AN EPISTLE OF A RELIGIOUS PRIEST UNTO his father: exhorting him to the perfect forsaking of the world.  
TO THE WORSHIPFUL his very good father, R. S. his dutiful son R. S. wisheth all happiness.  
IN children of former ages, it hath been thought so beautiful a point of duty to their parents, in presence by serviceable offices, in absence by other affectual significa●ions, to yield proof of their thankful minds, that neither any child could omit it, without touch of ungratfulnes, nor the parents forbear it without just displeasure. But now we are fallen into such calamity of times, and the violence of heresy hath so crossed the course, both of virtue & nature, that their engraffed laws, never infringed by the most savage & brute creatures, cannot of Gods people without peril be observed. I am not of so unnatural a kind, of so wild education, or so unchristian a spirit, as not to remember the root out of which I branched, or to forget my secondary maker and auctor of my being: It is not the carelessness of a cold affection, nor the want of a dew and reverent respect, that hath made me such a stranger to my native home, and so slack in defraying the debt of a thankful mind, but only the iniquity of our days, that maketh my presence perilous and the discharge of my duty an occasion of danger. I was loath to enforce an unwelcome courtesy up on any, or by seeming officious, to become offensive, deeming it better to let time digest the fear, that my return into the realm had bred in my kindred, then apruptly to intrude myself, to purchase their anger, whose good will I so highly esteemed. I never doubted, but that the belief, which to all my friends by descent and pedigree is in manner hereditary, framed in them a right persuasion of my present calling, not suffering them to measure their censures of me, by the ugly terms, and odious Epitheetes, wherewith heresy hath sought to discredit my function, but rather by the reverence of so worthy a Sacrament, and the sacred doom of all former ages. Yet because I might very easily perceive by apparent conjectures, that many were more willing to hear of me, then from me, and readier to praise, then to use my endeavours, I have hitherto bridled my desire to see them, with the care and jealousy of their safety, & banishing myself from the sent of my cradle, in my own country I have lived like a foreigner, finding among strangers that, which in my nearest blood I presumed not to seek. But now considering, that delay may have qualified fear, & knowing my person only to import danger to others, and my per suasion to none but to myself, I thought it high time to utter my sincere and dutiful mind, and to open a vent to my zealous affection, which I have so long smothered and suppressed in silence. For not only the original law of nature, written in all children's hearts, and derived from the bowels and breasts of their mothers, is a continual solicitor urging me in your be half, but the sovereign decree enacted by the father of heaven, ratified by his son, and daily repeated by instinct of the holy ghost, bindeth every child in the dew of Christianity, to tender the estate and welfare of his parents, and is a motive, that alloweth no excuse, but of necessity presseth to performance of duty. Nature by grace is not abolished, but perfected, not murdered, but manured, neither are her impressions quite razed, or annulled, but suited to the colours of faith and virtue. And if her affections be so forcible, that even in hell where rancour and despite chief reigneth, & all feeling of goodness is overwhelmed in malice, they moved the rich glutton by experience of his own misery to carry the less envy to his kindred: how much more in the Church of God, where grace quickeneth, charity inflameth, and natures good inclinations are abettered by supernatural gifts, ought the duty of piety to prevail. And who but more merciless than damned creatures, could see their dearest friends plunged in the like peril, and not to be wounded with deep remorse of their lamentable and imminent hazards? If in beholding a mortal enemy wrong and tortured with deadly pangs, the toughest heart softeneth with some sorrow: If the most frozen and fierce mind cannot but thaw and melt with pity, even when it seethe the worst miscreant suffer his deserved torments: how much less can the heart of a child, consider those that bred him into this world, to be in the fall to far more bitter extremities, and not bleed with grief of their uncomfortable case. Surely for my own part, though I challenge not the prerogative of the best disposition, yet am I not of so harsh and currish an humour, but that it is a continual corrosive, and cross unto me, that whereas my endeavours have reclaimed many from the brink of perdition, I have been least able to employ them, where they were most due, & barred from affording to my dearest friends, that which hath been eagerly sought and beneficially obtained of mere strangers. Who hath more interest in the grape than he that planted the vine? who more right to the crop than he that sowed the corn? or how can the child own so great service to any, as to him whom he is indebted unto for his very life and being? With young Tobye I have travailed far, and brought home a freight of spiritual substance, to enrich you, & medicinable receipt against your ghostly maladies. I have with Esau after long toil in pursuing a painful chase, returned with such pray as you were wont to love, desiring thereby to procure your blessing. I have in this general famine of all true and Christian food, with joseph prepared abundance of the bread of Angels, for the repast of your soul. And now my desire is that my drugs may cure you, my prey delight you, and my provision feed you, by whom I have been cured, delighted, and fed myself, that your courtesies may in part be countervailed, and my ducty in some sort performed. Despise not good Sir the youth of your son, neither deem that god measureth his endouments by number of years. Hoary senses are often couched under green locks, and some are riper in the springe, than others in the Autumn of their age. God chose not Isaï himself, nor his eldest son, but young David to conquer Goliath and to rule his people. Not the most aged person, but Daniel the most innocent infant delivered Suzanna from the iniquity of the judges: and Christ at twelve years of age, was found in the temple questioning with the gravest Doctors. A true Elias can conceive, that a little cloud may cast a large & abundant shower, and the scripture teacheth us, that God revealeth to little ones that which he concealeth from the wisest Sages. His truth is not abased by the minority of the speaker, who out of the mouths of infants & sucklings can perfect his praises. Timothy was young, and yet a principal pastor. S. John not old and yet an Apostle, yea and the Angels by appearing in youthful semblances, give us a pregnant proof, that many glorious gifts may be shrouded under tender shapes. All which I allege, not to claim any privilege surmounting the rate of usual abilities, but to avoid all touch of presumption in advising my elders, seeing that it hath the warrant of scripture, the testimony of examples, & sufficient grounds both in grace and nature. There is diversity in the degrees of our carnal consanquinity, and the preminence appertaineth to you, as superior over your child's body. Yet if you consider our alliance in the chief portion, I mean our foul, which discerneth man from inferior creatures, we are of equal proximity to our heavenly father, both descended of the same parent, and no other distance in our degrees, but that you are the elder brother. In this sense doth the scripture say, Call not any father upon earth, for one is your father which is in heaven. Seeing therefore that your superiority is founded upon flesh and blood, which are in manner but the bark and rind of a man, and our equality upon the soul, which is man's maigne substance, think it I pray you no dishonour to your age, or disparagement to your person, If with all humility I offer my advise unto you. One man cannot be perfect in all faculties, neither is it a disgrace to the goldsmith, if he be ignorant of the milliner's trade. Many are deep lawyers and yet shallow Divines, many very deliver in feats of the body, and curious in external complements, yet little experimented in matters of their soul and far to seek in religious actions. I have studied & practised these many years spiritual physic, acquainting myself with the beating and temper of every pulse, & travailing in the scrutiny of the maladies & medicines in cident unto souls. If therefore I proffer you the fruits of my long studies and make you a present of my profession, I hope you will construe it rather as a dutiful part, than any point of presumption. He may be a father to the soul, that is a son to the body, and requite the benefit of his temporal life, by reviving his parent from a spiritual death. And to this effect did christ say thes words: my mother, and brethren are they, that do the will of my father which is in heaven: Upon which place S. Climacus showing to what kindred a Christian ought chief to rely, draweth this discourse. Let him be thy father, that both can and will lay his labour to disburden thee of thy pack of sins. Let holy compunction be thy mother, to depure thee from thy ordure and filth. Let him be thy brother, that willbe both thy partner and compeditour to pass and perfit thy race towards heaven. Take the memory of death for thy perpetual fere, and unseparable spouse. Let thy children be bitter sighs of a sorrowful heart, and possess thy body as thy bondman. Fasten thy friendship with the Angelical powers, with which if thou closest in familiar affiance, they will be patrons unto thee in thy final passage. This (saith he) is the generation & kindred of those that seek God. Such a father as this Saint speaketh of, may you have of your own son, to enter you farther in the fore-recited affinity. Of which happily it was a significant presage, aboding the future event, that even from my infancy you were wont in merriment to call me father, R. which is the custumary style now allotted to my present estate.  
Now therefore to join issue, and to come to the principal drift of my discourse, most humbly & earnestly I am to beseech you, that both in respect of the honour of God, your duty to his Church, the comfort of your children, and the redress of your own soul, you would seriously consider the terms you stand in, & way yourself in a christian balance, taking for your counterpoise the judgements of God. Take heed in time, that the word Thecel written of old against Balthasar, & interpreted by Daniel, Dan. 5. be not verified in you, whose exposition was: you have been poised in the scoale, and found of to light weight. Remember that you are in the waning, and the date of your pilgrimage is well near expired, & now it behoveth you to look towards your country. Your force languisheth, your senses impair, & your body droupeth, and on every side the ruinous cottage of your faint & feeble flesh, threateneth fall. And having so many harbingers of death to premonish you of your end, how can you but prepare for so dreadful a stranger. The young may die quickly, but the old cannot live long. The young men's life by casualty may be abridged, but the old men's by no physic can be long adjourned: and therefore if green years sometimes must think of the grave, the thoughts of sear age should continually dwell in the same. The prerogative of infancy is innocency, of childhood reverence, of manhood maturity, and of age wisdom. And seeing that the chief properties of wisdom are, to be mindful of things passed careful of things present, & provident of things to come, use now the privilege of nature's talon to the benefit of your soul, & procure hereafter to be wise in well-doing, and watchful in foresight of future harms. To serve the world you are now unable, and though you were able you have little cause to be willing, seeing that it never gave you but an unhappy welcome a hurtful entertainment, and now doth abandon you with an unfortunate farewell. You have long sowed in a field of flint, which could bring you nothing forth, but a crop of cares, and affliction of spirit, rewarding your labours with remorse and affording for your gain eternal damages. It is now more than a seasonable time time, to alter the course of so unthriving a husbandry, and to enter into the field of God's Church, in which sowing the seeds of repentant sorrow, and watering them with the tears of humble contrition, you may reap a more beneficial harvest, & gather the fruits of everlasting comfort. Remember I pray you, that your spring is spent, and your summer overpast: you are now arrived to the fall of leaf, yea and winter colours have already stained your hoary head. Be not careless (saith S. Augustin) though our loving Lord bear long with offenders. for the longer he stayeth not finding amendment, the sorer will he scourge when he cometh to ludgement. and his patience in so long expecting, is only to lend us respite to repent, not any way to enlarge us leisure to sin. He that is tossed with variety of storms, & cannot come to his desired port, maketh not much way, but is much tormoiled: So he that hath passed many years, and purchased little profit, hath had a long being, but a short life. for life is more to be measured by merits, than by number of days, seeing that most men by many days do but procure many deaths, and others in a short space attain the life of infinite ages. What is the body without the soul but a corrupt carcase: and what the soul without God, but a sepulchre of sin. If God be the way, the life, and the truth, he that goeth without him, strayeth: he that liveth without him, dieth: and he that is not taught by him, erreth. Well saith S. Augustine that God is our true and chiefest life, from whom the revolting is falling, to whom the returning is rising, in whom the staying is sure standing. God is he, from whom to departed is to die, to whom to repair is to revive, in whom to dwell is to live. Be not you therefore of those, that begin not to live, until they be ready to die, & then after a foes desert, come to crave of God a friends entertainment. Some think to snatch heaven in a moment, which the best scarce attained in the maintenance of many years. and when they have glutted themselves with worldly delights, they would jump from Dives his diet to Lazarus crown, and from the service of Satan to the solacy of a Saint. But be you well assured, that god is not so penurious of friends, as to hold himself and his kingdom saleable for the refuse and reversion of their lives, who have sacrificed the principal thereof to his enemies, and their own brutish appetites, then only ceasing to offend, when ability of offending is taken from them. True it is, that a thief may be saved upon the cross, and mercy found at the last gasp. But well saith saint Augustine that though it be possible, yet is it scarce credible, that his death should find favour, whose whole life hath earned wrath, and that his repentance should be accepted, that more for fear of hell, and love of himself, then for love of God or loathsomeness of sin, crieth for mercy. Wherefore good Sir make no longer delays, but being so near the breaking up of your mortal house, take time before extremity to satisfy God's justice. Though you suffered the bud to be blasted, & the flower to fade, though you permitted the fruit to be perished, and the leaves to dry up, yea though you let the bougheswither, and the body of your tree grow to decay: yet alas keep life in the root, for fear lest the whole become fuel for hell fire. for surely wheresoever the tree falleth, there shall it be, whether it be to south or north, heaven or hell, & such sap as it bringeth such fruit shall it ever bear. Death hath already filled from you the better part of your natural forces, and hath left you now to the lees and remissailes of your wearish and dying days: the remainder whereof, as it cannot be long, so doth it warn you speedily to ransom your former losses. For what is age but the kalends of death, and what importeth your present weakness, but an earnest of your approaching dissolution? You are now impathed in your final voyage, and not far of from the stint and period of your course: and therefore be not dispurveyed of such appurtenances as are behoveful in so perplexed and perilous a journey. Death in itself is very fearful, but much more terble in regard of the judgement that it summoneth us unto. If you were laid on your departing bed, burdened with the heavy load of your former trespasses, and gored with the sting and prick of a festered conscience: If you felt the cramp of death wresting your heart strings & ready to make the rueful divorce between body and soul: If you lay panting for breath, and swimming in a cold and fatal sweat, wearied with struggling against your deadly pangs: O how much would you give for an hour of repentance at what rate would you value a days contrition. Then worlds would be worthless in respect of a little respite. A short truce would seem more precious, than the treasures of Empires. nothing would be so much esteemed as a trice of time, which now by months and years is lavishly misspent. O how deeply would it wound your heart, when looking back into your life you considered many faults committed and not confessed, many good works omitted and not recovered, your service to God promised and not performed. How inconsolable were your case, your friends being fled, your senses frighted, your thoughts amazed, your memory decayed, your whole mind aghast, and no partable to perform that it should, but only your guilty conscience pestered with sin, that would continually upbreid you with most bitter accusations. what would you think when stripped out of your mortal weed, and turned both out of the service & housrome of this world, you were forced to enter into uncouth & strange paths, & with unknown and ugly company to be convented before a most severe judge, carrying in your own conscience your inditement written, and a perfect register of all your misdeeds: when you should see him prepared to pass the sentence upon you, against whom you had transgressed, and the same to be your umpire, whom by so many offences you had made your enemy: When not only the devils, but even the Angels should plead against you, and yourself maugre your will be your sharpest appeacher. What would you do in these dreadful exigentes? When you saw that ghastly dungeon & huge golf of hell, breaking out with most fear full flames: When you saw the weeping & gnashing of teeth, the rage of those hellish monsters, the horror of the place, the rigour of the pain, the terror of the company, and the eternity of all these punishments, would you then think them wise, that would daily in so weighty matters, and idly play away the time allotted to prevent these intolerable calamities? would you then account it secure, to nurse in your bosom so many serpents as sins, or to foster in your soul so many malicious accusers as mortal faults? Would you not then think one life to little to do penance for so many iniquities, every one whereof were enough to cast you into those everlasting and unspeakable torments? Why then do you not at the least devote that small remnant and surplusage of these your latter days, procuring to make an atonement with God and to free your conscience from such corruption, as by your schism and fall hath crept into it. Those very eyes that read this discourse, and that very understanding that conceiveth it, shallbe sighted & certain witnesses of the rehearsed things. In your own body shall you experience those deadly agonies, and in your soul shall you feelingly find those terrible fears, yea and your present estate is in danger of the deepest harms, if you do not the sooner recover yourself into the fold and family of God's Church. What have you gotten by being so long customer to the world, but false ware suitable to the shop of such a merchant, whose traffic is toil, whose wealth trash, and whose gain misery? what interest have you reaped, that may equal your decrementes in grace and virtue, or what could you find in a vale of tears parageable to the favour of God, with the loss whereof you were contented to buy it: You cannot be now inveigled with the passions of youth, which making a partial estimate of things set no distance between counterfeit and currant. For they are now worn out of force by tract of time, or fallen in reproof by trial of their folly. It cannot be fear that leadeth you amiss, seeing it were to unfitting a thing, that the cravamt cowardice of flesh & blood, should daunt the prowess of an intelligent person, who by his wisdom cannot but discern, how much more cause there is to fear God then man, & to stand in more awe of perpetual, then of temporal penalties. If it be an ungrounded presumption of the mercy of God, and the hope of his assistance at the last plunge, (the ordinary lure of the Devil to reclaim sinners from the pursuit of virtue) it is to palpable a collusion to mislead a sound and sensed man, howsoever it prevail with sick and affected judgements. Who would rely eternal affairs upon the gliding slippernes & running stream of our uncertain life? or who but one of distempered wits, would offer fraud to the decipherer of all thoughts, with whom dissemble we may to our cost, but to deceive him it is impossible. Shall we esteem it cunning to rob the time from him and bestow it on his enemies, who keepeth tale of the least minutes of our life, & will examine in the end how each moment hath been employed. It is a preposterous policy in any wise conceit, to fight against God till our weapons be blunted, our forces consumed, our limbs impotent, and our best spent, and then when we fall for faintness, and have fought ourselves almost dead to presume of his mercy, the wounds both of his sacred body, so often rubbed and renewed by our sins, and every parcel of our own so sundry and diverse ways abused, being so many whetstones and incentives to edge and exasperate his revenge against us. It were a strange piece of art, and a very exorbitant course, while the ship is sound, the Pilot well, the sailors strong, the gale favourable, and the Sea calm, to lie idle at road, burning so seasonable wether: and when the ship leaked, the Pilot were sick, the Mariners faint, the storms boisterous, and the Sea a tormoile of outrageous surges, then to launch forth, to hoist up sails, and to set out for a voyage into far countries. Yet such is the skill of these evening repenters, who though in the soundness of health, and in the perfect use of reason, they cannot resolve to cut the gables and weigh the anchors, that withhold them from God, nevertheless they feed themselves with a strong persuasion, that when their senses are astonished, their wits distracted, their understanding dusked, and both the body and mind racked & tormented with the throbs and gripes of a mortal sickness, them forsooth will they think of the weightiest matters, & become sudden Saints, when they are scarce able to behave themselves, like reasonable creatures. If neither the canon, civil, nor common law alloweth, that a man perished in judgement, should make any testament or bequest of his temporal substance, being then presumed to be less than a man: how can he that is amated with the inward garboils of an unsettled conscience, distrained with the wring fits of his dying flesh, maimed in all his abilities, & circled in with so strange encumbrances, be thought of due discretion to dispose of his chiefest jewel, which is his soul, and to dispatch the whole menage of all eternity, & of the treasures of heaven, in so stormy and short a spurt. No no they that will loiter in seed time, and begin only to sow, when others reap: They that will riot out their health, & cast their accounts when they can scarcely speak: They that will slumber out the day & enter their journey when the light doth fail them. Let them blame their own folly, if they die in debt, and eternal beggars, and fall headlong into the lapse of endless perdition. Let such hearken to S. Cyprian's lesson. Let (saith he) the grievousness of our sore, be the sure of our sorrow. Let a deep wound have deep and diligent cure. Let no man's contrition be less than his crime. Thinkest thou that our Lord can be so soon appeased, whom with perfidious words thou hast denied, whom less than thy patrimony thou hast esteemed, whose temple with sacrilegious corruption thou hast defiled. thinkest thou easily to recover his favour, whom thou hast avouched not to be thy Master? We must rather most instantly entreat, we must pass the day in mourning, the night in watching, & weeping, our whole time in plainfull lamenting. We must fall prostrate upon the ground humbling ourselves in sackcloth and ashes. And having lost the garment of Christ, we should be unwilling to be clothed with any other having farced our stomachs with the viand of the Devil, we should now desire to fast from all earthly food. We should ply good works to purge our offences, we should be liberal in alms to avoid the death of our souls, that Christ may receive, that the persecutor would have spoiled, neither aught that patrimony to be kept or fancied, with which a man hath been ensnared & vanquished. Not every short sigh will be a sufficient satisfaction, nor every knock a warrant to get in. Many cry Lord Lord and are not accepted. The foolish Virgins knocked, and were not admitted. judas had some sorrow and yet died desperate. foreslow not saith the holy ghost to be converted unto God, and linger not of from day to day. for suddenly will his wrath come, and in the time of revenge he will destroy thee. Let no man sojourn long in his sinful security, nor post over his repentance till fear enforce him unto it. Let us frame our premises as we would find our conclusion, and endeavour to live as we are desirous to die. Shall we offer the main crop to the Devil, and set God to glean the reproof of his harvest? Shall we gorge the Devil with our fairest fruits, and turn God to feed on the filthy scraps of his leavings? How great a folly were it when a man pineth away in a perilous languour, to provide gorgeous apparel, to bespeak sumptuous furniture, and take order for the rearing of stately buildings, & never thinking of his own recovery, to let the disease take root within him? were it not the like vanity, for a Prince to dote so far upon his subject, as neglecting his own regalty, to busy himself wholly in advancing his servant? Thus saith S. chrysostom do they, that when their soul hath surfeited with all kind of sin and is drenched in the depth of infinite diseases, without any regard thereof, labour their wits in setting forth her garment, and in pampering the body with all possible delights. And whereas the soul should have the sovereignty, and the body follow the sway of her direction, servile senses, and lawless appetites do rule her as superiors, and she is made a vassal in her own dominions. What is there sayeth S. Augustine in thy meanest necessaries, that thou wouldst not have good? Thou wouldst have a good house, good furniture, good apparel, good fare, good cattle, and not so much but thy hose and thy shoes thou wilt seek to have good. Only thy life and poor soul, thy principal charge, and of all other things the most worthy to be best, thou art content should be nought, and lie cancring and rusting in all kind of evelles. O unspeakable blindness. can we prefer our shoes before our soul, refusing to we are an evil shoe, and not caring to carry an ugly & deformed soul? Alas let us not set so little by that, which God prised so much. Let us not rate ourselves at so base a pennyworth, being in truth of so peerless dignity. If the soul be such, that not all the gold and treasure of the world, nor any thing of less worth than the blood and life of almighty God, was able to buy it. If not all the dainties that wit can devise, or heaven and earth afford, but only Gods own precious body was by him deemed a repast fit to feed it. If not all the creatures of this, nor millions of new worlds, if so many more were created, but only the illimitable goodness and majesty of God can satisfy the desire, and fill the compass and capacity of it, who but of lame judgement, or perverse will, yea who but of an incredulous mind, and pitiles spirit could set more by his shoes, than he did by his soul, or be contented to suffer so noble a paragon, so many months and years to lie chanelled in ordure, & mired in all sin. Can we not see our servant sick, but we allow him a Physician, our horse diseased but we send for a leech, nor our garment torn, but we will have one to mend it? and can we so much malign out soul, as to let it die for want of cure, and seeing it mangled with so many vices, never seek any to restore it to the wont inte grity? Is our servant nearer, our beast more precious, & our coat dearer, than our own soul? If any should call us Epicures Aethestes, rebels unto God, or murderers of souls, we would take it for an untolerable reproach, and think it a most disgraceful & opprobrious calumniation. But to live like Epicures, to sin like Aethists to struggle against God's callings, and like violent rebels to scorn his commandments: yea & with daily and damnable wounds, barbarously to stab our infortunate souls, this we account no contumely, we reckon for no discreditt, yea rather we register it in the vaunt of our chief praises. O ye sons of men, how long will you carry this heavy heart, aliking vanity, and seeking lies? how long will children love the follies of infancy, and sinners run careless and wilful to their ruin? Will you keep your chicken from the kite, your lamb from the wolf, your faun from the hound. Dare you not suffer a spider in your bosom, or a toad to come near you, & can you nestle in your soul so many vipers as vices, and permit it to be so long chewed, & wearied with the poisoned jaws, & tusks of the Devil? And is our soul so vain a substance as to be had in so little esteem? Had Christ made shipwreck of his wisdom, or was he in a rage of passion when he became a wandering pilgrimme exiling himself from the comforts of his Godhead, and passing three and thirty years in pain and penury for the be hoof of our souls? Was he surprised with a raving fit, when in the tragedy of his passion so bloodily inflicted, and so patitiently accepted, he made his body as a cloud, to resolve into shovers of innocent blood, and suffered the dearest veins of his heart to be lanced, to give full issue to the price of our soul's redemption? Or if Christ did not err, nor deem amiss, when it pleased him to redeem us with so excessive a ransom, then what should we judge of our monstrous abuse, that sell our soul to the Devil for every vain delight, & rather adventure the hazard thereof, then of a silly pittance of worldly pelf. O that a creature of so incomparable a price, should be in the demain of so unnatural keepers, and that which is in itself so gracious and amiable, that the Angels and Saints delight to behold it, (as S. chrysostom saith) should by sin be fashioned into so loathsome & disguised shapes as to become a horror to heaven, and a sutely fere for the foulest fiends. Alas if the care of our own harms move us no more, but that we can still be so barbarous to the better portion of ourselves, let us at the lest fear to injury an other party, very careful and jealous over it: who will never endure so deep an impeachment of his interest to pass unrevenged. We must remember, that our soul is not only a part of us, but also the temple, the paradise, and spouse of Almighty god, by him in baptism garnished, stored, and endowed with most gracious ornaments. And how think you, he can brook, to see his temple profaned, and turned into a den of Devils, his paradise displanted, and altered into a wilderness of serpents, his spouse deflowered, and become an adulteress to his utter enemies? Durst we offer such usage to our Princes, yea or to our farmer's daughter? would not fear of the law, and popular shame, disturne us from it? And shall not the reverend Majesty of almighty God, and the unrebated justice of his angry sword, terrify us from offering the like to his own spouse? Do we think God either so impotent that he cannot, so base and sottish that he will not, or so weak witted that he knoweth not how to wreak himself upon so contemptuous and daring offenders? Will he so neglect and lose his honour, which of all things he claimeth as his chief peculiar? Will he that for the soul's sake keepeth a reckoning of our very hears, which are but the excrements of her earthly weed, see himself so much wronged in the principal, & pass it without remonstrance of his just indignation? O dear Sir remember that the scripture termeth it a thing full of horror to fall into the hands of God, who is able to crush the proud spirits of the obstinate, and to make his enemies the footstool of his feet. Wrestle no longer against the cries of your own conscience, and the forcible inspirations that God doth send you. Embrace his mercy before the time of rigour, & return to his Church lest he debar you his kingdom. He cannot have God for his father, that refuseth to profess the Catholic Church for his mother, neither can he achieve to the Church triumphant in heaven, that is not a member of the Church militant here in earth.  
You have been alas to long an alien in the tabernacles of sinners, and strayed to far from the fold of God's flock. Turn now the blaze of your heart towards the sanctuary of salvation, and the city of refuge, seeking to recompense your wandering steps trodden in error, with a swift gate and zealous progress to Christian perfection, & redeeming the time because the days be evil. The full of your springtide