chised, enlarged, and lifted up our apprehensions degrees above themselves. Ye cannot make us now less capable, less knowing, less eagerly pursuing of the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, that made us so, less the lovers, less the founders of our true liberty. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal, and slavish, as ye found us; but you then must first become that which ye cannot be, oppressive, arbitrary, and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have freed us. That our hearts are now more capacious, our thoughts more erected to the search and expectation of greatest and exactest things, is the issue of your own virtue propagated in us; ye cannot suppress that, unless ye reinforce an abrogated and merciless law, that fathers may dispatch at will their own children. And who shall then stick closest to ye and excite others? Not he who takes up arms for coat and conduct, and his four nobles of Danegelt. Although I dispraise not the defence of just immunities, yet love my peace better, if that were all. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

| light and clear knowledge to be sent down among us, would think of other matters to be constituted beyond the discipline of Geneva, framed and fabricked already to our hands. Yet when the new light which we beg for shines in upon us, there be who envy and oppose, if it come not first in at their casements. What a collusion is this, whenas we are exhorted by the wise man to use diligence," to seek for wisdom as for hidden treasures" early and late, that another order shall enjoin us, to know nothing but by statute? When a man hath been labouring the hardest labour in the deep mines of knowledge, hath furnished out his findings in all their equipage, drawn forth his reasons as it were a battle ranged, scattered and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his adversary into the plain, offers him the advantage of wind and sun, if he please, only that he may try the matter by dint of argument; for his opponents then to sculk, to lay ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge of licensing where the challenger should pass, though it he valour enough in soldiership, is but weakness and cowardice in the wars of truth. For who knows not that truth is strong, next to the What would be best advised then, if it be found so Almighty; she needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor burtful and so unequal to suppress opinions for the new- licensings to make her victorious, those are the shifts ness or the unsuitableness to a customary acceptance, and the defences that errour uses against her power: will not be my task to say; I shall only repeat what I give her but room, and do not bind her when she sleeps, have learned from one of your own honourable num- for then she speaks not true, as the old Proteus did, ber, a right noble and pious lord, who had he not sa- who spake oracles only when he was caught and bound, erified his life and fortunes to the church and com- but then rather she turns herself into all shapes, exmonwealth, we had not now missed and bewailed a cept her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to worthy and undoubted patron of this argument. Ye the time, as Micaiah did before Ahab, until she be adknew him, I am sure; yet I for honour's sake, and jured into her own likeness. Yet is it not impossible may it be eternal to him, shall name him, the Lord that she may have more shapes than one? What else Brook. He writing of episcopacy, and by the way is all that rank of things indifferent, wherein truth treating of sects and schisms, left ye his vote, or rather may be on this side, or on the other, without being unnow the last words of his dying charge, which I know like herself? What but a vain shadow else is the abowill ever be of dear and honoured regard with ye, so lition of "those ordinances, that hand-writing nailed full of meekness and breathing charity, that next to to the cross ?" What great purchase is this christian his last testament, who bequeathed love and peace to liberty which Paul so often boasts of? His doctrine is, his disciples, I cannot call to mind where I have read that he who eats or eats not, regards a day or regards rheard words more mild and peaceful. He there ex- it not, may do either to the Lord. How many other horts us to bear with patience and humility those, how-things might be tolerated in peace, and left to conever they be miscalled, that desire to live purely, in science, had we but charity, and were it not the chief que a use of God's ordinances, as the best guidance of strong hold of our hypocrisy to be ever judging one their conscience gives them, and to tolerate them, another? I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conthough in some disconformity to ourselves. The book formity hath left a slavish print upon our necks; the zelf will tell us more at large, being published to the ghost of a linen decency yet haunts us. We stumble, weld, and dedicated to the parliament by him, who and are impatient at the least dividing of one visible both for his life and for his death deserves, that what congregation from another, though it be not in funivice he left be not laid by without perusal. damentals; and through our forwardness to suppress, and our backwardness to recover, any enthralled piece of truth out of the gripe of custom, we care not to keep truth separated from truth, which is the fiercest rent and disunion of all. We do not see that while we still affect by all means a rigid external formality, we may as soon fall again into a gross conforming stupidity, a stark and dead congealment of “wood and hay and stubble" forced and frozen together, which is more to the sudden degenerating of a church than many subdichotomies of petty schisms. Not that I can think well of every light separation; or

And now the time in special is, by privilege to write tad speak what may help to the further discussing of masters in agitation. The temple of Janus with his controversal faces might now not unsignificantly set open. And though all the winds of doctrine Wer let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the bel, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to doubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and pen encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing. He who hears what praying there is for

sires to walk in the spirit, and not in the letter trust, for all the number of voices that ca made; no, though Harry the seventh him with all his liege tombs about him, should voices from the dead to swell their numb the men be erroneous who appear to be t schismatics, what withholds us but our slo will, and distrust in the right cause, that give them gentle meetings and gentle that we debate not and examine the matter with liberal and frequent audience; if n sakes yet for our own? Seeing no man wh learning, but will confess the many ways by those who, not contented with stale able to manage and set forth new positions And were they but as the dust and cinder so long as in that notion they may yet se and brighten the armory of truth, even for they were not utterly to be cast away. B of those whom God hath fitted for the these times with eminent and ample gi perhaps neither among the priests, no Pharisees, and we in the haste of a pr shall make no distinction, but resolve mouths, because we fear they come w dangerous opinions, as we commonly fo ere we understand them; no less than w thinking thus to defend the gospel, we persecutors!

that all in a church is to be expected "gold and silver and precious stones:" it is not possible for man to sever the wheat from the tares, the good fish from the other fry; that must be the angels' ministry at the end of mortal things. Yet if all cannot be of one mind, as who looks they should be? this doubtless is more wholesome, more prudent, and more christian, that many be tolerated rather than all compelled. I mean not tolerated popery, and open superstition, which as it extirpates all religions and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate, provided first that all charitable and compassionate means be used to win and regain the weak and the misled: that also which is impious or evil absolutely either against faith or manners, no law can possibly permit, that intends not to unlaw itself: but those neighbouring differences, or rather indifferences, are what I speak of, whether in some point of doctrine or of discipline, which though they may be many, yet need not interrupt the unity of spirit, if we could but find among us the bond of peace. In the mean while, if any one would write, and bring his helpful hand to the slow moving reformation which we labour under, if truth have spoken to him before others, or but seemed at least to speak, who hath so bejesuited us, that we should trouble that man with asking licence to do so worthy a deed; and not consider this, that if it come to prohibiting, there is not aught more likely to be prohibited than truth itself: whose first appearance to our eyes, bleared and dimmed with prejudice and custom, is more unsightly and unplausible than many errours; even as the person is of many a great man slight and contemptible to see to. And what do they tell us vainly of new opinions, when this very opinion of theirs, that none must be heard but whom they like, is the worst and newest opinion of all others; and is the chief cause why sects and schisms do so much abound, and true knowledge is kept at distance from us; besides yet a greater danger which is in it. For when God shakes a kingdom, with strong and healthful commotions, to a general reforming, it is not untrue that many sectaries and false teachers are then busiest in seducing. But yet more true it is, that God then raises to his own work men of rare abilities, and more than common industry, not only to look back and revise what hath been taught heretofore, but to gain further, and to go on some new enlightened steps in the discovery of truth. For such is the order of God's enlightening his church, to dispense and deal out by degrees his beam, so as our earthly eyes may best sustain it. Neither is God appointed and confined, where and out of what place these his chosen shall be first heard to speak; for he sees not as man sees, chooses not as man chooses, lest we should devote ourselves again to set places and assemblies, and outward callings of men; planting our faith one while in the old convocation house, and another while in the chapel at Westminster; when all the faith and religion that shall be there canonized, is not sufficient without plain convincement, and the charity of patient instruction, to supple the least bruise of conscience, to edify the meanest Christian, who de

There have been not a few since the this parliament, both of the presbytery a by their unlicensed books to the conte primatur first broke that triple ice cl hearts, and taught the people to see da none of those were the persuaders to this bondage, which they themselves h much good by contemning. But if ne that Moses gave to young Joshua, mand which our Saviour gave to yo was so ready to prohibit those whom licensed, be not enough to admonish unacceptable to God their testy mood is; if neither their own remembrance abounded in the church by this lett what good they themselves have begu ing it, be not enough, but that they w execute the most Dominican part of over us, and are already with one foot active at suppressing, it would be no tion in the first place to suppress the s selves; whom the change of their con up, more than their late experience hath made wise.

And as for regulating the press, le have the honour of advising ye bette have done in that order published "That no book be printed, unless the author's name, or at least the printer Those which otherwise come forth, mischievous and libellous, the fire at will be the timeliest and the most

THE DOCTRINE AND DISCIPLINE

OF

DIVORCE;

RESTORED TO THE GOOD OF BOTH SEXES, FROM THE BONDAGE OF CANON LAW, AND OTHER M TO THE TRUE MEANING OF SCRIPTURE IN THE LAW AND GOSPEL COMPARED, WHEREIN ALSO ARE SET DOWN THE BAD CONSEQUENCES OF ABOLISHING, or condemn AS SIN, THAT WHICH THE LAW OF GOD ALLOWS, AND CHRIST ABOLISHED NOT.

NOW THE SECOND TIME REVISED, AND MUCH AUGMENTED, IN TWO BOOKS: TO THE PARLIAMENT
OF ENGLAND, WITH THE ASSEMBLY.

Матти, хііі, 52.

"Every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a house, which bringeth ou his treasury things new and old." PROV. xviii. 13. "He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him."

[FIRST PUBLISHED 1643, 1644.]

TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND, WITH THE ASSEMBLY.

without a head, willingly accepts what supplies what her incompleteness went s it is, that errour supports custom, custo errour: and these two between them and chase away all truth and solid wis man life, were it not that God, rather in many ages calls together the prude counsels of men, deputed to repress the and to work off the inveterate blots wrought upon our minds by the subtl

If it were seriously asked, (and it would be no untimely | with errour, who being a blind and s question,) renowned parliament, select assembly! who of all teachers and masters, that have ever taught, hath drawn the most disciples after him, both in religion and in manuers? it might be not untruly answered, Custom. Though virtue be commended for the most persuasive in her theory, and conscience in the plain demonstration of the spirit finds most evincing; yet whether it be the secret of divine will, or the original blindness we are born in, so it happens for the most part, that custom still is silently received for the best instructor. Except it be, because her method is so gliberrour and custom; who, with the nu and easy, in some manner like to that vision of Ezekiel rolling up her sudden book of implicit knowledge, for him that will to take and swallow down at pleasure; which proving but of bad nourishment in the concoction, as it was heedless in the devouring, puffs up unhealthily a certain big face of pretended learning, mistaken among credulous men for the wholesome habit of soundness and good constitution, but is indeed no other than that swoln visage of counterfeit knowledge and literature, which not only in private mars our education, but also in public is the common climber into every chair, where either religion is preached, or law reported: filling each estate of life and profession with abject and servile principles, depressing the high and heaven-born spirit of man, far beneath the condition wherein either God created him, or sin hath sunk him. To pursue the allegory, custom being but a mere face, as echo is a mere voice, rests not in her unaccomplishment, until by secret inclination she accorporate herself

gar train of their followers, make it t to envy and cry down the industry o under the terms of humour and inno womb of teeming truth were to be presume to bring forth aught that so unchewed notions and suppositions. notorious injury and abuse of man's f and oppose the utmost that study an attain, heretofore the incitement of hath led me among others; and now right of an instructed Christian cal chance of good or evil report, to be of a discountenanced truth: a hig and commons! a high enterprise an as every seventh son of a seventh so on. Nor have I amidst the clamou and impertinence whither to appe course of so much piety and wisdo Bringing in my hands an ancient