Digestion if they turn upon his Stomach, or degenerate into Bile.

"A right Judgement is to the Soul what a ftrong and a healthy Conftitution is to the Body: It will by its own Force work off all leffer Inconveniencies and Diftempers. Though a man be feduced by his Paffions, yet so long as his Mind and Understanding have an habitually true Apprehenfion of Things they will recover the man, and prevent the Error from being infinite. And therefore, according to that Advice given to the Soldier, την Κεφαλην TEQUλa, fecure your Head-fo every one fhould preferve his judging Faculties entire, that he may not be abufed by false Conclufions: For a Flaw in thefe, leaves the Soullike an Army without Conduct, exposed to all the miseries of Flight and Confufion.”

The Food here ferved up to the ferious Chriftian is fimple, ftrong and nutritive; containing arguments of civil Life, Reasons of Faith and Incentives to Piety; collected by Men that were learned without Vanity, polite without Pride, great without Tyranny, and pious without Spleen.

The two Letters diffuafive of Popery are peculiarly seasonable at a Time when the wild Boar would root up the British Vine, and they that go by pluck off her Grapes. Modern

Difunion and Enthufiafm have received a powerful Rebuke and Confutation from the Pen of a modern Prelate* : and what an un

* See too letters figned, Academicus.

anfwerable

aniwerable Blow the Papacy received from Taylor's polemical Difcourfes, efpecially his Liberty of Prophefying,her Champions know, and feel to this hour,- Quantus in Clypeum affurgat quo Turbine torqueat Haftam.

Let me then be indulged the Vanity of adopting a Quotation from an eminent Writer in Honour of Characters, to which my two Favourites are no Ways inferior.

"To live in the Voice and Memory of "Men is the flattering Dream of every Ad"venturer in Letters: and for me who boast a "Veneration for two Names, whose Virtues "would attone for a bad Age, and their "Abilities make a bad Age a good one: for

me not to afpire to the best Mode of this "ideal Existence, the being carried down "to remote Ages along with them who will never die, would argue a strange Infenfi❝bility to human Glory."

TWO

LETTERS

то

Perfons changed in their RELIGION.

LETTER I

THE FIRST TO A GENTLEWOMAN SEDUCED TO THE CHURCH OF ROME.

I

Was defirous of an opportunity in London to have difcourfed with you about fomething of

nearest concernment to you, but the multitude of my little affairs hindered me, and have brought upon you this trouble to read a long letter; which yet I hope you will be more willing to do, because it comes from one who has a great respect for your perfon, and a very great charity to your foul. I must confefs, I was troubled on your behalf when I heard you were fallen from the communion of the Church of England, and entered into a voluntary, unneceffary fchifm, departing from the laws of the king, and the communion of those with whom you have always lived in charity: going against thofe laws, in the defence and profeffion of which your husband died, going from the religion in which you were baptized, in which for fo many years you lived pi

ously

ously, and hoped for heaven-and all this without any fufficient reason, without neceffity or juft fcandal miniftered to you. And to aggravate all this, you did it in a time, when the church of England was perfecuted and marked with the cross of her mafter, that is, when fhe fuffered for a holy cause, and an holy conscience, and was more glorious than at any time before: when fhe. could fhew more martyrs and confeffors than any church in Christendom-when a king died in the profeffion, and thousands of priests learned and pious, fuffered the fpoiling of their goods rather than forfake one article of so excellent a religion. So that seriously it is not eafily to be imagined that any thing fhould move you, unless it be that which troubled the perverfe Jews, and the heathen Greek, Scandalum crucis, the scandal of the cross. You ftumbled at that rock of offence, you left us because we were afflicted, leffened in open cir cumstances, and wrapped in a cloud: but give me leave only to remind you of that saying of the fcripture, that you may avoid the confequence of it; they that fall on this stone, shall be broken in pieces; but they on whom it shall fall, it will grind them to powder. And if we fhould confider things but prudently, it is a great argument that the fons of our church are very confcientious and just in their perfuafions, when it is evident, that we have no temporal end to serve, nothing but the great end of our fouls; all our hopes of preferment are gone, all fecular regards; only we still have truth on our fides, and we are not willing with the lofs of truth, to change from a perfecuted to a profperous church, from a reformed to a church that will not be reformed; left we give fcandal to good people that fuffer for a holy confcience, and weaken the hands of the afflicted; of which, if you had been more careful, you would have re

mained