moveth against patience in the Soules-fight of Prudentius, Die here and weep not, for wailing is against thy profession, yea and behaved himself heathenishly and angrily, he urgeth the surname of Christ, and the nature of a lamb, and then he telleth him and his preachers; That their wealth, their power, and strength should be no greater, than the power, the wealth and strength of a lamb, thus should he be pitomized, and thus should his flock be pistled.  
Now mark I pray you, what end cometh on these and such men, and I beseech you consider the seat of the scorner, which commonly proveth like the seat, that old courtier Hely sat upon. 1. King's c. 4. v. 18. Woe worth the blasphemy of Sennacherib & blackmouthed Rabshakeh, that cost the lives of an hundred four score and five thousand Assyrians, yea and the life of Sennacherib himself in the temple of Nisroch, by the word of Esay, but the sword of God's angel, and his own sons, by the prayer of that good king Ezechias, 4. King's c. 19 Woe unto that breach and derision of Gods Sabaoth, that caused Gorgias to fly, Lysias to be driven out of judea, the vanquishing of Ephron, the astonishment, and sorrowful sickness, and sudden death of Antiochus himself, besides the deaths and deadly wounds of their captains and soldiers by the arm of the honourable Maccabees revengers of Gods Sabaoth. 1. Macha. c. 4, 5, 6. and what surer plague hath Anger then herself, which killeth herself with her own weapons? And woe is likewise to this counterfeit reformer, that opposeth his Scriptum est against the clergy, as the tempter his pattern opposed his Scriptum est against Christ▪ for how can he escape the vengeance of God, that maketh a jest of descant upon our Messiah the mighty lion of the tribe of juda, because he is otherwile analogically called the meek and loving lamb of God? let him be sure, he shall never fly from the presence of this lamb, neither shall he ever hide his head safely from him, whom he thus lambacketh and abuseth in his paltry reformative and ironical discipline, no more than Martin de Pester did in Gaunt, that suddenly died in the heat of his secretariship going about to swear men against the gospel, or then Martin Sward did in England, who died like a thief among traitors, when he would have deposed king Henry the seventh by a set battle, to install a counterfeit in his place.  
But in heaven all honour is given to this lamb of God, that sitteth on the throne, saith S. john in his Revelation; and if the heavens obey him, the earth cannot withstand him, but all his tempting, despising, and ironising reformers shall laugh, and perish, & be laughed at, and such as know not, or fear not the lamb of God shallbe put to confusion for wishing him evil. Nevertheless this glozing theologer and privy underminer that would in these days with his creatures dig up our Church, as moules and frogs have in old time undermined fair and strong towns, according to some old and credible historians, is in his earthly labours & fennish coaxations persuaded for want of meekness and charitable insight, that he doth God great service and honour, to open his wide throat: o an Aristophanes might best handle him in his kind, to set up a new house in the old room, to take down & build up that is well builded already, as truly appertaining to him and his presumptuous schismatics, as the reforming of the temple of jerusalem pertained unto Herode, or the burning of incense belonged to Vzziah, who were both too bold & lofty in heart, and so perished in their confidence and usurpation. 2. Chron. c. 26. He might have learned even of Numa an heathen prince, lege 23. That religion public is not subject to any one; or of king Martius, lege 1. That religion is no private invention; and not exceed them in blind ignorance, who thought in natural reason: that none is above God or men's souls, to make them what he alone listeth, as Plato by the same light of nature saw, that self-will in religion which he termeth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, is the root and original of all mischiefs and inconveniences; l. 10. de legibus, a book made purposely in honour of divine matters according to the natural light of so learned a philosopher.  
He thinketh himself the preacher of humility and christian liberty, as one Wall thought himself too in the days of king Richard the second, when as in plain evident proof he hindereth one special cause thereof, I mean the authority and reverence of God's divine lawyers and gospelers, as he that readeth the third epistle of S. Cyprian will certainly judge, and would make them of true shepherds very mercenaries, of right patrons right beggars, of men in greatest account by law of nature, by law of grace, by all true law of reason & conscience, men of small reputation & triobolares, men of small power, of smaller ability, of least sovereignty in virtuous exercises, of christian magistracy, of ecclesiastical hospitality, of godly correction. So julian their Emperor took away the revenues of the church, that it might be the lighter and nimbler to fly into heaven, as he said, blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; whereas Christ's poverty is an example of humility as well for temporal christians as for spiritual, unless the laity will lose the name & nature of christians, and bequeath it only to the clergy, which is in the higher sort very poor & needy in respect of those domestical and political acts which are regularly belonging to them, and in the lower sort, with reverence be it spoken of so good a company as that is, or may be, when God shall in mercy amend patrons, most woeful and miserable in respect of that provision which is necessary for him that would not be defective in his own profession. If either be insufficient for life or learning & altogether unworthy of their living, there are a great number sufficient enough that in peaceable and military government could supply their wants.  
O sweet country and countrymen, let the inheritance and succession remain in the lineage of teachers, unless you will have learning leave the earth and return to heaven, where above all principalities it is adored and is named no less thing than God, than the word, than maker and ruler over all. For this reformer, which is no better than a blinded and hard-hearted guide may say, he loveth Christ the word, but you, and I, and all good christians may hardly believe him because we must judge of a tree by the fruit, and never call it an apple tree that bringeth forth crabs; we must never imagine he can love and allow God's laws, which hateth and disalloweth the true preachers thereof, and because I am assured, that he cannot show you, or me, or any Christian another rule and example of better credit, than the law of the Lord, and the gospel of his lamb, both which are ever in building, not in spoiling the church, in helping ever, not in beggaring the brethren, in doing good to all companies and honest societies, not in undoing any, in giving to Caesar & giving to God, & not giving that distinct part to Caesar that is due to God, seeing all that Caesar himself hath is due to God. If this truth be untruth, if this light be darkness, yet all schismatical Tees, and such Cees, and such Ems in the world can never disprove it; shall we once think, that this, or that one man who is in some men's and women's supposes of a most odd disposition and rare judgement, hath more knowledge in government than Moses had, the lawgiver of Gods own elect people so peculiarly and wonderfully called and chosen? or will any peevish vain and factious tongue on that side once say for his life, that master Reformer knoweth in his wisdom better than did Solomon, what is best belonging and behoveful to the Church Christ's beloved spouse? or may the zealous bounty of Christian Emperors, the devout gifts of noble and godly Princes, the liberal adoptions of magnificent and mighty men, bestowing worldly goods on heavenly uses, and bequeathing mortal heritage's to immortal services, may these lawful, and just, and successive possessions, privileges, and charters, and codicils of ecclesiastical endowment and maintenance be once abrogated? aught all these liberties and prerogatives to be made void, to be disannulled, and brought under, than which none can be, or should stand in more full strength and virtue? for Bishops, and under them Elders, ought no less to be reverenced of all christened souls in the churches, than fathers are of their children in the family, as Heresbachius writeth in his Christiana iurisprudentia.  
But the living Lord of heaven, and God of peace, the God of our forefathers, and king of all kings, preserve and arm his own christian children from that outrage, from that desolation, from such abomination standing in the temple of God, where it ought not, from such heathen, turkish, martinish, and carterly brutish ravin, and make us like his own Moses, like his own Solomon, like all his own godly governors and Christian Princes, and other good men of his own in all ages, not like any other unlike them, that maintain seminaries of schism and malignity, that hatch the Cockatrice's egg, and weave the spiders web, and would make men believe, they are for their eating and wearing, which in final proof would eat up and wear them out, to the poisoning and undoing of themselves, of the whole Realm, and of the whole world too, as may easily appear to them which can compare consequents and antecedents together.  
Then look not to them, but look into Gods own holy and faultless book, the only chief doctor and reformer of government, that is by God's gracious providence more common among us, than it was with grandfathers in England by print, by translation, by exposition & meditation: in which book we know the ever lasting will and testament of God more than they did, & wherein we learn all that pertaineth to our direction and instruction for all spiritual and temporal jurisdictions and regiments whatsoever. Here you have, and you read, or may have and read, the Oecomenickes and Politics of the Hebrew commonwealth, which is the most ancient and excellent of all other, as Sigonius writeth in the years of his best and ripest judgement, when he had entreated upon the Athenian and Roman commonwealth in his younger days, and by which the most and best Nations of the earth have been taught and ruled to this present day, in all good counsels, in all great affairs, in every good intendment, or order in personal, and actionall, and real causes. In this heavenly and righteous book, the same hand of Moses which gave the Hebrews laws from above, and said, Thou shalt not steal from the Clergy or Laity, thou shalt not covet thy neighbours house, or any thing that he hath in the church, or out of the church; doth also institute and ordain, that the measure of the sanctuary should be much more than the measure of the congregation, and the weight as much more again, the sanctuary serving God and, his ministers the Elders of the Levites and the high Priest set over them, the other belonging to the people of Israel, and other tribes only among themselves, who reckoned in their accounts to the tribe of Levy two for one, and double for single, as the sickle and talon of the Sanctuary was as much more as the sickle and talon of the congregation, the cubit much more, even a hand breadth, which is named a great cubit, Ezech. c. 41. v. 8. c. 43. v. 13. Exodus c. 30. v. 13. Levit. c. 27. v. 25. Num. c. 18. v. 16. Cenalis' tomo, 5. fol. 87, 88, 89. and tomo 9 fol. 133, 134, etc. Whose zealous example and godly devotion, all good men and women that love God and his rulers, ought readily to follow, yea much more willingly and earnestly in this light of the truth, that shineth out among us now, than other did in time of ignorance next passed, whose reddinesse notwithstanding was more forward than our, lest we learning more, and doing less than they, be beaten with more terrible and woeful stripes, according to Christ's own sentence in Luke c. 12. v. 47. Neither yet Moses the sovereign teacher and Lord of the Hebrews stayed there, but God bade him command the people of Israel, and in them all true Israelites for ever, to give the cleanest, the purest, the fattest and lustiest of the sacrifices of lambs, and goats, and other cattle, & the tenths and firstfruits of all fruit unto God's uses, Gods services, Gods servitors; and every thing that belonged to the church and sanctuary, both living and dead, both agent and instrument, to be appointed in the best and goodliest manner that could be devised, beside other certain and determinate prescriptions given indefinitely by God himself, agreeing with that eternal statute of S. Paul 1. Cor. c. 14. where lastly he chargeth them in the name of the holy spirit, which he verily believed to be in him, both to keep a good order always, and specially to have a special care of adorning and beautifying it with all seemly supplements or additions, even as the circumstance of the place, or the time, or the person may deserve and require.  
In this consideration, when the Hebrews used metals for the sanctuary, they were clear and pure in the highest degree; their wood must ever be that durable Sethim, and the best or smoothest; their oil the sweetest and cleanest; their frankincense the brightest; their odours pleasantest, their sacrifices males & without blemish; their flower similage and no meaner; their fruits of the fairest trees; the place of offering without all foulness; the fat must be the Lords, and if any man eat it, he shall be cut of from his people; their music choicest of all sorts, haps, and trumpets, and cymbals, and organs, and psalteries, and other instruments, together with loud hearty voices; their vestures and garments of finest linen, and finest silk furnished with gold and precious pearl; their workmen the most famous and cunning that could be gotten; the churchmen without deformities of body comely and cleanly, as it evidently and notably appeareth in Exodus, from the 25. chapter to the 32, and in Leviticus almost throughout, and much elsewhere. For seeing these outward and momentany goods are not our, but the good blessings of our God, lent and given us for his use and glory, then judge I pray to whom they may so rightly or truly belong by way of dispensation, as to Gods own spiritual and temporal ministers, which in all earthly and heavenly business and actions serve him and his congregation, him & his people, him and his saints which excel in virtue, in higher and lower places of degree and title both in the church and out of the church, as those goods have been ever most plentiful since the world began with the godliest fathers of all ages, and namely most of all with those chief men, Noa, Abraham, jacob, joseph, Solomon, job, Ezechias, and the rest, who never thought any goods too good for God's Church; for his right hand is on them that fear him throughout all generations, as his children are right-handed one to another in all places and in all cases of truth and conscience.  
Yet if these men in our white lily mending days more divine reformers forsooth and purer correctors of abuses than Moses, if these little ones divine ones descended from the bosom of father Abraham, or some better Saint, if better may be, for so they bear themselves ever with and above the best, that have all zeal and all knowledge among them, and can spare or afford no morsel or parcel of these their two Spiritual graces for other poor men simple creatures in respect of such new creators, if they had been in the time & reign of Moses & josua, or rather very Moses and very josua were now in their times, for all must be drawn to M. reformers computation, & perhaps we shall hear news shortly, of another computation, & then we must say, in the year of reformation, 1, 2, 3, 4. & so on apace as long as it lasteth, be you sure of it, that they would in their pure quick fine Sybilline melancholy, the cause of Prophets and Prophetesses in Agrippaes' mind, that never kept a mean, but was ever extreme, in writing magical toys or dispraising all liberal and mechanical arts, in extolling women above men, and suppressing almost every man with his own excellency in his Epistles, no unfit master for these extreme reformers, have said, and say unto Moses and josua, even as they said to our Mosees, and josuees, to our priests and rulers. For look how Corah, Dathan, Abyram, and On rose up before Moses and Aaron, and told them in their reformative discipline: ye take too much upon you, why lift ye yourselves above the congregation of the Lord? we are all as holy as you, what Moses and Aaron? ye are too high. Num. c, 16. v. 3.  
So spreaken our pure and holy ones reformers, so our holy and pure ones speak, even thereabout as holy as Corah, and as pure as Abyrams' conspiracy, and as pure and precise, as all honest conspirators: sober men men in other times, who at the first ever pretended reformations and corrections of abuses, and then corrections and reformations of vices, and nothing but amending of unjust matters, corruptions, relics: these have a pleasure to water and dress, and revive that withered oak, that reformatoria quercus Ketti ducis, adorning and adoring it as the only chief tree of the field and forest, even in a precise jollity to abase and over-crow the famous planetree of Xerxes, or any other Dodonean shade, but they for all their numbers of voices, their singular holiness, or hollowness of heart, so cunningly hid, were devoured of the earth; and swallowed up quick, to the example and terror of all conspiring reformers even to the world's end, that now they should hinder the authority of God's messengers no more, like those cursed Dathanites. And what became of furious Ket? and what is like to come upon these practisers that can never see when they are well? Neither yet did Moses put of his zeal, or leave of from enriching the holy Priesthood in Israel, or from honouring their posterities successively after his and their death, but he gave them the goods, and lordships, and dominions of many cities for themselves, and the lands and suburbs of them for their cattle and substance, Num. c. 35. Ios. c. 21.  
No doubt at that time many rough mal-contents and envious Reubenites spoke among the Israëlites, as our hotspurres & Rufi say now among us, Church-bread is sweet, that is, stolen things are pleasant, but heard they never of a sweet and pleasant poison among their proverbs, delightful at the first, and at the last deadly? It is not Gods will, say they that know not the legacies of Gods will, that they should be troubled with such revenues, with such lands & livings, with so many loaves which might find an army to defend Israel, a number of lusty & choice valiant youngmen, a sort of experienced captains and soldiers of the best stamp.  
Notwithstanding such a vulgar and plausible insinuation, the most provident and heavenly lawgever Moses reproveth their rebellious and stiffnecked hearts, he went forward in settling the ground of his godly government, because he by years and wisdom knew better than they could tell him, that their youth is too rash to wish that which troubleth men: that their experience is utterly imperfect: that greatest hotspurres are least conquerors: that a man is not delivered by much strength: that armour and men are counted but a vain thing to save a country: that nations are not defended & preserved by the puissance & chivalry of the inhabitants, but that the wisdom & gravity of learned men, the counsel & understanding of sober discreet men, that the fiery zealous & heavenvly minded man, like the priest Phinees, or the king jehu, that moderation which is neither too high nor too low, half up & half down, even in the mids, that God's blessing bestowed on those that bless him, is cause of all obedience & peace at home, of all safety and security in respect of foreign danger abroad; that the head and heart must rule the hand and foot; that the outward parts must be preserved by the inward, and preserve one the other mutually; that if they must needs take away goods from other men, their value should be stretched out against their heathenish enemies; and therefore he commanded them in God's holy name on the Eastside of jordan in the land of promise, and in the same holy name the fathers commanded josua his successor on the other side of jordan in the land of promise, they willed & charged their Tribes by the will of their God to whom they were all tributary, that forty and eight cities with the granges, and villages, and suburbs, and all bounds and limits of them, should be allotted unto the principal fathers of the Levites out of their inheritance, which the Levites God & their God had bestowed upon them; among which eight and forty cities were those six principal places of refuge & noblest sanctuaries of safeguard for the unwilling unlucky slayer, even those three cities within the river, Chades, Sichem, Hebron, and those three cities without the river, Golan, Ramoth, Bosor, standing in both the ends, and in both the middle parts of the land, that no tribe might be without the lordships of Levy, that the land and manors of Levy might with greatest liberty lie in every part, and on either side of the land of promise, the holy land, and pattern of all holy land, so far and so long as nothing was done without the laws of Moses which were the laws of God.  
Now if it would please God, to open the eyes, and ears, and hearts of our tribes, of our hundreds, of our counties, of our shires, of our fathers, & rulers, that they might see and perceive, hear and understand, know fully & acknowledge freely, I say no more; yet I might well name our reformers a sort of new Arrians, that invent lies against our spiritual lords, as they did against Athanasius devise one slander of his abusing a woman, another of cutting of Arsenius arm, both which in the trial proved false and ridiculous, as those should do if the libeling accusers were known, yet truth will reign though they die in the dark, and in another kind of Arrianisme abuse Christ's church impudently and profanely, as if he were a man & no God, not caring whether it be true or not true that they writ, so that the wavering and rude multitude void of deliberation and judgement seem to like it, for whose only pleasures it is published in the rudest fashion, seeing all learned and civil men peacemakers abhor it; but God almighty send a true spirit into them, that as new borne babes they may be children concerning maliciousness, not in knowledge, or a new jubilee in us, and for us, at his good pleasure.  
These are God's goods, Gods cities, Gods suburbs, Gods manors, which he himself hath given, before Constantine's donation no whit belonging to us, as legacies of his first will and testament, to his own holy and beloved Priesthood. Or if our rough smoothed brethren, which name they use for a bait, if our Esau's and Nymrod's reformers hunters, if our temporising temporal correctors mammonistes, these presumed and supposed judges of eternal laws, if they will in their wild and wily wilfulness frustrate this constitution of God, if they care not how short their days may be upon the earth which the Lord hath given them, so that they may not honour their ghostly fathers, without whose authority they shall never rule Subictes, or servants, or children, but suppress and overrule them: if they will claim and avouch a second will or testament, and disavow and disclaim the old will and testament, cancel the ancient acts of Gods former registers, make a parliament act of their own private, and in deed no better then apostumated brains, which in the second consequence, and in the third depending thereon, concluding any way either simply or comparatively, a causis and a partibus, will certainly cast themselves and all other into a manifest anarchy, into all disturbance and utter confusion: because the same objections against one state of spiritual Lords, may as justly and more sensibly be derived upon secular Lords of like degree. I say, if Moses eternal laws, the very true laws of God, be in these new reformations no better then temporary and transitory laws, which were a deep root for atheism, and a groundwork for blasphemy, yet I hope these martin's will not make themselves worse than Pagans, being counted Christians, they cannot possibly, I trust, be so ireful and raging, as to exceed the profane Egyptians, who allowed their priests no small commodities, in plenty of bread, of flesh, of wine, besides their domestical immunities and privileges, whereby they spent nothing of their own, neque è re domestica aliquid conterunt, neque impendunt, saith Herodotus in Euterpe, and Danaeus in his Aphorisms gathereth more from that second book than I do: they will not for shame do less for other christians, than they did for other idolatrous Egyptians, cap. 47. ver. 22. of Genesis.  
But in truth, these reformers have without truth contemned Moses and josua, like jannes' and jambres, and the Gibeonites in former times, God send them more of his grace and mercy, or the reward of those men, if it be his will: now will they also count joseph that heavenly politic guide, that true pattern of politics, a partial and partial judge, and account him and his rulers all superstitious rulers, for not touching and buying the lands of the Egyptian priests and fathers in the seven years of intolerable dearth and famine, when all other men of the Temporalty sold every man his land, his cattle, himself and all to buy bread? Surely those holy men of our so learned days and so christian peace, that put almost all God's husbandry in lopping, and pruning, and making every thing less than it should be: much like that holiness that the Grecians & Hippocrates name in those words, sacer morbus, sacer piscis, os sacrum, whereby they understand greatness more than goodness, quantity more than quality, a diseased holiness, a fishy holiness, slick on the skin, and sick within, a bonish holiness, and fit to choke men, then to feed them, would in their reforming discipline, make our governors and joseph's, worse affectioned to their natural and spiritual countrymen or fathers and instructors, that have altogether alike one baptism, one confirmation, one communion, one belief, one prayer, one law, one gospel, one God, and one mediator & saviour, than Pharaoh was to the idolatrous Priests of his kingdom, having more forcible necessity, then to have sequestered and impropriated their church-landes and goods, then ever other kings and princes had or aught to have, by the rule of God's word, to impair their church-lands and goods, which even in the natural wit of Trebatius are sacred, being once dedicated unto God, and therefore inviolable, according to the nature of holy things, Macrob. l. 2. Satur. cap. 3. but receiving all their blessings and fruits for the church's sake, whereof they are members, which is the only spouse and best beloved sister of the lamb of God, not for any meritorious work of their own, ought contrariwise rather to increase their annuities and revenues, as they will for a worse and meaner loves cause in common usual favour increase the livings of such as they only wish well unto. But these our reformers say what they list, either like tyrants that cannot be hindered, or like wittols that must be tolerated, and these will have their words, though the rulers bid peace.  
Then leave them a while to themselves and let them alone, and think in your hearts, beloved christians, and judge in your own consciences unfeignedly like right Nathanaels' without guile or gall, judge I pray soberly & advisedly in your minds, and then mark my communication; Is not equity or law and reason universal and common for all reasonable men? is any man forbidden in equity and reason to keep his own goods which are lawfully given him? did Naboth offend God, by keeping his inheritance & vineyard, or Ahab in ask, and jezabel in catching it by false process and wrongful execution, when her cosmeticall physicians had commended the prospect and recreation of the place, and his greedy lawyers told him of his profit and prerogative? may one man or lord say, let it alone, it is mine not your, seeing he speaketh truly? and may not an other man or lord say, let it stand, it is mine not your, it is Gods, not your, given as truly & lawfully to his house and householders, as ever any right and title was given in the world, by God's word or man's, by Gods written promise and covenant or by man's, or by any other means? Learn of Comes Purliliarum in his first book of the art of war, to abstain from sacred things, not to touch them yourself being captain, and to punish them grievously that touch them, less you come to nought, by making God and godly men your enemies, which being a rule of war with the best Admirals of the field toward the enemy, must for horror of shame not once be broken in peace toward the neighbour; Learn of Onosander Platonicus first to have a chief eye to holy matters, that by this skill of the general other matters may prosper, in his book De optimo Imperatore; Learn of Dions' first precept De regno, not to dally with God, as if he were Praws or Stultus, but principally to adore him, in his visible ministers, the only way in this life to approve our faith; Learn of Xenophon in his Hipparchicus, to pray to the God of the world above all things for health and glory, and not to esteem him under all; learn of Pythagoras, God immortal must be first honoured; of Phocylides, worship God first: of all teachers, to excel pagans in that Eusebeia which hath the first place in Isocrates and all other gnomographers, increasing daily in piety and virtue; there is Meum in the clergy, not only in the laity, and if either of them plead lawful inheritance and possession, they say well and speak no less than truth, and yet the clergy should in equity & truth be first and more forward than the other, by how much God's plea & interest must have greater audience than the plea of men.  
Yea reason and truth cry out upon these Mosemastiges and Theomastiges too, who when they hear Moses say in God's law, all the fat is the Lords, Leuit. c. 3. v. 16. that is, the best is the Lords offering, as may appear, Num. c. 18. v. 12. & Ps. 81. v. 16. they answer him in their lawless mouths and malcontented hearts, let all the lean be his, he hath no need, the lamb is fat enough already, his pasture is good enough: neither needeth he either of them, the fat or the lean, or any thing else, because he hath all things at commandment without your leave, and is the Lord of Lords both ghostly & bodily, yet thus by your inconsiderate wits and spritish mockeries and new-founded minds which you bear, you incur the danger of his heavy wrath, o ye sons of Belial, with your incredible vanities and credulous followers, that in S. Paul's eye c. 16. v. 17. Rom. fight all for the belly maintenance, and bring all their zeal to the merchant's shops, their learning to money matters, their pure meditations to set up shifters, their discipline to banish or imprison royalties now established, their christianisme to open julianisme, their wits to Lucianisme, beware in time of God's displeasure, which being once kindled yea but a little, blessed are all they that trust in him, and cursed are they that make such a turkissing and furbushing of his omnipotent and irreprehensible word, which hath been ever hitherto the word of joy and comfort, and will be hereafter the word of jubilee itself, of victory herself; which jubilee is neither against the institutions & grounds of our, or of other soundest laws, or any way against the analogy of christian religion or regiment, but a true restorative for decayed families, and a good preservative against the proud poverty, and is therefore so highly extolled and magnified by Moses, Levit, cap. 25. v. 10. as these are professed of us with heart and voice, and yet are daily defaced and weakened among us, so far as truth may be enfeebled, which is invincible, by privy and open treacheries, falsely called reformations.  
O merciful God, seeing it is thy sovereign majesties most gracious and apparent word, not to touch thine anointed, or do thy Prophets any harm, Psal. 105. v. 15. either execute thy will, and pour out thy vengeance upon such wicked ones, as seek both to touch thine anointed, and hurt thy Prophets, or else shorten the day of thy second coming, and quickly sound the last thundering trumpet of thy greatest glory, that all these impostors and intruders may know, that thou, o Lord, art God above all men, and emperor of all the world, but specially of thy little flock, to give it a kingdom according to thy word, which thy son and our Saviour purchased with the inestimable and unspeakable price of his most precious life blood, which to us is so hearty and full of life, and in which lieth the life of our souls, as the life of our bodies is in our own blood.  
They went out from us, o God of heaven & earth, they went out from among us, and why are they suffered to live by us? that would betray us and thy shepherds upon no just causes, but by vain & vile means, out they went from us and were not of us, but they were of that malicious arch-rebel Cain, and that pecuniary Ringleader judas, they were of themselves, and their own selfewil, that have rebelled against our reverend spiritual fathers, and our honourable spiritual Lords, and but for fear of losing their heads, would hold up their pens and Prints that come from Ovid's Europa, a metamorphosed deflowered beast, or rather from Aristotle's Euripus a desperate problem, and throw their books, their libels, their lies at temporal fathers and secular Lords: for both these tenors hold alike by thy service, in ruling the souls and bodies of thy people.  
O Lord, they have opened a gap to all obstinacy, outrage, and misery, their malicious proceed have put shameful and perverse paradoxes into subjects minds: how much better were it to hold them down, and as it were to the grindstone, as Moses and Lycurgus did by just executions, than thus to let go the reins, and to let them loose till they looze themselves and all? as the Athenians and Rhodians, which therefore at this day are of no account, but slavish and unknown, did play the part of children, in breaking their laws so soon as they made them, or the part of spiders, in catching small flies, and letting go great hurtful hornets and dors: by the discipline of their reformations many have reached beyond the compass of thy word, in these common places, of accepting no persons, of unequal comparisons, in striving against external decent ceremonies and customs, as though they were principals of our salvation, cases of life and death, matters of hell and heaven: they have been disobedient to the Magistrates of thy Sanctuary and congregation, they would overrule thy rulers in indifferent things, rather than be ruled by them, as if they were above them: they speak of peace, and make continual war: they think themselves nathan's and good finders out of errors, & correctors of abuses, when as in very deed the parable of Nathan, 2. Kings, cap. 12. v. 1, 2, 3, 4. is verified by them in the fifth commandment, Honour spiritual and corporal fathers, as it was true in David by the tenth, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, and they are in mind as their works prove them very Mathans of some one Baal's grove or other, if all were known to us that is known to thee, to bring his vilest indignities to pass, to make a woeful Democraty without order, honour, or seemly estate, and a right cyclopical and giantlike church, and consequently such a commonalty, where every bold one may be a controller of his betters, and power out his fancies like water that runneth apace, their arrows are shot, when shall they be rooted out? where the stipendiary man may esteem of his reverend Lord, as the vast rudes by Polyphemus counteth of superior powers, poëtically termed jupiter and the gods, and saith, that he is but a cyclops with half his eyes, yet will do what he list and ask them no leave, though at last he lost his one eye like enough for his blasphemous treason. Lord God, what a desperate state is this? how shall duties be regarded? how shall offices be performed? how can thy great name be honoured in thy rulers? how can the government of civil and godly nations endure, if the chief pillar and ankerhold of all fear and obedience be once broken and taken away from thy sanctuary & holy church? if their hearts be thus set against thy glory, who shall safely trust them in men's affairs? if their Deleatur begin at thy house, where shall the ungodly and sinners appear? if one lamb and sheep thus rend another, what rendings and tearings shall the wolves make? if they behold thy lamb, o God, with so cruel and envious eyes, how can they be loving and merciful toward thy children? O how truly have the Prophets and Apostles compared such men to unreasonable creatures? as Paul hath called the Cretians Evil beasts, and Christ surnamed Herod a Fox; whom other zealous and learned writers have followed in like causes of pride and mischief, but especially Epiphanius above other, who by his manifold natural similitudes, seemeth to write his books of Poisonous beasts, being made purposely against rebellious heretics; to omit our countryman Gildas surnamed Sapiens, & other, who dealing plainly against notorious enormities, told kings to their faces, that they lived like outlaws, lions, and lions whelps, and leopards, and bears, and dragons, and dogs, forsaking the rules & manners of men, and living in lust not in order, in will not in skill, at rovers and rangeal, not within bounds and compass, madly and drunkenly; to let pass the surpassing style and violent phrases of Luter in this vain forced upon causes. Therefore from all such reforming discipline, that is privy conspiracy against all rulers, from all such false doctrine and heresy, which no magistrate can allow without perjury, from such hardness and deceitful contempt of thy word and commandment, good God save us or deliver us, and let thy will be now done still and still in earth, as it hath ever more and more been in heaven by thy will, and lead not thy princes and people into these snares and calumnies of the devil, that in his angelic sophistry goeth & looketh like a reformer, intending wrong and pretending right, that is honey and mealemouthed to look unto, but hath his entrails compounded of all unhealthful bitterness, and is in true taste a wild kind of Coloquintida or death itself in the pot of the prophet's children, in our schools and towns, which the gatherer shredded in steed of good herbs, being too hasty and presumptuous to ask, & too ignorant to know of himself what he should have gathered.  
How can I but be moved heartily, to write against some such grave and some such bragging conspirators in these days, whose heresy is more dangerous than any old one, being a more winding & crooked mutiny then any of them? And now at last it is proved no better than a spiteful sect, a very mocking ishmaelitical kindle, Gen. c. 21. v. 9, 10, 11. a counterfeit holiness, a proud self-love, an old military objection and barbarous paradox, renewed a fresh and misalledged▪ tush man, quoth he, temporal and ecclesiastical are synonimas, it is popery to count ecclesia and ecclesiastica for coniugata, cedant togae armis▪ it is a stubborn and arrogant quarrel, begun upon private emulation, and continued with a brazen forehead, uttered first in heat and haste, and then defended in earnest, one great cause of corrupted arts, as Vives judgeth rightly, l. 1. de disciplinis▪ herein following the judgement of Solomon, Bion, Seneca, and experience itself, a swelling and harmful schism sprung from a college malcontentship to a common-wealth-braule, a clamorous and wrangling doctrine of another british Sphynx, a spotted linx, or such, not innocent & harmless as the doctrine of God's blessed lamb, an hypocritical imposture, which hath the face of a man, and the tail of a Scorpion, a show of peace before it, and fire & powder following it, which propoundeth conscience, and concludeth injury, pretendeth purest divinity, and is farthest from charitable necessary christian humanity, a most perfit enmity to the lamb of God, and God himself, in defacing and supplanting the magistracies of both.  
For seeing in Greece this day not only the doctrine and rites of christian religion, but also the order and degree of Bishops, and the whole ecclesiastical regiment and jurisdiction are both tolerated and defended under the Turkish tyranny, as many faithful men which lived there a long time, have witnessed in an oration of David Chitreus, written about twenty years since, and as he there telleth more plentifully, how can we esteem them so godly as Turks, that seek in their own country to hurt the Church, more than those infidels antichristians do, though they can, and these cannot? as God forbidden they should ever do it. Church goods are only to be reserved to the churches use, saith Hadamarius in his institution of a Prince. Or if these words seem any way hard to any good christian, which to the well disposed and skilful reader are no less allowable by good example, then apparently true, and more true than he or I would they were by reason, I desire some good Christian, even in christian charity and godly brotherhood, to think upon, to consider and examine the proofs and grounds of this assertion, and then judge thereafter accordingly in conscience as he ought, specially when he remembreth that the heathen writers themselves never set any men but the vainest and maddest of all the rest against their Priests, which men either lived in reproach, or came to shame, or for the time were generally reputed reproachful and shameful men, as may appear in their gigantomachies and theomachies, commonly made even of poets in reverence of religion, the causes of greatest mischiefs and sorrows, to which end and purpose all the most ancient tragedies have been written, even every one of them, as R. Harvey hath proved in his Logical and enthymematical Analysis, dedicated to the valiant and virtuous noble Lord, the Earl of Essex. If Menelaus counted a light and idle prattler abuse Calchas, or Agamemnon a great drinker in his haste and anger misuse Chryses, or Pentheus in his frenzy disturb the Bacche, or Creon in his pride disable Tiresias, and so forth, neither shall their passions hinder the spirits of those Prophets, nor make Nestor, or Ulysses, or Cadmus, or the Thebans, or the wiser sort, or God himself, in their phrase termed Apollo and Dyonisius of destroying evil things, and working great matters, to despise them one jot the more, but the rather to defend them, which decorum is ever kept in all their books, in giving the best end of their controversies to their religious persons, he that hath eyes to read, let him read.  
Then let him think in his heart, whether patience and humility in one man should provoke another man to presumption and rigour, and the naked innocency and innocent nakedness of God's holy prophets and teachers may in any heavenly or worldly reason cause busiebodies the rather to annoy them? if he answereth in himself, it should not, it may not be, why goeth he against his conscience and woundeth his own soul, in allowing these idle flies, these troublesome wasps, these stinging gnats, these unprofitable worms? if he saith, it should be, it may be, he maketh love a reason of hatred, and submission a cause of oppression, he taketh away the reward of virtue, and doth evil for good, which is worse than the worst beasts, than devils & all. Then I beseech him to consider, how disallowable it is in good discipline, which they and he stand upon so much, to change that order and break down those degrees, that are neither divers from Gods holy and reverend word, nor contrary to true and godly government, to be fiery & vehement in their innovations, whereas old standards have more equity and safety in them by much, or else by such an infinite method we shall never make an end of change, and ever trouble the world with needles questions, beside, that is the most inordinate & unlawful thing in the world, to have private men speak and write their pleasures in public cases, seeking on their own heads without any good allowance or lawful warrant of the rulers, factiously and arrogantly to alter the state that is builded and framed on Gods and man's law.  
Then I desire him to examine this question, whether virtue and wealth, godliness and riches may not be in one and go together? if they may not, why were the most sovereign princes and godly puissant captains of God's church, ever as wealthy and rich as any other? will they reform God too, for doing this, and teach the Almighty to do better? or if they may be in one, being both good, what mean these immoderate clensers of no faults, to pull down or spoil, to beggar or abase with all their forces the countenance and maintenance of spiritual magistrates and fathers, of ecclesiastical teachers and rulers? whose revenues and jurisdictions are more necessary and less hurtful, more charitable and natural than any other, and whose children shall not be behind any in true virtue and true proof. How truly hath S. Augustine defined him to be an heretic, which for profits sake or fame beginneth or followeth new opinions? God in his goodness and mercy forgive all ignorant and weak offences, as he will in his powerful justice overthrow all presumptuous and strong offenders, to his own immortal glory, and the everlasting comfort of his true church, his peculiar people, his faithful children, his obedient servants, which believe in him above all, which fear him under all, which love him with all the powers of their souls and bodies, in all thankfulness and duty, in all visible & invisible offerings of their goods and goodwills. For when the reasonable and honest soul remembreth in itself, that the weight of God's sanctuary was ever as much more as the weight of the congregation, and the measure much more; that the best & fairest of all things were always bestowed upon God's divine uses and services, who giveth us the best & all for his uses; that the lands of the Levites in that only little land of Canaan contained at the least in compass one hundred and ninety miles, Num. c. 35. v. 5. or if later times be better, that of the whole land of jury divided into four several parts, two parts of them were given to the priests, to the temple and the Levites for their inheritance. Ezech. cap. 45. vers. 3, 4, 5. or if an interpreter be required herein, in, that S. Jerome in his notorious and notable epistle to Euagrius, concludeth, and calleth this an apostolical tradition, that the Bishops and Priests and Deacons may ask and challenge so much in the church, as Aron and his sons and the Levites did in the temple; that the livings of the Egyptian priests, even idolatrous priests were not once touched or diminished in common dearth and famine and need, and knoweth withal that these benefits and liberties were ordained by two of the most godly and politic lawmakers that ever lived, except Christ, even by Moses and joseph, men every way most singular & unmatchable, men taught of God himself, from heaven itself, by visions, and revelations, and familiar conferences; how can he judge otherwise then honourably and graciously for the heads and parts of the church, as he will judge both graciously and honourably for the heads and parts of the congregation? & there is not I am sure any one of us, that reading S. Paul 2. Cor. c. 3. v. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. of the glorious and continual ministry of righteousness more excellent than the ministry of condemnation, or c. 4. Galat. humbling the law with the names of rudiments and bondage, and those which lived under the law of children and servants, but exalting the gospel with the titles of fullness of time and redemption, and the gospelers, of sons and heirs and such other concordances of like Scripture, can once think, that the law of Moses is greater than the gospel of jesus, but that the gospel is, both for the godhead of the author, Hebr. c. 3. v. 3. and for the doctrine itself, and for the first teachers of both, greater and worthier than the law; which proposition of the gospels excellency and preferment being truly granted and rightly grounded, these consequents must necessarily be conjoined; that they which teach the gospel ought every way to live in more honour and credit thereby among the Christians, than they which taught the law lived in honour and reverence thereby among the Israëlites: as the perfitest state of the church must have perfitest honour; that he is the surest friend to God and God's people, which joineth the power of the world unto the mightiness of the word, the arm of Moses to the tongue of Aron, the blessings of God to God's blessed church; that by uniting of both powers either may be stronger. Eccle. c. 4. v. 12. that in this greatest light of divinity, divines should be in greatest light and reputation, yea if it were but to anger the devil in hell, who like a crafty thief as he is, ever seeketh by miserable poverty to cast them into woeful & contemptible estate. That unhappy poverty may make the men ridiculous, as Iwenall writeth Satyra 3. or as Synesius bishop of Ptolomais singeth in his second and third Hymn, sad poverty may pull them from heavenly studies to earthly cares, as he had learned of Agur the son of jaketh, or rather of experience the daughter of truth; that our preachers now may pronounce a sevenfold Vae, and a mighty malediction over them which empayre Gods tenths, or any other dues, as the old Prophets aforetime did in judaea, Mala. c. 3. v. 8, 10. Amos cap. 4. vers. 4. that there is no just cause why the papists should be readier to magnify their Clergy in a false superstition, than the Protestants to uphold & reward their clergy in a true religion, why the heathen churches should be in greater reverence with the pagans, than the christian churches with the christians: as the love of good men should exceed the love of the wicked, why secular men may get their wealth by testament or desert, & spiritual men having the same plea both of testament and desert, may miss of their own goods, and lose them by force, by tyranny & hypocrisy, under a merciful Prince, in a peaceable state, in their own native country, of their own neighbours, by the wayward and sophistical wrangling of their own professors, and such other deceitful and ungodly means and essays of the maker, the shifter, the hooker, against the golden rules of universality, of antiquity, of unanimity, which Vincentius in his commentary standeth so well upon.  
Then to whom may I best liken this race of Reformers, and with what may we justly and truly compare them? If I should continua similitudine resemble them to the Viper's brood, that kill their own dam which bred and brought them up to life, I am sure you that know the use of this kind of simile, and the manners of this people against their mother the Church that first bred them, will say I speak truth.  
If in like sort I compare them to the noisome Cuckoo, reckoned among other unclean birds in Leviticus which must not be eaten or tasted of, c. 11. v. 16, whose property is to starve his nest-felowes, and destroy his nurse that fed him, our daily experience doth approve it, and if Orus or Pïerius were alive, even they would make these two natural examples the Hieroglyphics of Reformers. God grant they be not like the unadvised Physician, that would needs cut a vein where no danger was, and thinking to ease and lighten the head, where the sign was, which point he either forgot or neglected, let the life blood out, and killed both head and heart together. I pray God they prove not like the hasty and curious husbandman, that to make his trees grow in more sightly order, as he thought, so cropped, and disarmed, & disarrayed them, that in short time they withered up.  
I hope in Christ they shall never be like that conceited harebrained Captain, who when by gross oversight and blindness he had lost the City in neglectigg one gate which had most need of defence, beyond his expectation cast himself and his neighbours into bondage and death, and as it were out of God's blessed Paradise, into the wild field, and hot Sun.  
But alas I see well, they are to day like themselves yesterday, and to morrow like themselves to day, seeking this day and all other like themselves, to make desperate exchanges, to bring in fruitless amendments, stumbling at straws that hinder not the way, and leaping over great blocks that half stop up the way, crying out upon the godly orders and decent customs of the church, as ill birds that file their own nest, exclaiming against convocation robes, and grave apparel, because sometimes, forsooth, there hangs a straw, or feather, or threads end, or some such great thing, which a crank, a cursitour, a Martin, a carter, threw or blewe upon them in his terrible mocking vain, and letting pass the monstrous unnatural, unlawful, ungodly, uncivil, and more than jewish usurers, whom the most learned M. doctor Wilson, once her majesties Secretary, hath condemned in his Dialogues, to the endless shame of gromelgayners, ill occupiers, by heathens, by Christians, by the old fathers, by the ancient counsels, by emperors, by bishops, by decrees, by canons, by all sects of regions, and of all religions, by the gospel of Christ, by the mouth of God: omitting the outlandish and English corruptions or witcrafts, by which and those kind of people together, if we mark well, this seminary of reformers is chiefly upholden and bolstered out, and by such companions as make the bookish unwary Minister a cloak for their conveyances, and a shadow for their scars.  
It is but too true which Ptolemy writeth in his 12. aphorism, that love and hatred corrupt men's judgements, either in themselves by extenuating the greatest faults, and by extending the least commendations, or by enlarging the least faults, and abridging the greatest praises of their adversaries which like not their proceed. Wherefore I would to Christ they would once leave off from their uncharitable and unwary contradictions, and be so graciously and godly wise, to take the lamb of God out of the Lions and bears mouth, as valiant young David did save his lamb with his cunning and hardy sling, and taught some old shepherds as he learned of other, to keep their sheep and lambs from hungry, and empty, and ravenous beasts of the field and of the wood: Save the lamb of God, not because he hath need of your help, but that ye may be blessed and saved by him. Hurt not the servants of the Lamb, if ye have any foresight in you, lest while you go about to drown the poor mouse, as the envious frog did, you make yourselves a prey to your enemies, by the same devise and thread which drowned him, as Aesop said to Delphi for himself, in a silly tale containing a subtle and solemn precept to beware of revenge.  
Let us look upon the Princes and heads of Israel, let our noblemen allow and follow their acts, which shallbe renowned and praised for ever, their offerings shallbe famous throughout all posterities, no reformers or misinformers shall ever deform and defame their good works and good names, and the six sons of Arcturus in heaven shall not continue longer than the gifts of Naason, Nathaniel, Eliab, Elizur, and the other rulers unto Pagiel and Ahyra, which gifts they gave at the setting up of the tabernacle, and the dedication of the altar, Nom. c. 7. v. 11. unto the 88 they offered silver in very great measure, they offered gold a mighty quantity, they presented the finest flower, mingled with pleasant oil in most bountiful manner, they gave of the best of their cattle a goodly number, and because they came so willingly unto God, behold the reward of godliness, God came the more readily unto them, and God talked presently with Moses their chief ruler and captain from his mercy seat, v. 89. both to encourage them in the work of their free will offerings, and to stir up their children and successors after them unto the worlds end, to such religious devotion and restitution. Their, and all the people's voluntary contribution toward the tabernacle was so great and plentiful, even in that time of their wandering and poverty in the wilderness, that the workmen complained of too much trouble in receiving their daily gifts, that Moses at their requests proclaimed in their armies, to have them cease from offering any longer. A crystal glass for this age to look in, and see to wipe out their cankered spots, which make them most unlike those primitive Israëlites, and as devilish in purloining the benevolences and legacies given to God's holy places, as good Christians were liberal in providing for their spiritual fathers, Exodus c. 35. and 36. They all gave their offerings for love, for example, for thanksgiving, they restored to God that which God gave them, they knew that their goods without God's service, should be unto them as those delicate quails, and that white pure Manna, the quails choking those that did eat them against God's will, and the Manna smelling with worms, that was kept against God's commandment, Num. cap. 11. v. 19, 29. Exod. c. 16. v. 20.  
But why stand I upon those virtuous examples? was not that infamous Balaam more just than these new fangled censuring reformers? yea and was not his very rude ass more respective & regardant in humble submission to his better, than these busi-motespiers smoothing hypocrites? O let those precise lips and pure sanguine livers pardon me, that love to feed finely and sleep softly, not on thistles, not asselike, not hardly. No fair allurement of king Balac, no subtle suggestion of his lords of Moab, could make him go beyond the word of the Lord God, but he took up his parable and blessed jacob, he spoke once and twice, and exalted the flourishing and happy estate of Israel, he could not curse them whom God had blessed, and he would not go against the word of their God▪ neither was he himself only obedient, though he were in the number of false prophets, but his ass likewise did bow to the Angel in the way; the beast bowed and fell down before God's messenger again and again, and God made the dumb brute to seem somewhat reasonable with a man's voice, Num. c. 22. v. 22. whereas these strange new founders of discipline, will look on the magistrate, which is God's angel, and neither bow heart, nor bend body to him, but in a blind courage will bite the lip at him, and look under the brow, and walk on proudly apace, will tell God's angel that he must put up his sword, that they are not borne to obey him, but to govern and reform them, though neither Sultan nor Saphra, neither princes nor judges, neither valiant nor wise men be on their sides, otherwise than joab was next to Abner, and Hamon to Guinder, even to execute their own purposes, though Abner and Guinder paid their lives for them in the end. 2. King's c. 3. v. 27. or if perhaps any hold with them, it is the horseleech and his daughter, that cry give and give, and nothing but give, Prou. c. 30. v. 15. if themselves have any zeal, it is the zeal of judas Iscariot, who envied the precious anointing of Christ's body, that now is the Church. john c. 12. v. 5, 6. if they have any spirit for them, it is that false spirit, that flew into the mouths of Ahabs' prophets, and blew all their proofs to a goodly and new gay nothing, like our new reformations. 3. King's c. 22. v. 23. or rather it is that foul ugly spirit, their own very type and example, who in calumny and lying hath no prior nor peer, & being a traveler to and fro, and maligning the prosperity of rich and righteous job, came among the children of God on a day, as these pure ones do often, & tempted God openly, as these tempters do their adherents and hearers in corners and convents, to plague good job, to punish him, to torment and vex him, and if the holy plaintiffs might have the devils luck, and by some sinister means obtain their request, they would even for perfect zeal do as the devil did, and leave their father job nothing but nakedness and woe; or at their best, be but like the pure penitent, that stole away a swan & picked down a feather: desiring in their too singular and too extraordinary discipline, that God might be magnified, in restoring him again to his children, in re-edifying his houses, in renewing his lands and goods and all that he had, much like him that would break his fellows head, to give him a plaster, or that put his finger in the fire, to have it healed again, that contrary to S. Paul's counsel would do evil that good might come of it; Rom. c. 3. v. 8. job c. 1. v. 6. c. 2. v. 1. never regarding that prohibition in God's proverbs, of not removing the bounds of their ancestors, c. 22. but devising and filling their lusts.  
Hereafter I for my part must account Aristotle & his scholars more religious than these news bringers, that use holy magistracies that are public offices like private charges, that are necessary duties like decent orders: for he judgeth them both public and necessary, which must be regarded publicly of all men, and without which the commonwealth cannot begin or endure. and though at first he reckoneth religious degrees after politic, yet in his methodical transition or recapitulation of necessary offices, he setteth divine before warly or any other, perhaps criptically and histerologically, perhaps in his lukewarm zeal not caring which were placed first, as may appear by Laërtius l. 5. and elsewhere in his own works. Polit. l. 6. c. 8. Yea these men may well be set even to Phalaris the tyrant's school, to learn devotion & zeal of him, after thus many years purity and purgation, who in his 84. epistle to the Messanenses, accuseth them of theft, of impiety, of sacrilege, for doing that which our reformers seek with tooth & nail continually, and dividing those golden gifts among themselves, which he had sent to Delphos as a thanksgiving after the recovery of his health, & threateneth them with revenge from heaven, & giveth them at last a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, a farewell with a mischief. Yea and julius Caesar that great spoiler may read a divinity lecture to these reformers, though those german currages Agrippa and Luter make account of him as of a thief, he may well teach them a way of regiment, which after his victories and instigations of many friends would not in any wise take his sword from a temple of the people called Aruerni in Gallia Aquitanica, where he that got it from him in battle or some other, had dedicated it to the honour of God In sempiternam rei memoriam.  
In which kind of regard toward reverend orders Plutarch reproveth the covetous Grecians, which in steed of golden spoils constituted brazen remembrances and counterfeits in their public places and temples. Yea and the oath of Hypocrates that heathen doctor, shall be in more honour with good men, wherein he bond himself, not to be persuaded either by counsel or by hand to minister any poison to any man, than these reformatorie pastoral inventions, by which they poison and bewitch the people with a taste of holiness, bringing them by little & little to live wholly upon poisons, or to make them madly affected thereby, that they may abhor all men beside their own brood, as drunken men delight in none but drunkard's company. O what pity or shame is it, that the statute of prisoning such maleparts and obstinates, or depriving their headstrong teachers of their usurped livings, is not like the laws of the Medes and Persians, that must not be broken? Now fie upon Lucian, he was not worth a bean, and out upon the wits of Italians & Greeks', that are not any way comparable with these men, they are fain to rail grossly, or taunt vainly after their own carnal manner, but these upstarted wits will choke God with his own scripture, these can construe his own will and testament otherwise then he ever did, with their placets, and interlacing, and grand protestations, these will by their physical informations and magicals, think and tell God himself, that if one pasture and close will not serve one lamb of his, the lamb must starve for them, and learn of the wolf to eat earth, and make shift as foxes do, the best they can: they will tell him that his lamb is too hot and wants a shearer, that he is cloyed with too much, and must be dieted, that the virtues and patience of lambs appeareth most in misery, and therefore it were good to keep them still in it, lest they forget all; that having high minds and proud looks, unlike David the prophetical Prince, tell him in his triumph over Goliath, of his shepherds bag and sling, and it be but to pull David's grace an ace lower: presuming that all goodly proceed are disgraced, because all their first beginnings in comparison were simple and but vile, which wiser men judge è diametro contrarily; and while the virgins of jerusalem sing of saul's thousand, these blunder about the meanness of his tribe and house & of his seeking his father's asses; & by equal reason abasing the miracles and blessings of the almighty, whereby he putteth down the mighty from their seat, and exalteth the humble and meek; yea and abasing our saviours hosanna, because of the manger where they laid him; dispraising that good wine of Cana, because it was once water: humbling the excellency of one contrary, because it is compared with the lowliness of another; and so forth, in a strange new Martinish hasty logic, the very reversion and scrape of Sophistry herself, they in this and such manner have sold themselves to hatch nothing but injurious themes and invectives all their life long; or if it were as they say being extremely and abominably false, yet how great was the pride of Diogenes which contemned the decency of Plato? and what lords would these lordings be, think you, that would overthrow lordships? how lofty was Carolus Martellus that hammer of christians, which scorned the thrones of princes, & yet lived in meaner state, belike affecting the insolent nature of Caesar, that in winged self-love refused all names of magistracy, and would rather be remembered by his own name then any other, as in their several histories it is recorded? or if these men be in their own confession inferiors and no Lords, why do they so wrongfully and shamefully rebel against their heads? much like those heretics in Epiphanius, by name called of him Cathari, which are in English Puritans, and by natural qualities right reformers and crooked patrons for our quaint ones, that did put shoes on their heads, and garlands on their feet, & rings on their toes, only to cross them in this contemptuous guise, that used them as all sober and wise men do now in their proper places.  
So judged the reverend Bishop Epiphanius of all heretics, and inclusively of those Cathari or Puritans, which lived in the time of the Emperors Decius & Aurelianus, and so he prophesied of these pure men, and purer women which are in some places, and prevail among their own ignorant and headlong favourers, which will never leave to break down the hedge, till a serpent bite them, Eccles. c. 10. v. 8. of both he giveth forth that true & Apostolic sentence, 1. tom. 2. l. 59 Her. Hi verò qui seipsos Catharos, id est, puros appellant, ab ipso doctrinae suae argumento impuros seipsos efficiunt. And his proof is all one with the proposition of the Apostle S. john, Omnis enim quiscipsum purum pronunciat, impurum seipsum perfectè condemnavit, if we say we are pure and have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there is no truth or purity in us, 1. ep. c. 1. v. 10.  
But if they will needs down with jurisdictions, & up with deformations, if they will not honour priests as jesus biddeth them, cap. 7. v. 31. if they will yet go forward in their froward doings and sayings, if they will forsake the Levite contrary to Moses, Deut. c. 12. v. 19 c. 33. v. 11. if Satan that calumniator be so great and hot within them, that they cannot stay themselves, if they will needs be rich, though they fall into many temptations and snares, and into many noisome and foolish lusts, which drown men in perdition and destruction, for the desire of money is the root of all evil, which while some lusted after, they erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows, but thou which art a man of God, fly these things, 1. Timo. c. 6. v. 9, 10, 11. if their note be still, there, there, so would we have it; then let all mal-contents, usurers and jews, all jugglers, owlegasses, and poggians, all decayed and bankrupt spendthrifts, all lightheaded and ungracious mates, all turkissing and new-fangled turkish poncet practisioners, all these and such like martinish fellows go, for none but these and such jolly fellows will go unto them at any time, to lose an hour among them, though TeeCees stand never so stately at the door, to entertain all that come and go, with protections and licenses, and tolerations, let these go unto them and encourage them in their extreme vengible reformatives, these new metrapolitanes, that have passports and investitures of the devils good holiness, to Nymrodize and judaize their fills, these that care not if heaven fall down and earth rise up, so they have their wills, and get themselves a day, and a name, being now weary of their right surnames and christian, and wishing to be their own godfathers or nicknamers, for here is their great theme and maxim of pure and purpur misrule, I warrant you largely and illuminately handled, here is the goal and price they run at and long for, here is that crucifige which they cried so long, here is a corrective Leaguer and Factor for their new-shapen worships, their humours of all sorts; here is their upright patrico or Abraham man, as they term him, at a beck, at an inch with his dieu guard, that can and will at a dead lift prove it good by his laws and canons, by his reasons and senses, by his fathers, and brothers, and sisters, by his angels and perhaps paredrall devils, that bore such a sway in their book Nemith vel legum Orci & Inferorum: That Hazael and joas princes, were base kings and as it were flattering dogs, to call the ecclesiastical prophet Elisaeus their lord and father: 4. King's c. 8 v. 12. c. 13. v. 14. that the third Semicenturion or captain of king Ochoziah with all his fifty men was but a swain, to fall on his knee, and do the ecclesiastical prophet Elias reverence, and call him his good lord; 4. King's c. 1. v. 13, 14. that king Benhadad, Naaman the captain, and the rest in holy Chronicle did amiss, to call prophets their fathers and lords, themselves being noble and mighty men. 4. King's c. 5. v. 17. c. 8. v. 9 that God did not well to make Moses that was but a lawgiver and counsellor the God of Pharaoh, a king & dread sovereign. Exod. c. 7. v. 1. that all men in the earth which have called the heads & rulers of the church their lords, in books, in sermons, in other meetings, shall for that idle word give account at the last day, but not for calling other men their lords: that our Church is maimed, unless we turn 7. into 4, and yet so we maim it more; that our bishops are blasphemers and traitors, unless they set down 4. sorts of churchmen by those texts, where S. Paul setteth down 7. several things, Prophecy, Office, Teachers, Exhorters, Distributers, Rulers, Mercymen. Rom. c. 12. v. 6, 7, 8, etc. where he setteth down nine gifts of the spirit, wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, great works, prophecy, discerning of spirits, diversities of tongues, interpretation of tongues, 1. Cor. c. 12. v. 8, 9, 10. where he setteth down five orders with the fruits of them, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, etc. Ephes. c. 4 v. 11, 12. that deacons must not teach wisdom, but pastors; that elders must not teach knowledge, but doctors; that pastors must not meddle with goods, but deacons; that doctors must not deal with manners, but elders; that wisdom, knowledge, manners, accounts, these four things belong not to every pastor, to every doctor, to every elder, to every deacon, because every one in himself belike and in other men, must not look to the soul and body, to the mind and manners, to the inward and outward man; that our confessors and martyrs of late time, men as careful of every word they spoke, as men might be, and specially that most innocent and righteous preacher M. Bradford was overseen in being so dutiful and courteous, to call the Bishop's lords; that these our Eliae, Elisaei, Moses, our spiritual captains and fathers, should not be called lords, nor charet & strength of England any more, though they ever were and will be so; that teachers must be poorer than their inferiors and scholars; that the magistracies for none or least causes must be contemned and overthrown; that the shepherd must not be richer than a sheep; and Christ put from his See in the church, because he is not corporally resident▪ that laughing and rejoicing upon supposed faults betokeneth God's spirit; that the watchman in the tower must be kept of the meanest that saveth me best and all; that he may in conscience be fostered that standeth stiffly in a lewd cause: that Philemon did not owe himself to Paul his spiritual father, v. 19 that physicians of the bodies shall be in great account, for healing an outward malady that would cast into the grave, and looking to the mortal part of man, and our ghostly and heavenly physicians of the soul must be out of account, for preserving the immortal part of a man, and curing the inward diseases that otherwise would cast down to hell; that the minority of Saul and the judaisme of Paul must prejudice the ones title and royalty, and the others doctrine and divinity; that Edgar's and justinian's, and the first Williams, or third Edward's & Henry's laws, or Magna charta, should set their lawyers afloat in wealth, in magnificency, in all ability, and God's law descending from heaven upon the holy mountain Sinai in all majesty and honourable reverence, & the prophet's words written by the wisest spirit of the whole world, even Gods own holy Ghost, & the gospel of Christ, that hath by God's providence conquered heaven and earth, as I could easily show unto you, if puritanism were not, and the spiritual & true decretals of the Apostles, which keep all men from follies, and lawmen from injuries, & these 4. chartae maximae of God himself, that hold up even the four corners or quarters of heaven over our heads, that else for our sin would contrary to all philosophical quintessences fall upon us, shall set their students, their barresters, their counsellors and judges at an ebb, or in a drought, in more penury, in greater want and contemptible estate.  
Such reasons and conclusions which either must be upholden with many other like inconveniences and mischiefs, or else these novelties and quarrels must be cast down, are more fit for the oration of Catiline, with the conjuration of Lentulus & Cethegus once in Rome, then for reformation of our English church, which is not of the same manner of spirit that Elias was, for so our Saviour teacheth his Apostles in the gospel of S. Luke c. 9 v. 55. even as this commonwealth is not in such distress by God's favourable goodness wherein it liveth, for according to the times God raiseth up diverse graces in the world, as those regions were at that day under persecution, when notwithstanding the prophet was thus highly honoured and reverenced of princes; which if it were otherwise in deed than it was, yet in right what argument call you this by your reformation? what consequence is this in your witcraft your new logic, which desire to seem so logical and sensible witty men? To set worldly magistrates up on height, for good service done to their prince and country duly and justly, & to thrust down these magistrates of magistrates, as Ignatius, Ambrose and other have truly judged, the one almost in every epistle, the other in his pastorals, for the divine court of conscience ruleth all courts whatsoever and wheresoever, into the lowest places & offices with the lowest provision of external goods, for their divine and politic service done to God and their prince, to God & their country, to God and the whole earth: & herein I commend all christians to truth, to charity, & to faith, which bid all true charitable faithful christians, to obey their guides & submit themselves to those which have charge of their souls, Heb. c. 13. v. 17. must the greatest service be least regarded and recompensed? God be merciful to us, what a wilful world live we in? shall the service of all services, even Gods own divine service be least considered and rewarded, whereby all other services and masteries are holden up? Then farewell all virtue which should be Lady and Queen over all, then God help godliness, that ordereth all virtues, and is of highest orders, then let Porphyrius saying of Brittany revive again, That it is a fertile Province of Tyrants: nay but must the greatest service among the greatest be smally respected, and simply honoured? which helpeth men of all diseases and hurts, more than all Lawyers and Physicians, the precepts thereof being better remedies against diseases and poverty, either in preventing them best by temperance, or overcoming them by patience, as it may appear to them that read the Scripture over but half so often as Alphonsus Arragonius did.  
Then let in all dissolution and neglect of justice, than Britannia shallbe Romania, not as Gildas meant of Rome which conquered us in Caesar's time, and after that kept us long under yoke. Ecce quàm malum & iniucundum non habitare in unum, but as Romania is taken this day for a part of Turkey, which, if we that profess the Gospel had the grace to agree in ourselves, might go hang itself for any hurt it could do us; then your & our Eirenarchy will be anarchy, them shall those paddock lordings rule all with their line & revel, that have in their charity & christianity so unruly and irregularly, in their policy, & their humanity so traitorously & perversely opposed and set themselves against the power and honour of the lamb in heaven, of the almighty lamb, which is Lord over all, and within all, ruling for ever, in that they are adversaries to the reverence and fatherhood of his kingly prophets, and messengers, and lawyers, his visible angels, and priests, and saints, created and ruled by his most happy and blessed word. Which name of priests or elders by their reformative sullen misorder, and their terrible grave Lord of misrule, is now half reckoned with some harebrains a name in reproach, & so the best names of fathers, and brothers, and other, will shortly likewise be in contempt, if this correcting, corrupting Mart. endure long, as he that hath but half an eye may plainly see how it is already crept in with these markers and marrers, & by disobedient thoughts hath bred more equality in men's minds, than was wont to be in my short remembrance, or aught now to be in our experience, unless you would have in your time, and in your successors, a monarchy turned into a democraty, a king into a subject, a better into a worse, contrary to Christ's own rule in his Gospel, The servant is not above his master, Matth. c. 10. v. 24. for all the fire burneth not at the first or second blast, but riseth and spreadeth by little and little, and so climbeth up to the top, and can hereafter turn equalities upon their temporal Lords and tenants, as it appeareth already by some they call Brownists, or Downists, and Downing, or such men of plucking down both great and little hills, by the same texts which they wrist upon spiritual lords and their curates, which texts belong universally to all christians, as the lords prayer and other texts do, being spoken likewise at first to the Apostles, and that people only.  
But perhaps I am in a wrong confutation, seeing these reformers are of so sober and maidenly discreet advised behaviour? what? say you advised & discreet? when you might say as truly, the most wise that ever lived under the sun, and the purity itself of mortal sapientials? for Solomon himself ever counted hitherto the wisest of men, was not, it seemeth by them, of half so wise a spirit, as these frugal dainty mote-spyers be in these points, wherein both of them show forth their love and zeal toward God's church. I beseech you weigh them both together, and so you shall find the truth by trial. Salomons love is loved of all good men, in building and beautifying God's temple most gloriously, because it is lovely in itself, and loving unto all. 3. Kings. cap. 6. v. 2.2.3. cap. 7. vers. 15. Reformers love is the cleaving of ivy to the tree, to rot it, or to the wall for snails and vermin to creep up aloft by it, their love is of the ape, the fond old ape, that with embracing too closely killed his young one, when he did all for apish love: their love is of the kiss of that hellish ape, that antichristian judas, it is falsehood in fellowship, we find it so: it is no kind of good love or zeal toward God or man, which breaketh down his holy places with axes and hammers, which crieth down with them, down with them even to the ground, and are hereupon called enemies and blasphemers of God and his honour, Psal. 74. and maketh the Turk and the devil to laugh at Christians: God grant this division cause not the increase of Mahomet's kingdom, as the faction of jeroboam was cause of Nabucodonosers' victories over Israel. Solomon hath so entirely and fervently loved the church, that in reading him any man would think he could scarcely imagine or tell how to express his affection sufficiently and significantly enough to his contentation, that he ever thought, he never did good enough, or said good enough to Christ's spouse and Church. Reformers Soliman's, or half Turks have so sheerly and purely loved the Church Christ's sister and spouse, which that king so magnifieth and extolleth in his divine caution or heavenly hymn, by most hearty exclamations, and most sweet comparisons, that they cannot tell which way to abase her prelate's too much, or enough to impoverish her estate, and make it like themselves rather then Christ, who is Lord over all things, and hath all power in heaven and earth, taking Luke for no body, c. 22. v. 30. and naked truth in a scogginly and ruffianly sense, not as it is meant of plainness and perspicuity, they cannot afford her any honour and grace, by whose doctrine all other powers are honourable and gracious, otherwise remaining in their old heathenish slippery estate, with catch that catch may, as Brennius once said, they cry out for spritish zeal, and without spiritual skill, they call envious detraction religious purgation, and violent robbery valiant jealousy, and false dealing godly insinuation. Lord God amend them if it be thy will, for they know not what they say.  
Solomon writeth in his sure promise and exhortation, that if his spouse be a wall, he will build a silver bulwark upon it, to make it the more venerable and glorious among men; Reformers in their discipline and exhortation are as ready to steal his silver work away by a false plea, as he was to set it up by a good conscience, they are ready to rob the Church for love, they now with all blasphemous impudency profess it openly & set a price on it, as the malecious men in in old time did on joseph, and judas in later time on jesus himself, and soldiers cast lots on his own garment, Gen. c. 37. v. 27. Math. c. 27. v. 5. and some care not in their madness, if he were stripped from top to toe, such is their lunacy, and so are they puffed up with pecuniary logic, which Verres a worthy teacher hath taught them, making more account of money then of men, & teaching other men, how to buy the best princes alive of their own men, but shall this jugurth say of you relatively, o angliam venalem si invenerit venditorem? shall he thus vilely dishonour the judges of this age with such proffers as if they were for his tooth: maligning secretly our gracious & blessed prince, and devising how to blot her Royal immaculate glory in this her merciful and right Christian reign, by some such villainous desperate act, whereby she might be stained in all posterities and records, by pleasuring Martinish malcontents once, and displeasuring all learned men for ever▪ even for love they would worse than that excessive tyrant Richard the third, play an enemy's part to the Church, for the love they have to God, they wish the decay of God's temple, these Antidavids' and Antichrists have not loved the habitation of his house, nor the place where his honour dwelleth; as their S. Dionysius, to whom the hotter & wittier they are, the liker they are, rob the church of his god whom he worshipped because he would taste of the goodness of his God, but we see what sorrow came on him, even by deriding that religion which was bad, or as mad men and fools, and drunkards condemn their own souls for money, and lose the blessings and joys of God's kingdom, to win the transitory goods of the earth by mischievous ways, being misled of an ignorant will, and unadvised resolution, blinded with a fond desire of innovation only, and presuming to rule the wheel which themselves never made or knew.  
Solomon saith in the abundance of that wisdom which God gave him, that if his sister and spouse be a door, as Christ metaphorically calleth himself a door, by which we enter into heaven, as by his Church we enter unto him, he will keep her in with the best wood he can come by, even with the boards of Cedar wood, which is a wood ever good, of greatest continuance, of fairest beauty, of noblest worthiness, insomuch that young grammarians can say proverbially, Cedro digna, of a thing that deserveth immortality and the renown of all posterity, that preserveth itself, and other things, that are in it, from corruption: but these supposed gentlemen as far from gentleness as the goats be from sweetness, these courtiers as far from courtesy, as devils are from goodness, these shrewd reformers of Moses and joseph, & Solomon, I pray God, if it be possible, they may once prove reformers of themselves, and learn to be ruled by their rulers, had rather that preservation, that future renown, that immortality of name, those cedar boards should only or chief be given to the temporal scholar than the spiritual teacher, to the easy hearer than the painful speaker, to the external ruler the image of God, than the internal ruler the other image of God, then to the kings of all kings even God himself, or to his house for his own sake, that giveth all goods only for his houses sake (as he blessed Pharaoh for jofephs' sake, and the poor widow of Sarepta for Elias sake, and Laban for jacobs' sake) where his blessed name is called upon, where his ears are open out of heaven to our prayers, where the bottomless graces and immeasurable benefits and all happiness begin, where his own word is once and for ever sent from above, where in a better imitation of heavenly harmony than Macrobius mentioneth, l. 2. c. 3 Satur. the nightingale, and the lark, and all sweet birds, for so I may well name them, sing jesus, & Gloria all the year, where Gods own word is in man's phrase, that men may understand it: a thousand times more worthy of golden cover and golden desk, than the furious Iliads and fraudulent Iliads, than the lion and fox of Homer were in the judgement of Great Alexander, according to the like comparitive argument of the kingly prophet David, who thinketh it no reason, that himself should dwell within cedar walls, and the Ark of God should abide in tents and be carried upon cart wheels in a more penurious and simple manner, than was either lawful or expedient. 2. King's c. 6. v. 3. c. 7. v. 2. For David did not make such a conclusion as our deformers do, he was not so headstrong a gentleman, or so presumptuous a man of worship, as this great mender thus counseling all before he be called, and canceling that he never had, with a metrapolitanisme of his own making and fashion: he said not, that the ark of God's covenant should stay on a cart still in other ages after him because in the primitive necessity it was first carried upon cart wheels, as these seniors in railing and juniors, in obeying say, that the church must stand for ever, as she stood in her apodemical mobility at the first, in travail, in trouble, in sorrow, in persecution, like the first churchmen, and if that were granted, yet even at those days the true christians of the laity laid down their goods at the churchmens feet, and they did not the like only that were infidels and very pagans, Acts c. 4. v. 32. which bounty showed in the dreadful time of persecution, when themselves might have need, should teach our men to do the like in time of peace, and liberally supply the wants of the clergy, which by ungodly Martinish unreasonable absurdest means are beyond a mean very grievous and many, and if christian patience were not most intolerable: o ye devilish cormorants, read the 83. Psa. v. 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. & repent, & make restitution of those church lands & goods so lewdly and ungraciously gotten, and kept, and spent in pride and lechery, unless with your other hellish paradoxes ye will make the time of peace in a settled state, more niggardly and ravenous, than that time of affliction in a movable wandering commonwealth, so that they may as readily protest and maintain this with Wall and Straw, with Leyden and his mate, that the Nobility must return back to ancient poverty, and divide their sums and goods among their needy secular brethren, and be reform for company into a woeful and distressed case, till every one hath enough to live thereby in some trade without beggary and woe, because the first Nobles in this realm, and all other lived so at the first in the primitive Nobility, following the sun and moon and all lights, which the higher they are, the less shadows they make, without such costly trains, and deep expenses, and so many good morrows, whilst hundred starve for want of that they cast away. But they never consider that none should want, if either those numbers would labour in their vocations soberly and painfully, or many other beside Noblemen could do their duties neighbourly and willingly toward the impotent creatures the objects of mercy: they remember not that idleness destroyeth more than poverty, and that infinite men die, or come to nought by their folly, not by misorder of superiors, by not obeying them, not by any fault of them, of their own stony obdurate wilfulness, not otherwise.  
O unthankful wretchedness and wretched unthankfulness, o disobedient tongues against the law & impenitent souls against the gospel, o forgetful and ungrateful iniquity, o creatures marprelates most unkind and barren of justice distributive, as Sir Thomas Elyot proveth solemnly, l. 3. c. 2. in his governor, where he thus exclaimeth against them which dislike the names and ceremonies that appertain to reverence and obedience, together with the costly rewards & ornaments of virtuous and godly men. Ought they not to fall prostrate on the ground with fasting and prayer? to glorify God, for his most loving and fatherly care, for his princely providence, for his bountiful goodness ever more and more bestowed upon us, and them? aught they to refuse Gods gracious liberality, to look backward when he looketh forward, to think they can have too much of God's blessings, to restrain that which is given only to a godly & honest end, for the sustenance of learned and religious men in schools & churches, for the reverence and safeguard of the chiefest sober stayed men and fathers, approved and constant in learning and manners of life, not for martinish whelps that can neither speak well nor do well, thrust in by them that now are offended with their dignities? as Palamedes, and joseph's brethren, and Aesop were accused for having that which was thrust upon them, injuriously.  
O vos nefarij gnaviterque impudentes libelli, nulla est Ecclesiae Anglicanae macula, cuius autores & fautores non sint vestri laici martinistae, as the devil cast sores upon job, and then made his lightheaded wife to upbraid him and tell him of that he had against his will. It must needs be, that offences should come, but woe be to them by whom they come, and woe be to you, that curse those things, which yourselves have caused, Math. cap. 18. vers. 7.  
But happy are they, that avoid the curse, by keeping the right way, by not coveting that which belongs only to churchmen, contenting themselves with their own, not contending for sacred goods and possessions, without which interserted among other, the whole body of the kingdom would soon prove a huge monster of ataxy and anarchy, with a moving earth, and an immovable heaven, in Copernicus' guise, neither true astronomer herein nor theonomer, howsoever he seemeth a reformer to some, that are open at all times to receive all that falleth or cometh next to hand, yea if it were in their heat, when they have not their wills, to curse God and die, to lift fools on horseback and set kings on foot, to convert with our derivative converts the bells into guns, the leads into pellets, the mother cathedral churches into close chambers, the fonts into basins, the organs in water pipes, and then themselves into devils, the realm into hell, though God hath abundantly besides their desert endued them with all kind of principal and necessary provision for peace and war, that they might not have evil eyes because he is good unto other. Math. c. 20. v. 15. How can they be the members of Christ, that are the limbs of Satan, and make a sport of mocking those chief men of learning and sober life, men casting aside all railing and unlearned innovations, and as sufficient for their places of government as ever any have been in England, and notwithstanding the superlative of Erasmus concerning the fathers in his days? How can they be true subjects, that tell the Parliament, they are starved with their Service book, wherein is the most perfect order and matter of divine prayer and thanksgiving set down for all men, that rend and cut in pieces her Maisties' irreprehensible Statutes enacted in the first year of her gracious reign, c. 2. spurning them and abusing them rebelliously? O good God, we beseech thee, if they be of thy flock which have erred and strayed thus desperately from thy way of peace and righteousness like lost or diseased sheep, to open their ears, and eyes, and hearts, that they may at length by thy provident favourable goodness hear, see, and know, what they are doing and undoing, for they are as deaf, and blind, and dead in sin without thee, as the jews were that stoned thy protomartyr Steven, as the Libertines and Cyrenians were that persecuted thy disciples, not otherwise able then with raging words & hundreds of headlong sectaries to resist their power, but only thought they did well for want of thy spirit, and through ignorance of thy holy word. Acts c. 6. v. 10. c. 7. v. 60.  
Thy primitive Apostles count it in thy evangelical histories a glory to thy name & increase of thy gospel, thy faith, thy love, thy church, when any maintenance and revenue was bestowed on them and thy faithful disciples, and laid down at their hands and feet. 1. Cor. v. 16. v. 17. when any zealous patron or other devout person by thy fatherly love and economy, was sent to help their christian brotherhood and fellowship in thy battles and heavenly embassages, the more they received the more they rejoiced, they prayed daily for them which ministered to their wants, Philip. cap. 4. v. 18. they were then enroled among the godly Christians that entertained and maintained thy Saints, the laity than strived among themselves who should be greatest in christian devotion, in liberality, in patronage, in love and such like virtues which uphold mankind, 1. Thessal. 6.5. v. 12, 13. they were such as should be saved, saith the Evangelist S. Luke, that were added, and that added to the church, Acts c. 2. v. 47. they were called brethren, because they fed, of the same table, of the same milk, of of the same store, Acts. c. 21. v. 7. Rom. c. 1. v. 13. and shall their derivative successors, o merciful God, o bountiful jesus, count it for a dishonour to thy name, and a decrease of thy Gospel, a decay of thy love, thy faith, and thy church, unless their apostasy, heresy and Martinisme prevail, and those goods, which as thy Apostle S. james teacheth us, came from above by former good instruments, be ravened, and bribed, and pulled away by these wicked instruments, these mad dogs, these infamous libellors, from our feet and heads, from our tables and studies, from our mouths and hearts, to feed hounds, to dress whores, to multiply hellhound and whorehound ruffians, swearers, harebrains? unless we be desolate and forsaken, without our own patrons, without tutors of our own, without our own judges, as other men have all of their own, without the possession and fruition of our own, or rather of thy goods, to the derision of thy omnipotent power, to the contempt of thy reverend word, to the overthrow of thy catholic and apostolic church, of thy faithful and true bishops and priests, which have authority even from the great commission of thy holy spirit, to be chargeable to the hearers and professors of the faith, 2. Thessaly. c. 3. v. 8, 9 in the days of this life, and have a more singular pre-eminence than any other in the life of the resurrection? Dan. c. 12. v. 3. which are the chiefest pillars in thy commonwealth, that being in honour and reputation, and environed with many godly Centurions & defenders, with many loving David's, meek Mosees, and liberal salomon's, the whole glory, and every part thereof, shall redound to thee, o father of heaven, now in the last times and years of the world, and continue evermore by thy mighty will, as it did in the beginning of the law, and the dayspring of the gospel, when true zeal was earnest in enriching thy flock, and tyranny only occupied in empouerishing it; when it was true religion to confirm the estate of thy preachers, and execrable atheism to enfeeble them; when it was esteemed for right divinity to obey God more than man, & for profane judaisme to serve God and Mammon, much more to serve Mammon and God after the jewish construction and antichristian manner; that triumpheth in the name of blood which is but aery; of seed which is but fiery, of elementary and mineral accidents which are but earthy and watery, of those bodily blunt and sharp properties and casual endowments, which make the life tedious unto men of this world, and odious to thy majesty in the world to come, unless they be consecrated to thy blessed lamb, and dedicated to the use of thy holy Church, whose internal prosperity first, then external is regarded of all good men, howsoever these new putfoorths, drunken textuals, brainsick templaries, monstrous protesters, play the verbal sophisters throughout their whole generations. Now dear Christians, let us labour continually to be dear to God; let us not undo the whole body for the faults of some parts; let us not for a worldly hope lose a heavenvly certainty; for accidental shadows essential substances; for indifferent ceremonies necessary laws, the good wheat for the cockle in the fields; the fruitful trees for the fruitless & haughty bramble in the woods, for the frail love of a man, the endless love of our God & his lamb that teacheth us only to fly from the sin, not the goods of the world, but use them godly and canonically.  
Let us I beseech you duly consider the word of the Lord of hosts unto Zachary his prophet, which biddeth us, Execute true judgement, and show mercy and compassion, and that none imagine evil against his brother in his heart. cap. 7. vers. 9 Let us daily and instantly pray unto God, to illuminate our knowledge with his heavenly empireall light, to establish our faith, to multiply his gifts and graces upon us, that we sing with the spirit and with the understanding, as S. Paul our great doctor hath said, If God be on our side, who can be against us? who spared not his own son, but gave him for us all as a lamb to death, how shall he not with him give us all, even all things also? Rom. c. 8. v. 31, 32. Let not us make ourselves worse than the heathen, or reverence our religious fathers & bishops less than they did their holy men, accounting their priests and pastors for nobles & princes, and their princes & nobles for priests & pastors of the people, as Homer nameth metaphorically Agamennon the prince of Grecians the pastor of the people, & Hector the prince of Troyans' the bishop of men; as Sophocles and the other grave and sententious Tragedians call their prophets princes, and namely blind Tiresias for being a prophet is called a king even of a king; as Virgil familiarly known to young scholars, calleth Anius a king and a priest; or as Moses rather telleth us in his divine judgement, that Melchisedech was the prince of Salem and the priest of God, Genes. cap. 14. v. 18. and S. Paul to prevent glossary cavils nameth him king plainly by the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, which is the ground or foundation of the people, whereon they build their confidence and strength, jesus being the corner stone. Heb. c. 7. v. 1. and who hath not heard of the kingly prophet David? of Hermes that was a philosopher, a priest, a king, and thereof was among other Egyptian princes named Trismegistus or thrice excellent. Let not us English men make ourselves worse affected toward God's Church, than our forefathers have been before us, whereof some leaving their crowns, some their royalties, some their riches, devoted themselves wholly to the orders of the Church, and bestowed their lives and livelihoods upon God's ministrations and services, as some readers know very well, besides divers examples of other foreign chronicles, judging the name of a divine, better than of a man, and the title of God's priest, as joyful and honourable with men and Angels, as that which is the very best of all titles. Let him that is taught in the word minister unto him that teacheth in all good things: who goeth a warfare at his own cost? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? who feedeth a flock and suffereth another to devour the milk? saith S. Paul the mighty Apostle and Bishop of the Gentiles. Galat. cap. 6. vers. 6. what true Christian man will once do otherwise unto an other, than he would in that others place á paribus causis should be done to him? saith Christ the almighty Saviour. Math. c. 7. v. 12. Let us not follow Aërius the heretic, whose opinion concerning the equality of Bishops and Priests Epiphanius confuteth l. 3. haer. 75. but rather satisfy ourselves with the confutation thereof in that place, then seek new shifts for him and starting holes▪ for that sentence of S. Jerome pronounceth a bishop to be a priest, because they are divers orders, as a man might say in that phrase without confounding the degrees, the same man which is a doctor is a master, but it doth not by conversion judge a priest to be a bishop, a master to be a doctor. Or if the words following in him will not suffer you to be content with this answer, even from that which followeth there I reason thus: That which taketh away the seed of schisms is necessary in our church, wherein the people is so ready to say, I am of one, I am of another, I am of neither, as they were in former times: but to choose one among the priests to be overseer or bishop above the rest, by jeroms confession taketh away the seed of schism in the church now as it did aforetime, or else every parish priest will be a bishop, a judge, without check of any there, and mar all obedience for want of bishop-like government in himself, and due reverence in the neighbours. Ergo it is necessary in our church, to choose one among the priests to be overseer and bishop above the rest, and to rule them with discretion and knowledge.  
If any man argue against this argument, of the effect, and urge the word of S. Paul Philip. c. 1. v. 1. we may deny the consequence of the reason, either because it is a synecdoche of a general for a special, or such a speech as this, To the prince & people, taking away lords herein, & reckoning them with the people, as S. Paul contriveth priests in the word deacons, which in respect of bishops are deacons, as lords in respect of their princes are of the people, according to that parcel of a prayer in our common service book, Upon our bishops and curates, which judgeth the diocese the bishop's parish, and priests under them in several parishes their curates, which take their cure and charge of them by institution, as the spiritual sons of spiritual fathers. If any shall yet reason from S. Peter 1. Epist. c. 5. v. 1. we may answer, that either he might call himself a priest in his humility in respect of Christ the chief bishop of souls, as Emperors have in modesty named themselves their soldiers fellows, yet none will, I trow, be so wise to conclude hereupon, that captains and soldiers aforetime were all one, or that he being in the order of a bishop, now was withal a priest, and writ to them which had been his fellow priests, & were not yet elected bishops, as a doctor may call a master his fellow pupil, in remembrance of old friendship, though he never mind to make both dignities one.  
If the text of the Acts c. 20. v. 28. be urged upon us, where S. Paul calleth them bishops whom before in the seventeenth verse he named priests, which seemeth more forcible at the first sight, than any other text among their objections, yet I pray, S. Paul had sent for the fathers and masters of families, and in his exhortation called them kings and captains over their own houses, you could not deny them to be subjects still, or say they are kings. It is written that they to whom the law was given were called gods, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, but not the gods, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, for that were simply to make them gods, and commit idolatry, john. c. 10. v. 34. so in this text it is written, that the holy Ghost appointed them bishops, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, but not the bishops, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉; as it were bishops comparatively, not the very bishops themselves, looking carefully and vigilantly to their Churches by the example of the bishops, which were as S. Paul testifieth, careful for all churches, as the bishops are in their own and other diocese and provinces. 2. Cor. c. 11. v. 28.  
As for the objections of Chemnisius taken from jerom, from the counsel of Toletum, and from Gregory's 95. distinction, 2. part, 70. page, they move me no more than if he had said, They that use viceroys and vicegerents, have no necessary places and offices. Such magistrates use substitutes, ergo they are not needful: for so I may best answer him with a parallel even as our hundred thousand martin's with their protestations may be answered, to make as speedy a dispatch in temporals as in spirituals, upon as probable accusations, causes, articles. And look what this examiner writeth upon the fourth chapter in the same part, it proveth nothing but a superiority, a regiment, a place over other, a bishopric, which some sons & vassals of envy prick against, tolerable by the confession of Chennisius, among true bishops, so partial is he in his toleration, when as S. Paul's Examen. 1. Tim. c. 5. v. 17. appointeth double honour to worthy men, which are with virtuous men as S. Augustine and S. Jerome in their Epistles call one another, Domini verè sancti, and beatissimi papae, and in christi visceribus honorandi, and venerandi, not Popes, not Antichrists, not Beelzebubs, as these new jacobines lately famous count all men Esau's which please not them, jacobines that have begun in France and would go in England with mischiefs and spoils▪ they go to their lords Esau's, as they call them, and send three railing Rabshakees messengers, as jacob sent humble servants; they stand at defiance with all the hundreds of Esau, as jacob was greatly afraid and sore troubled; they curse and rage, as jacob prayed and blessed; they present as many lies and foul words, as jacob did scores and hundreds of cattle: they strive and are disallowed of all discrete men and worse reputed than the vainest rhymers and players that ever lived, as jacob wrestled and was blessed of the Angel; they desire to pull and catch from their lords Esau's, as jacob would needs bestow a gift upon his brother; so that we cannot esteem them Esau's till these prove themselves jacobites, seeing there can be no Esau where no jacob is, no Antichrist without Christ, no Popes without Papists, no devil unless he that is against him be a God▪ but alas poor jacob, thy prudent Rebecca is tky enemy, thine own speech bewrayeth thee, surely thou art Esau; o thou french and popish and antichristian and devilish counterfeit, thou art nothing but Esau in every part, and so will prove in soul as thou art already in body, unless thou become a newborn babe in innocency and concerning malice.  
Let us good Christians, not strive to be like lions and eagles, like bears and other beasts, in cruelty, in ravin, in such other qualities, which are by Gods own will made our own servants and put in subjection under our feet, Gen. c. 9 v. 2. but follow the nature of salomon's dove that is washed with milk and of a clean fair behaviour, which hath a sweet voice or loving conferences for peacemakers, which hath a comely face, and threateneth no mischief, Cant. cap. 2. ver. 15. c. 5. v. 12. but follow the nature of the innocent lamb, and specially of this principal and righteous Lamb of God, that cleanseth and taketh out our spots, blots, sins, filthiness, and all our corruptions, to give us a contented and peaceable mind, a quiet and thankful tongue, a brotherly and neighbourly helping hand toward one another, to give us soft tender hands and soft tender hearts every one to other, that we perish not in our own folly by discord, that we open no gates or doors to confusion and misrule, that we prove not a by word or laughing stock to our enemies, but that God may bless us and be blessed in us for ever and ever.  
Let us always remember that memorable sentence and comparative suppose of our highest teacher and archbishop jesus Christ, and apply it unto our naked hearts, and be fully persuaded of it without waning & minishing in this faith, that if any one despiseth his preachers and messengers, he despiseth him, and that he which despiseth him despiseth the father which sent him. Luke cap. 10. vers. 16. whereby he is necessarily brought to a naughty and shameful end, having God and his Christ with the same Christ and his faithful ones his accusers and judges▪ which precept of personal regard is in all reason so necessary to maintain discipline, that the Romans having only a politic regard of religion in their blindness, grounded their devotion upon Numaes fourth law, Feroces animos non posse in officio contineri nisi deorum metu, ideoque religionibus & ceremoniis esse alligandos, so honoured their chief bishops, or Archbishops, and namely among other, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus their chief Bishop, that they set a great punishment and fine upon Cneus Cornelius the praetors head, for abusing him, and in him religion, with reproachful words, whose name they tendered chiefly next the greatest name of all other, as Alexander ab Alexandro recordeth, l. 2. c. 8. genia. & how much more should true honour be given to the chief priest in a true religion, then in a false? then in the profane religion of Orestes yet being sober, and of his sister Iphigenia among the Commani? where the priest is next the king in honour, seeing he that is a king, and he that is a priest, are commonly of one family and progeny, in so much that their priests on the feast days twice in the year did wear a crown or diadem, and Pompeius that conquered their country Cappadocia, made the inhabitants subject to Archelaus their high priest, who had by his decree 6000 servants at commandment for holy things, and for his use two skoenes, or 60. furlongs, or 7. miles and a half of ground about the city Comana, as Budaeus reporteth in his third book de ass out of Straboes 12. book of Cosmography; then in that vain religion of the Druids among the primitive Galli? where the priests were in chiefest account and honour, they had a high priest, they enjoyed privileges miverualias and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, in being free from wars, in paying no tribute, in other immunities, they were judges in private and public controversies, so that they were excommunicated from all companies, which yielded not to their decrees, and to the shame of these new-fangled brablers it is written, that arts were much esteemed, that judges were in great authority, that the propitiation and divination of sacrifices was no less than augustae maiestatis, and even imperial. To let pass the clean, beautiful, and reverend order of the Tanagraei, and the Cabiris, commended by Paufanias lib. 9 for the regard they had to religious buildings, and many other, whose policy was greater, and learning profounder then the skill of all church-robbers in this Island.  
Let us not lay up for ourselves treasure in earth, & specially not ill gotten goods, against God's will, but make us friends of unrighteous Mammon, that the mountains or greatest men may bring forth peace, and the little hills or inferiors righteousness unto the people, that they may receive us into everlasting habitations, where Seraphin, and Cherubin, and Angels, and Prophets, and Apostles, and Martyrs, praise the God of this Church for ever and ever. Let us follow the widow of Sarepta, and ever be like her whose praise is in the Gospel, Luke chapter 4. verse 26. that having but a little oil, and a little meal, was so obedient and faithful toward God, when she had but once heard God's word, that she would rather, even in a great famine, put herself and her son in danger, than not do for Elias the man of God; and what lost she by it? or what lose any other by the like? 3. King's chapter seventeen, verse nine.  
Let us live and dwell among ourselves in unity and concord, like Lambs and Doves, like fathers and sons, and be Lions in God's name to our foreign enemies, that are Gods enemies, not to our neighbours, whom we must love as ourselves, seeing God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, 1. Cor. c. 14. v. 33.  
Let us live, let us, the prince and people of England, live in the band of impregnable love and charity, like fellow-labourers, and sworn men, and sworn brethren, and because the Clergy soweth unto us spiritual things, is it any matter if they reap our temporal things? which without their divine regiment the strong commonalty would by force pull from us idle politics, & too idle in suppressing the foes of holy Church. 1. Cor. cap. 9 v. 11.  
Let us hold fast together in uniformity like the parts of one and the same body, not defying and enfeebling one another without all wisdom and compassion that become true Christians, seeing the body shall be too much defied by the enemies, God knoweth, though it hurt not itself▪ for who ever in a good mind hated his own body? Ephes. c. 5. v. 29. Let us leave the motespying of worldly men and hypocrites, that juda and Israel, Roboam and jeroboam, jerusalem and Samaria, may be no more among us in England, according to that historical prayer of Tertullianus against the Arrians; Let Martin and his Martinets not think the realm so rude as to be delighted in his undecent and uncivil language, or the rulers so unlearned as to be persuaded by his gross and ignorant opinions, but leave to strike at them whom he cannot reach, though he hath three more sheaves to stand upon.  
What if the old cocks of Danubius and Rhenus have putrefied humours in them, and thereby lay unhealthful eggs, must the merchants of Tamesis and Severne bring them hither for novelties, where the swelling corner birds and toads of the hellish calumniator are so ready to brood them, and breed such Serpents and Cockatrices as are lately flown abroad? or if we shall have 100000. judasses' and as many Caines, to betrray Christ's holy Church for 100000. pounds, and crucify his disciples, and give him and them gall and vinegar to drink by reeds of pitomees and pistles, let us be sure, that Christ shall rise again from death, for it is impossible that he should be holden of death, neither can his ministry see corruption, be sure that Abel's blood will cry from the earth, and then woe be to them by whom the Son of man was betrayed, it had been good for them, if they had never been borne, and then shall their scornful generation be cursed from the earth and prove but runnegates and vagabonds in the earth, and not be able to keep themselves that disdained to be their brethren's keepers and defenders. Math. c. 26. v. 24. Gen. c. 4. v. 9, 10, 11, 12.  
Let no man speak ill of them that be in authority or revile the High priest, so, as Martinists do, not in calling him mildly painted wall, but ragingly very caiphass himself, who doubted of Christ whom he hath professed mightily in word and deed, who rend his clothes in horror of Christ's divinity which he hath in daily Prayers and every way acknowlodged and maintained honourably and heartily, but they can be content, that as Cayphas was the devils high priest, so the electors and favourers of our gracious archbishop should be reputed devils and rakehells, and none but these most rebellious and heretical jacobites reformers good livers.  
Let no man think to make a doctrine of one man's head, but follow the divine and sweet counsel of S. Paul, and learn to go the right way to the truth of the gospel, not in dissimulation and flattering ourselves with the fashions of worldlings, but in plain and sincere dealing without bitterness or disdain against the Christian fellowship of the church, ever taking heed through the holy ghost, that we do not with the ignorant and unstable pervert the scriptures of S. Paul & other, as S. Peter warneth, 1. Epist. c. 3. v. 16.17. Galath. c. 2. v. 14.  
Let us consider, that which julian the apostata writeth to Arsatius bishop of Cappadocia, how christian religion groweth and spreadeth abroad because of the liberality that christians use towards all men of all sorts, and follow those primitive Christians in all good nature, unless we be come to that apostasy, iulianisme, and martinisme, which would neither see it grow or spread abroad, but banish it into the nows orbis, whether the ten tribes of israel went long before Portugals, and deliver itself another while into the outlandish devices, now loathing the Angel's food and Manna after these thirty years.  
O where are our renowned old noblemen and yeomen of Britanny? where be the cities, and castles, and victories, which they were usually accustomed to win from their enemies? are our hearts out of our bodies, that we cannot understand what belongeth to men of so manly a nation? are british wits become now so brutish, to judge it manhood and counsel, to rob poor scholars of their rewards provided for their labours in mind, as other have rewards appointed for labours of body? cannot the beast that hath a man's face be content, to be a Fox at fifty and beguile many, but it must be a wolf and old dog at seventy and eighty, and ravine all?  
O let us all look about us, and see how the professed enemies of Christ the Saracens are at hand and insult upon us; how they have gotten Asia minor, and great parts of Africa, and in them possess the four chief patriarch cities of old christendom, jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandry, Carthage; how they are entered into the bowels of christian lands, inhabiting the imperial city Constantinople, through the idle arms and miserable discords of Christian people, which by self-will is grown more proud than valiant; how the turkish Mahu like another Pharaoh or Nabuchodonoser threateneth the bondage of old Egypt, and the captivity of old Babylon; how he hath conceived Rome and travaileth with Pope, as Peter Ramus the most blessed martyr of Paris writeth in his divine commentaries of Religion. lib. 4. cap. vlt.  
Let not the devil beguile us with his shadows and faces, with his gallant brood and hospital knights, and temporal church men, to believe him more against the title of our ecclesiastical Lords, when he quoteth Luke c. 22. v. 26. then we believe him when he citeth Math. c. 23. v. 8, 9 against the title of our corporal Fathers and virtuous doctors, but resist him faithfully and bid him heartily avoid Satan, and tell him we must honour our fathers and masters, our doctors and lords and all our betters: who confess, they learn by these comparative texts, not to be impatient as the Gentiles, not to be vayneglorious as the Pharisees, not to be Lords over the faith, or tyrannical commanders of the faithful, but to follow the example and life of Christ their Lord and Doctor, to hold up all with love and peace, to be meek and lowly, to help even the meanest, and regard the poorest Christian, as he washed and wiped the basest parts of his Apostles, even the very feet of them, which the Lords and Doctors of the Gentiles would never have done for any cause to their servants and scholars. john c. 3. v. 5, 14. for bathing the feet may save the life, or preserve the health, or refresh the body, or do some good: and these effects, to save life, to save health, to help the body, to do good, are no abasements, no disgraces, no shame, but manly regard, neighbourly concord, christian community and commonwealth. Let not the proud and pompous challenges of the envious men fear any young scholar in Christ's school more than it disquieteth the elder sort, which know assuredly, that put forths metal is in nature lightest & in proof weakest, that audacious crackers are commonly fugitives, that unablest workers are busiest worders, that the challenger is for the most part ever vanquished, to day in the full who but he? and to morrow in the wanes who would have thought it? the very stones cry out upon them. Let us buy the truth and sell it not, likewise wisdom, instruction, or understanding. Proverb. c. 23. v. 23. and speak every one the truth unto his neighbour. Eph. c. 4. v. 25. Let us every one amend our own lives in all duty and thankfulness, and still and ever behold, mark, know, remember, imitate, worship, honour, serve, adore and praise the only true right Lamb of God, that was made the son of man as we are, to make us the sons of God as he is, that made, and saveth, & crowneth men with his greatness and goodness for ever and ever. Amen-  
Autoris verbum ex Augustini epistola 163. ad Generosum.  
Si ergo aliquid asperè diximus, non ad amaritudinem dissensionis, sed ad correctionem dilectionis valere cognosce.    

Faults escaped.  
Page 4. line 7. necessary read accessary. page 7. line 15. c. 32. read c. 35. page 9 line 8. sesquiamus read sesquiannus. pag. 14. line 7.1. 1. King's read 3. King. line 10. 2. Cor. not 1. pag. 22. line 17. read juggling oracles of the East. page 24. line 21. Senezar read Genezar. page 40. l. 16. irrideri read irridere. p. 87. l. 9 Libanus read Libanius. p. 96. l. 2. arrogantest read arrantst. pa. ead. for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. p. 111. arms read armies. p. 127. l. 30. oecomenikes, read oeconomickes. p. 131. l. 32. men read minded. p. 136. l. 1. partibus read paribus. p. 146. l. 13. for some, read the same.