Remonft. Thofe verbal exceptions are but light froth, and will fink alone.

Anfw. O rare fubtlety, beyond all that Cardan ever dreamed of! when, I befeech you, will light things fink? when will light froth fink alone? Here in your phrafe, the fame day that heavy plummets will fwim alone. Truft this man, readers, if you pleafe, whofe divinity would reconcile England with Rome, and his philofophy make friends nature with the chaos, fine pondere habentia pondus.

Remonft. That scum may be worth taking off which follows.

Anfw. Spare your ladle, fir, it will be as the bishop's foot in the broth; the fcum will be found upon your own remonftrance.

Remonft. I fhall defire all indifferent eyes to judge, whether thefe men do not endeavour to caft unjust envy upon me.

Anfw. Agreed.

Remonft. I had faid that the civil polity, as in general notion, hath fometimes varied, and that the civil came from arbitrary imposers ; these gracious interpreters would needs draw my words to the present and particular government of our monarchy.

Anfw. And defervedly have they done fo; take up your logic elfe and fee: civil polity, fay you, hath fometimes varied, and came from arbitrary impofers; what propofition is this? Bifhop Downam in his dialectics, will tell you it is a general axiom, though the universal particle be not expreffed, and you yourself in your defence fo explain in these words as in general notion. Hence is juftly inferred, he that fays civil polity is arbitrary, says that the civil polity of England is arbitrary. The inference is undeniable, a thefi ad hypothefin, or from the general to the particular, an evincing argument in logic.

Remonft. Brethren, whiles ye defire to feem godly, learn to be lefs malicious.

Anfw. Remonftrant, till you have better learnt your principles of logic, take not upon you to be a doctor to others.

Remonft. God bless all good men from fuch charity.

Answ.

Anfw. I never found that logical maxims were uncharitable before; yet fhould a jury of logicians pafs upon you, you would never be faved by the book.

Remonft. And our facred monarchy from fuch friends. Anfw. Add, as the prelates.

Remonft. If epifcopacy have yoked monarchy, it is the infolence of the perfons, not the fault of the calling. Anfw. It was the fault of the perfons, and of no calling we do not count prelaty a calling.

Remonft. The teftimony of a pope (whom these men honour highly).

Anfw. That flanderous infertion was doubtless a pang of your incredible charity, the want whereof you lay fo often to their charge; a kind token of your favour lapped up in a parenthefis, a piece of the clergy benevolence laid by to maintain the episcopal broil, whether the 1000 horse or no, time will discover: for certainly had those cavaliers come on to play their parts, fuch a ticket as this of highly honouring the pope, from the hand of a prelate, might have been of special use and fafety to them that had cared for fuch a ransom.

Remonft. And what fays Antichrift?

Anfw. Ask your brethren the prelates, that hold intelligence with him, afk not us. But is the pope antichrift now? Good news! take heed you be not fhent for this; for it is verily thought, that had this bill been put in against him in your laft convocation, he would have been cleared by moft voices.

Remonft. Any thing ferves against episcopacy.

Anfw. See the frowardness of this man, he would perfuade us, that the fucceffion and divine right of bishopdom hath been unquestionable through all ages; yet when they bring against him kings, they were irreligious; popes, they are antichrift. By what era of computation, through what fairy land, would the man deduce this perpetual beadroll of uncontradicted epifcopacy? The pope may as well boaft his ungainfaid authority to them that will believe, that all his contradicters were either irreligious or heretical.

Remonft. If the bithops, faith the pope, be declared to be of divine right, they would be exempted from regal power; and if there might be this danger in those kingdoms,

kingdoms, why is this enviously upbraided to those of ours? who do gladly profefs, &c.

Anfw. Because your diffevered principles were but like the mangled pieces of a gafhed ferpent, that now begun to close, and grow together popish again. Whatfoever you now gladly profefs out of fear, we know what your drifts were when you thought yourselves fecure.

Remonft. It is a foul flander to charge the name of epifcopacy with a faction, for the fact imputed to fome few.

Anfw. The more foul your faction that hath brought a harmless name into obloquy, and the fact may justly be imputed to all of ye that ought to have withstood it, and did not.

Remonft. Fie brethren! are ye the prefbyters of the church of England, and dare challenge epifcopacy of faction?

Anfw. Yes, as oft as epifcopacy dares be factious.

Remonft. Had you spoken such a word in the time of holy Cyprian, what had become of you?

Anfw. They had neither been haled into your Gehenna at Lambeth, nor ftrapadoed with an oath ex officio by your bowmen of the arches: and as for Cyprian's time the cause was far unlike, he indeed fucceeded into an epifcopacy that began then to prelatize; but his perfonal excellence like an antidote overcame the malignity of that breeding corruption, which was then a disease that lay hid for a while under fhow of a full and healthy constitution, as those hydropic humours not difcernible at first from a fair and juicy fleshiness of body, or that unwonted ruddy colour, which feems graceful to a cheek otherwise pale; and yet arises from evil causes, either of fome inward obftruction or inflammation, and might deceive the firft phyficians till they had learned the fequel, which Cyprian's days did not bring forth; and the prelatifm of epifcopacy, which began then to burgeon and spread, had as yet, especially in famous men, a fair, though a falfe imitation of flourishing.

Remonft. Neither is the wrong less to make application of that which was moft juftly charged upon the VOL. L practices

M

practices and combinations of libelling feparatifts, whom I deservedly cenfured, &c.

.

Anfw. To conclude this fection, our Remonftrant we fee is refolved to make good that which was formerly faid of his book, that it was neither humble nor a remonftrance, and this his defence is of the fame complexion. When he is conftrained to mention the notorious violence of his clergy attempted on the church of Scotland, he flightly terms it a fact imputed to fome few; but when he fpeaks of that which the parliament vouchfafes to name the city petition," which I," faith he, (as if the ftate had made him public cenfor) "defervedly cenfured." And how? As before for a tumultuary and underhand way of procured fubfcriptions, fo now in his defence more bitterly, as the practices and combinations of libelling feparatifts, and the mifzealous advocates thereof, juftly to be branded for incendiaries. Whether this be for the honour of our chief city to be noted with fuch an infamy for a petition, which not without fome of the magiftrates, and great numbers of fober and confiderable men, was orderly and meekly prefented, although our great clerks think that thefe men, becaufe they have a trade, (as Chrift himself and St. Paul had) cannot therefore attain to fome good measure of knowledge, and to a reafon of their actions, as well as they that spend their youth in loitering, bezzling, and harlotting, their ftudies in unprofitable queftions and barbarous fophiftry, their middle age in ambition and idleness, their old age in avarice, dotage, and diseases. And whether this reflect not with a contumely upon the parliament itfelf, which thought this petition worthy, not only of receiving, but of voting to a commitment, after it had been advocated, and moved for by fome honourable and learned gentlemen of the house, to be called a combination of libelling feparatifts, and the advocates thereof to be branded for incendiaries; whether this appeach not the judgment and approbation of the parliament I leave to equal arbiters.

SECT.

SECT. II.

Remonft. After the overflowing of your gall, you defcend to liturgy and epifcopacy.

Anfw. The overflow being paft, you cannot now in your own judgment impute any bitterness to their following difcourfes.

Remonft. Dr. Hall, whom you name I dare fay for honour's fake.

Anfw. You are a merry man, fir, and dare say much. Remonft. And why should not I fpeak of martyrs, as the authors and users of this holy liturgy?

Anfw. As the authors the tranflators, you might perhaps have faid: for Edward the fixth, as Hayward hath written in his ftory, will tell you upon the word of a king, that the order of the service, and the use thereof in the English tongue, is no other than the old fervice was, and the fame words in English which were in Latin, except a few things omitted, fo fond, that it had been a fhame to have heard them in English; these are his words: whereby we are left uncertain who the author was, but certain that part of the work was esteemed fo abfurd by the tranflators thereof, as was to be ashamed of in English. O but the martyrs were the refiners of it, for that only is left you to fay. Admit they were, they could not refine a scorpion into a fish, though they had drawn it, and rinced it with never fo cleanly cookery, which made them fall at variance among themselves about the use either of it, or the ceremonies belonging to it.

Remonft. Slight you them as you please, we bless God for fuch patrons of our good cause.

Anfw. O Benedicite! Qui color ater erat, nunc eft contrarius atro. Are not these they which one of your bishops in print fcornfully terms the Foxian confeffors? Are not these they whofe acts and monuments are not only fo contemptible, but so hateful to the prelates, that their ftory was almoft come to be a prohibited book, which for these two or three editions hath crept into the world by stealth, and at times of advantage, not without the open regret and vexation of the bishops, as many M 2 honeft