ftrict and serious examination to be undergone, ere their admiffion, as St. Paul to Timothy fets down at large, and then they need not carry fuch an unworthy fufpicion over the preachers of God's word, as to tutor their unfoundness with the * Abcie of a liturgy, or to diet their ignorance, and want of care, with the limited draught of a matin, and evenfong drench. All this may fuffice after all their laboursome scrutiny of the councils.

Remonft. Our Saviour was pleased to make use in the celebration of his laft and heavenly banquet both of the fashions and words which were usual in the Jewish feasts. Anfw. What he pleafed to make ufe of, does not juftify what you please to force,

Remonft. The fet forms of prayer at the Mincha.

Anfw. We will not buy your rabbinical fumes; we have one that calls us to buy of him pure gold tried in the fire.

Remonft. In the famaritan chronicle.

Anfw. As little do we efteem your famaritan trumpery, of which people Christ himself teftifies, Ye worship ye know not what.

Remonft. They had their several fongs.

Anfw. And fo have we our several pfalms for feveral occafions, without gramercy to your liturgy.

Remonft. Those forms which we have under the names of Saint James, &c., though they have fome infertions which are plainly fpurious, yet the fubftance of them cannot be taxed for other than holy and ancient.

Anfw. Setting afide the odd coinage of your phrase, which no mint-mafter of language would allow for fterling, that a thing fhould be taxed for no other than holy and ancient, let it be supposed the substance of them may favour of fomething holy or ancient, this is but the matter; the form, and the end of the thing may yet render it either fuperftitious, fruitlefs, or impious, and fo worthy to be rejected. The garments of a ftrumpet are often the fame, materially, that clothe a chafte matron, and yet ignominious for her to wear: the substance of the tempters words to our Saviour were holy, but his drift nothing lefs.

i. c. A, b, c.

Remonft.

Remonft. In what fenfe we hold the Roman a true church, is fo cleared that the iron is too hot for their fingers.

Anfw. Have a care it be not the iron to fear confcience.

your own Remonft. You need not doubt but that the alteration of the liturgy will be confidered by wifer heads than your

own.

Anfw. We doubt it not, becaufe we know your head looks to be one.

Remonft. Our liturgy fymbolizeth not with popi mafs, neither as mass nor as popish.

Anfw. A pretty flipfkin conveyance to fift mass into no mafs, and popish into not popish; yet faving this passing fine fophiftical boulting hutch, fo long as the fymbolizes in form, and pranks herself in the weeds of popish mass, it may be juftly feared the provokes the jealousy of God, no otherwife than a wife affecting whorish attire kindles a disturbance in the eye of her difcerning hufband.

Remonft. If I find gold in the channel, fhall I throw it away because it was ill laid ?

Anfw. You have forgot that gold hath been anathematized for the idolatrous ufe; and to eat the good creatures of God once offered to idols, is in St. Paul's account to have fellowship with devils, and to partake of the devil's table. And thus you throttle yourself with your own fimilies.

Remonft. If the devils confeffed the Son of God, shall I disclaim that truth?

Anfw. You fifted not fo clean before, but you shuffle as foully now; as if there were the like neceffity of confeffing Chrift, and ufing the liturgy: we do not difclaim that truth, because we never believed it for their teftimony; but we may well reject a liturgy which had no being that we can know of, but from the corrupteft times: if therefore the devil fhould be given never fo much to prayer, I fhould not therefore cease from that duty, because I learned it not from him; but if he would commend to me a new Pater-nofter, though never fo feemingly holy, he fhould excufe me the form which

was

was his; but the matter, which was none of his, he could not give me, nor I be said to take it from him. It is not the goodness of matter therefore which is not, nor can be owed to the liturgy, that will bear it out, if the form, which is the effence of it, be fantastic and fuperftitious, - the end finifter, and the impofition violent.

Remonft. Had it been compofed into this frame on purpose to bring papifts to our churches.

Anfw. To bring them to our churches? alas, what was that? unless they had been first fitted by repentance, and right instruction. You will fay, the word was there preached, which is the means of converfion; you should have given so much honour then to the word preached, as to have left it to God's working without the interloping of a liturgy baited for them to bite at.

Remonft. The project had been charitable and gracious.

Anfw. It was pharifaical, and vain-glorious, a greedy defire to win profelytes by conforming to them unlawfully; like the defire of Tamar, who, to raise up feed to her husband, fate in the common road dreft like a courtezan, and he that came to her committed incest with her. This was that which made the old chriftians paganize, while by their scandalous and base conforming to heathenifm they did no more, when they had done their utmost, but bring fome pagans to chriftianize; for true chriftians they neither were themselves, nor could make other fuch in this fashion.

Remonft. If there be found aught in liturgy that may endanger a fcandal, it is under careful hands to remove it.

Anfw, Such careful hands as have fhown themselves fooner bent to remove and expel the men from the scandals, than the scandals from the men, and to lose a foul rather than a fyllable or a furplice.

Remont. It is idolized they fay in England, they mean at Amfterdam.

Anfw. Be it idolized therefore where it will, it is only idolatrized in England.

Remonft. Multitudes of people they say diftafte it; more shame for those that have fo miftaught them.

Anfw. More fhame for those that regard not the trou

bling

bling God's church with things by themselves confeffed to be indifferent, fince true charity is afflicted, and burns at the offence of every little one. As for the chriftian multitude which you affirm to be fo miftaught, it is evident enough, though you would declaim never fo long to the contrary, that God hath now taught them to deteft your liturgy and prelacy; God who hath promifed to teach all his children, and to deliver them out of your hands that hunt and worry their fouls: hence is it that a man fhall commonly find more favoury knowledge in one layman, than in a dozen of cathedral prelates; as we read in our Saviour's time that the common people had a reverend efteem of him, and held him a great prophet, whilst the gowned rabbies, the incomparable and invincible doctors were of opinion that he was a friend of Beelzebub.

Remonft. If the multitude distaste wholesome doctrine, fhall we, to humour them, abandon it?

Anfw. Yet again! as if there were like neceffity of faving doctrine, and arbitrary, if not unlawful, or inconvenient liturgy: who would have thought a man could have thwacked together fo many incongruous fimilitudes, had it not been to defend the motley incoherence of a patched miffal?

Remonft. Why did not other churches conform to us? Imay boldly fay ours was, and is, the more noble church.

Anfw. O Laodicean, how vainly and how carnally doft thou boast of nobleness and precedency! more lordly you have made our church indeed, but not more noble.

Remonft. The second quære is fo weak, that I wonder it could fall from the pens of wife men.

Anfw. You are but a bad fencer, for you never make a proffer against another man's weakness; but you leave your own fide always open: mark what follows.

Remonft. Brethren, can ye think that our reformers had any other intentions than all the other founders of liturgies, the leaft part of whofe care was the help of the minifter's weakness?

Anfw. Do you not perceive the noofe you have brought yourself into, whilft you were fo brief to taunt other men with weakness? Is it clean out of your mind what you cited from among the councils; that the prin

cipal scope of those liturgy-founders was to prevent either the malice or the weakness of the minifters; their malice, of infufing herefy in their forms of prayer; their weakness, left fomething might be composed by them through ignorance or want of care contrary to the faith? Is it not now rather to be wondered, that such a weakness could fall from the pen of fuch a wife remonftrant man?

Remonft. Their main drift was the help of the people's devotion, that they knowing before the matter that fhould be fued for,

Anfw. A folicitous care, as if the people could be ignorant of the matter to be prayed for; feeing the heads of public prayer are either ever conftant, or very frequently the fame.

Remonft. And the words wherewith it fhould be clothed, might be the more prepared, and be so much the more intent and lefs diftracted.

Anfw. As for the words, it is more to be feared left the fame continually fhould make them careless or fleepy, than that variety on the fame known fubject should diftract; variety (as both mufic and rhetoric teacheth us) erects and roufes an auditory, like the masterful running over many chords and divifions; whereas if men fhould ever be thumbing the drone of one plain fong, it would be a dull opiate to the moft wakeful attention.

your

Remonft. Tell me, is this liturgy good or evil? Anfw. It is evil: repair the acheloian horn of dilemma how you can, against the next push. Remonft. If it be evil, it is unlawful to be used. Anfw. We grant you, and we find you have not your falve about you.

Remonft. Were the impofition amifs, what is that tọ the people?

Anfw. Not a little, because they bear an equal part with the priest in many places, and have their cues and verses as well as he.

Remonft. The ears and hearts of our people look for a fettled liturgy.

Anfw. You deceive yourself in their ears and hearts, they look for no such matter.

Řemonft. The like answer ferves for homilies, furely

they were enjoined to all, &c.

Anfw.