Proper Persecution, or the sandy Foundation of a general Toleration, Discovered and Portrayed in its proper Colours.  
By the fruit ye shall know the tree; And by the waters the fountain. Read and Consider what the Envious man hath done.  
A Reply to DICTATED thought ●… By a more Proper Emblem  
Dictater here behold in proper place  
Three joined as one to blemish and disgrace  
Hear wants no chain to link each to other  
You see how loveingly they 'gree together  
Sweet peace and Truth how gladly would they meet  
Yet for these enemies they Cannot greet  
I shall begin with Martin's cursed shrill Echo. pag. 5, 6.  
1 THe life of Sir John Presbyter is like neither to be long nor good.  
2. That he will be brought to a sudden untimely end, perhaps to hanging.  
3. That Presbytery shall live but a short time to do mischief, and then the common people will sing, hay toss the Devils dead.  
4. The Synod will soon be dissolved, the devil chained up.  
5. Clap thy hands for joy, O England, Presbytery shall have never a child to vex thee shortly, or imprison thy free Denizens, and to suck up thy fat.  
6. Then farewell persecution for conscience, then farewell Ordinance for tithes; farewel Ecclesiastical supremacy: farewel Pontifical revenue.  
7. Farewell Assembly of Divines, Dissembled at Westminster, Sir Simon Synod, and his son Presbyter Jack.  
In Persecution Arraignment, Pag. 2.  
8. Persecution hath a thousand jack tricks above all the rest to block up all passages and stop all mouths.  
9 He turned Reverend Imprimatur and here all was as sure as the Devil and Presbyter could make it.  
10. Pag. 14. We employ Dr. Featlyes' Devil a very reverend ten pound Sir John, to make up a description of the Anabaptists, etc.  
Against Tithes in a scurrilous Libel:  
11. Time hath been wholly taken up in the Procurement of that sacred Ordinance of Tithes, wisely thought on before the Directory; for he is an Infidel and denyeth the faith that doth not provide for his Family.  
12. My Lord the Defendant smells of a fat benefice; see his pockets are full of Presbyterian steeples, the spires stick under his girdle; ha', ha', ha', instead of weathercocks, every spire hath got a black box on it.  
13. Instead of Moses, Aaron, and the two tables, we shall have Sir Ssmon and Sir John holding the late solemn League and Covenant.  
14. And then that demure, spotless, pretty, lovely, sacred, divine, and holy Ordinance for Tithes. The two tables of our Presbyterian Gospel painted upon all the Churches in England.  
15. O brave Sir Simon the Bells in your pocket chime all in, ours chime all out.  
16. I pray you give a funeral homily for your friends here before you depart, here's twenty shillings for your pains.  
17. Yea 'tis sacrilege to bring down the prize as it was in the beginning is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.  
18. Our Temporising Doctors are not so simple to swim against the stream, they are wiser in their generation and know most state goes that way.  
19 Their Religion moves upon the wheel of the State.  
20. I would your Lordships would call in your Ordinance for tithes, & turn them to the people's goodwills; Then a tithe pig would be sold for a penny.  
In the Sacred Decretal, or Hue and C●y.  
21. From his superlative holiness Sir Simon Synod, etc. In the front whereof is the picture of a Bull tossing Sir Simon Synod on his horns, Trampling the Ordinance for tithes under his feet, with this Inscription upon it. Ordinance for Tithes.  
22. That the Ordinance permitting none to preach, but such as are ordained is a pattern of the spirit worse than the Monopoly of Soap, hereby to get all trading into their own hands.  
23, Sir john Gurns being lately robbed with a Parliament Coral, that late Ordinance is made to put his boarish Tusks, his great huge iron fangs in execution, to divorce, rend and tear these Heretics.  
24. Therefore we wisely consulted of a Committee of examination to be chosen out of us, it must not be esteemed a Court of juquision that's popery, not a Renovation of the High Commission, that's Antichristian, only an Inlet to a through Reformation, that's a godly name that may do much good, etc.  
25. The Classical Clarks and Sextons of the three Kingdoms demolish and put down all the Martin's nests from your Church-wals and Steeples, that no birds build, chatter, or do their business there.  
26. But Church owls, Jackdaws, otherways called Sir john blind Bats Presbyterian Wood cocks.  
27. O ye two Houses of Parliament make another Ordinance, that all the meetings may be made to fly the three Kingdoms the next Midsummer with Cuckoos and Swallows.  
28. Thar so we may have a blue Cap Reformation, amongst Bats, Owls, Jackdaws and Wood cocks and the blue Cap for us.  
Arraignment of Persecution, pag. 33. 34.  
29. Persecution is thy name, Perfect Reformation.  
Persecu. Yes my Lord, judge. Who gave you that name? I. Reasen, his God fathers and Godmothers in his Baptism wherein he was made a member of the Assembly, and an Inheritor of the Kingdom of Antichrist.  
30. judg. Who are your Godfathers, and Godmothers?  
Persecu. My Lord, Master Ecclesiastical Supremacy, and Master Scotch government my Godfathers, Mistress State ambition, and Church Revenue are my Godmothers.  
31. And I was sprinkled into the Assembly of Divines, at the taking of the late solemn League and Covenant.  
32. judg. 'tis strange, that at the making of the late solemn league and Covenant, blood Thirsty Persecution should be Anabaptist present before Reformation.  
33. Then here's a design of blood in the Covenant, if under the name of Reformation the Clergy have infused the spirit of Persecution into it.  
34. My Lord there was never any National or Provincial Synod, but strengthened the hand of Persecution under the vizard of Religion.  
35. I. Reason, as soon as these underling Divines are from under their Episcopal Taskmasters, and begin to encroach your Lordship's power, they presently take this notorious bloody Traitor Persecution, stripped by your Lordships of his High Commission habit, and out of their zeal dress him in a divine Synodical garb, and change his name from Persecution to Reformation.  
Pag. 39 By the late solemn League and Covenant, Good Lord deliver us.  
Arraignment of Persecution in the Epistle.  
36. A Reverend Assembly such a quagmire of croaking skipjack Presbyters etc.  
37. New upstart trifling Presbyters, Synodian Cormorants; the Synodian whore of Babylon; The traitorous Synod called the Assembly of Divines.  
38. Presbyterian Horse leeches, bloodthirsty .  
39 The great gore-bellyed Idol, called the Assembly of Divines.  
40. Jesuitical Traitors, designs of the Synod.  
41. Our dissembly Doctors a Consistory of Devils.  
42. Pag. 1. The Synod is guided by the holy Ghost, sent in Cloak-bag from Scotland.  
43. Because the Assembly have saddled the Parliament, it is unlawful for the Presbyterians to go on foot.  
44. Pag. 35. 36. It is most certain that this fellow, whose name Sir Simon feigns to be Reformation, is absolute Persecution; so that had these Reformers as much power as Queen Mary's Clergy, their Reformation would conclude in fire and faggot.  
45. Judge, oh insufferable Assembly, I see 'tis dangerous for a State to pin their faith upon the sleeve of the Clergy.  
46. Others are impoverished and lose their lives in the Quarrel, but these are enriched and advanced by it, save their purses and persons, cram their filthy greedy guts too il to carry to a bear.  
47. Yea my Lord this great gore belly Idol called the Assembly of Divines is not ashamed in this time of necessity to devour more at one Meal than Bel and the Dragon.  
48. Besides all their fat Benefices forsooth they must have four shillings a piece by the day, etc.  
49. They move your Lordship that all the Clergy may be freed from taxations that now the trade of Presbytery is the best.  
50. All are taxed and it goes free, thus these Church-lubbers live at ease.  
51. Let all that suffer opppression consider this and no longer be Riden and Jaded by Clergy-masters.  
52. But to give the Devil his due, they are zealously affected to the honour of the cloth, that it is pity to disrobe them of the cassock garb to be led in strings from Westminster to Algate in leathern Jackets and mattock on their shoulders.  
53. Pag. 36, 37. Primacy, Metra politanism, Prelacy etc. are shrunk into the Presbytery, and the High Commission court turned into an Assembly of Divines.  
With numerous such like cursed expressions the like whereof I persuade myself all our jesuitical State-destroying Romish enemies are no way able to parallel, thus in plain English we see a goodly Foundation laid for a Toleration, pretended for tender consciences but contradicted by hellish, heathenish and cursed carnal practices.   

London, Printed for Joseph Potts, and are to be sold at his shop, in the Old Bailie, near the Session's house 1646.