ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE REMONSTRANT'S DEFENCE AGAINST SMECTYMNUUS. [FIRST PUBLISHED 1641.] THE PREFACE. ALTHOUGH it be a certain truth, that they who undertake a religious cause need not care to be men-pleasers; yet because the satisfaction of tender and mild consciences is far different from that which is called men-pleasing; to satisfy such, I shall address myself in few words to give notice beforehand of something in this book, which to some men perhaps may seem offensive, that when I have rendered a lawful reason of what is done, I may trast to have saved the labour of defending or excusing hereafter. We all know that in private or personal injuries, yea in public sufferings for the cause of Christ, his rule and example teaches us to be so far from a readiBess to speak evil, as not to answer the reviler in his language, though never so much provoked: yet in the detecting and convincing of any notorious enemy to truth and his country's peace, especially that is conceited to have a voluble and smart fluence of tongue, and in the vain confidence of that, and out of a more tenacious ding to worldly respects, stands up for all the rest to justify a long usurpation and convicted pseudepiscopy of prelates, with all their ceremonies, liturgies, and tyrannies, which God and man are now ready to explode and hiss out of the land; I suppose, and more than suppose, it will be nothing disagreeing from christian meekness to handle such a one in a rougher accent, and to send home his haughtiness well bespurted with his own holyWater. Nor to do thus are we unautoritied either from the moral precept of Solomon, to answer him thereafter that prides him in his folly; nor from the example of Christ, and all his followers in all ages, who, in the refuting of those that resisted sound doctrine, and by subtile dissimulations corrupted the minds of men, have wrought up their zealous souls into such vehemencies, as nothing could be more killingly spoken: for who can be a greater enemy to mankind, who a more dangerous deceiver, than he who, defending a traditional corruption, no common arts, but with a wily stratagem of yielding to the time a greater part of his cause, seeming to forego all that man's invention hath done therein, and driven from much of his hold in Scripture; yet leaving it hanging by a twined thread, not from divine command, but from apostolical prudence or assent; as if he had the surety of some rolling trench, creeps up by this mean to his relinquished fortress of divine authority again, and still hovering between the confines of that which he dares not be openly, and that which he will not be incerely, trains on the easy Christian insensibly within the close ambushment of worst errours, and with a sly se of counterfeit principles, chopping and changing till he have gleaned all the good ones out of their minds, leaves them at last, after a slight resemblance of sweeping and garnishing, under the seven-fold possession of a desperate stupidity? And therefore they that love the souls of men, which is the dearest love, and stirs up the noblest jealousy, when they meet with such collusion, cannot be blamed though they be transported with the zeal of truth to a well-heated fervency; especially, seeing they which thus offend against the souls of their brethren, do it with delight to their great gain, ease, and advancement in this world; but they that seek to discover and oppose their false trade of deceiving, do it not without a sad and unwilling anger, not without many hazards; but without all private and personal spleen, and without any thought of earthly reward, whenas this very course they take stops their hopes of ascending above a lowly and unenviable pitch in this life. And although in the serious uncasing of a grand imposture, (for to deal plainly with you, readers, prelaty is no better,) there he mixed here and there such a grim laughter, as may appear at the same time in an austere visage, cannot be taxed of levity or insolence: for even this vein of laughing (as I could produce out of grave authors) kath oftimes a strong and sinewy force in teaching and confuting; nor can there be a more proper object of ndignation and scorn together, than a false prophet taken in the greatest, dearest, and most dangerous cheat, the cheat of souls: in the disclosing whereof, if it be harmful to be angry, and withal to cast a lowering smile, when the properest object calls for both, it will be long enough ere any be able to say, why those two most raFinal faculties of buman intellect, anger and laughter, were first seated in the breast of man. Thus much, readers, in favour of the softer spirited Christian, for other exceptioners there was no thought taken. Only if it be asked, why this close and succinct manner of coping with the adversary was rather chosen, this was the reason chiefly, that the ingenuous reader, without further amusing himself in the labyrinth of controversial antiquity, may come to the speediest way to see the truth vindicated, and sophistry taken short at the first false bound. Next, that the Remonstrant himself, as oft as he pleases to be frolic, and brave it with others, may find no gain of money, and may learn not to insult in so bad a cause. But now he begins. SECT. I. REMONSTRANT. My single remonstrance is encountered with a plural adversary. Answer. Did not your single remonstrance bring along with it a hot scent of your more than singular affection to spiritual pluralities, your singleness would be less suspected with all good Christians than it is. Remonst. Their names, persons, qualities, numbers, I care not to know. Answ. Their names are known to the all-knowing Power above; and in the mean while, doubtless, they reck not whether you or your nomenclator know them or not. and christian warfare, the luggage is too great that follows your camp; your hearts are there, you march heavily: how shall we think you have not carnal fear, while we see you so subject to carnal desires? Remonst. I do gladly fly to the bar. Answ. To the bar with him then. Gladly you say. We believe you as gladly as your whole faction wished and longed for the assembling of this parliament, as gladly as your beneficiaries the priests came up to answer the complaints and outcries of all the shires. Remonst. The Areopagi! who were those? Truly, my masters, I had thought this had been the name of Remonst. But could they say my name is Legion, the place, not of the men. for we are many? Answ. Wherefore should ye begin with the devil's name, descanting upon the number of your opponents? Wherefore that conceit of Legion with a by-wipe? Was it because you would have men take notice how you esteem them, whom through all your book so bountifully you call your brethren? We had not thought that Legion could have furnished the Remonstrant with so many brethren. Remonst. My cause, ye gods, would bid me meet them undismayed, &c. Answ. Ere a foot further we must be content to hear a preambling boast of your valour, what a St. Dunstan you are to encounter Legions, either infernal or human. Remonst. My cause, ye gods. Answ. What gods? Unless your belly, or the god of this world be he?, Shew us any one point of your remonstrance that does not more concern superiority, pride, ease, and the belly, than the truth and glory of God, or the salvation of souls. Remonst. My cause, ye gods, would bid me meet them undismayed, and to say with holy David, "though a host, &c." Answ. Do not think to persuade us of your undaunted courage, by misapplying to yourself the words of holy David; we know you fear, and are in an agony at this present, lest you should lose that superfluity of riches and honour, which your party usurp. And whosoever covets, and so earnestly labours to keep such an incumbering surcharge of earthly things, cannot but have an earthquake still in his bones. You are not armed, Remonstrant, nor any of your band; you are not dieted, nor your loins girt for spiritual valour, Answ. A soar-eagle would not stoop at a fly; but sure some pedagogue stood at your elbow, and made it itch with this parlous criticism; they urged you with a decree of the sage and severe judges of Athens, and you cite them to appear for certain paragogical contempts, before a capacious pedanty of hot-livered grammarians. Mistake not the matter, courteous Remonstrant, they were not making Latin: if in dealing with an outlandish name, they thought it best not to screw the English mouth to a harsh foreign termination, so they kept the radical word, they did no more than the elegantest authors among the Greeks, Romans, and at this day the Italians, in scorn of such a servility use to do. Remember how they mangle our British names abroad; what trespass were it, if we in requital should as much neglect theirs? And our learned Chaucer did not stick to do so, writing Semyramis for Semiramis, Amphiorax for Amphiaraus, K. Sejes for K. Ceyx the husband of Alcyone, with many other names strangely metamorphosed from the true orthography, if he had made any account of that in these kind of words. Remonst. Lest the world should think the press had of late forgot to speak any language other than libellous, this honest paper hath broken through the throng. Answ. Mince the matter while you will, it shewed but green practice in the laws of discreet rhetoric to blurt upon the ears of a judicious parliament with such a presumptuous and overweening proem: but you do well to be the fewer of your own mess. Remonst. That which you miscall the preface, was a too just complaint of the shameful number of libels. Answ. How long is it that you and the prelatical troop have been in such distaste with libels? Ask your remonstrance. stand to the courtesy of a night-walking cudgeller for eaves-dropping, nor to accept quietly as a perfume, the overhead emptying of some salt lotion. Who could be angry, therefore, but those that are guilty, with these free-spoken and plain-hearted men, that are the eyes of their country, and the prospective-glasses of their prince? But these are the nettlers, these are the blabbing books that tell, though not half your fellows' feats. You love toothless satires; let me inform you, a toothless satire is as improper as a toothed sleek-stone, and as bullish. Remonst. I beseech you, brethren, spend your logic upon your own works. Answ. The peremptory analysis that you call it, I believe will be so hardy as once more to unpin your spruce fastidious oratory, to rumple her laces, her frizzles, and her bobbins, though she wince and fling never so peevishly. Remonst. Those verbal exceptions are but light froth, and will sink alone. Answ. O rare subtlety, beyond all that Cardan ever dreamed of! when, I beseech you, will light things sink? when will light froth sink alone? Here in your phrase, the same day that heavy plummets will swim alone. Trust this man, readers, if you please, whose divinity would reconcile England with Rome, and his philosophy make friends nature with the chaos, sine pondere habentia pondus. Remonst. That scum may be worth taking off which follows. Answ. Spare your ladle, sir, it will be as the bishop's foot in the broth; the scum will be found upon your own remonstrance. Remonst. I shall desire all indifferent eyes to judge, whether these men do not endeavour to cast unjust envy upon me. Answ. Agreed. Answ. We know where the shoe wrings you, you fret and are galled at the quick; and O what a death it is to the prelates to be thus unvisarded, thus uncased, to have the periwigs plucked off that cover your baldness, your inside nakedness thrown open to public view! The Romans had a time once every year, when their slaves might freely speak their minds; it were hard if the freeborn people of England, with whom the voice of truth for these many years, even against the proverb, hath not been heard but in corners, after all your monkish prohibitions, and expurgatorious indexes, your gags and snaffles, your proud Imprimaturs not to be obtained without the shallow surview, but not shallow hand of some mercenary, narrow-souled, and illiterate chaplain; when liberty of speaking, than which nothing more sweet to man, was girded and strait-laced almost to a broken-winded phthisic, if now at a good time, our time of parliament, the very jubilee and resurrection of the state, if now the concealed, the aggrieved, and long persecuted truth, could not be suffered to speak; and though she burst out with some efficacy of words, could not be excused after such an injurious strangle of silence, nor avoid the censure of libelling, it were hard, it were something pinching in a kingdom of free spirits. Some princes, and great statists, have thought it a prime piece of necessary policy, to thrust themselves under disguise into a popular throng, to stand the night long under eaves of houses, and low Answ. And deservedly have they done so; take up windows, that they might hear every where the utter- your logic else and see: civil polity, say you, hath ces of private breasts, and amongst them find out the sometimes varied, and came from arbitrary imposers; precious gem of truth, as amongst the numberless peb- what proposition is this? Bishop Downam in his diabiles of the shore; whereby they might be the abler to lectics will tell you it is a general axiom, though the discover, and avoid, that deceitful and close-couched universal particle be not expressed, and you yourself evil of flattery that ever attends them, and misleads in your defence so explain in these words as in general them, and might skilfully know how to apply the notion. Hence is justly inferred, he that says civil several redresses to each malady of state, without trust-polity is arbitrary, says that the civil polity of England g the disloyal information of parasites and sycophants: is arbitrary. The inference is undeniable, a thesi ad whereas now this permission of free writing, were there hypothesin, or from the general to the particular, an no good else in it, yet at some times thus licensed, is evincing argument in logic. such an unripping, such an anatomy of the shyest and tenderest particular truths, as makes not only the whole tution in many points the wiser, but also presents and caries home to princes, men most remote from vulgar concourse, such a full insight of every lurking evil, or restrained good among the commons, as that they shall not need hereafter, in old cloaks and false beards, to Remonst. I had said that the civil polity, as in general notion, hath sometimes 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. Remonst. Brethren, whiles ye desire to seem godly, learn to be less malicious. Answ. Remonstrant, till you have better learnt your principles of logic, take not upon you to be a doctor to others. Remonst. God bless all good men from such charity. charitable before; yet should a jury of logicians pass upon you, you would never be saved by the book. Remonst. And our sacred monarchy from such friends. Answ. Add, as the prelates. Remonst. Had you spoken such a word in the time of holy Cyprian, what had become of you? Answ. They had neither been haled into your Gehenna at Lambeth, nor strapadoed with an oath ex officio by your bowmen of the arches: and as for Cyprian's time the cause was far unlike, he indeed succeeded into an episcopacy that began then to prelatize; but his personal excellence like an antidote overcame the malignity of that breeding corruption, which was Remonst. If episcopacy have yoked monarchy, it is the insolence of the persons, not the fault of the calling. Answ. It was the fault of the persons, and of no calling: we do not count prelaty a calling. Remonst. The testimony of a pope (whom these men then a disease that lay hid for a while under shew of a honour highly). full and healthy constitution, as those hydropic humours not discernible at first from a fair and juicy fleshiness of body, or that unwonted ruddy colour, which seems graceful to a cheek otherwise pale; and yet arises from evil causes, either of some inward obstruction or inflammation, and might deceive the first physicians till they had learned the sequel, which Cyprian's days did not bring forth; and the prelatism of episcopacy, which began then to burgeon and spread, had as yet, especially in famous men, a fair, though a false imitation of flourishing. Answ. That slanderous insertion was doubtless a pang of your incredible charity, the want whereof you lay so often to their charge; a kind token of your favour lapped up in a parenthesis, 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, such a ticket as this of highly honouring the pope, from the hand of a prelate, might have been of special use and safety to them that had cared for such a ransom. Remonst. And what says Antichrist? Remonst. Neither is the wrong less to make appliAnsw. Ask your brethren the prelates, that hold in- cation of that which was most justly charged upon the telligence with him, ask not us. But is the pope Anti-practices and combinations of libelling separatists, christ now? Good news! take heed you be not shent whom I deservedly censured, &c. for this; for it is verily thought, that had this bill been put in against him in your last convocation, he would have been cleared by most voices. Answ. To conclude this section, our Remonstrant we see is resolved to make good that which was formerly said of his book, that it was neither humble nor a remonstrance, and this his defence is of the same complexion. When he is constrained to mention the notorious violence of his clergy attempted on the church of Scotland, he slightly terms it a fact imputed to some few; but when he speaks of that which the parliament vouchsafes to name the city petition," which I," saith he, (as if the state had made him public censor,) “ deserv Remonst. Any thing serves against episcopacy. Answ. See the frowardness of this man, he would persuade us, that the succession and divine right of bishopdom hath been unquestionable through all ages; yet when they bring against him kings, they were irreligious; popes, they are antichrist. By what era of computation, through what fairy land, would the man deduce this perpetual beadroll of uncontradicted epis-edly censured." And how? As before for a tumultuary copacy? The pope may as well boast his ungainsaid authority to them that will believe, that all his contradicters were either irreligious or heretical. Remonst. If the bishops, saith 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, why is this enviously upbraided to those of ours? who do gladly profess, &c. Answ. Because your dissevered principles were but like the mangled pieces of a gashed serpent, that now begun to close, and grow together popish again. Whatsoever you now gladly profess out of fear, we know what your drifts were when you thought yourselves secure. Remonst. It is a foul slander to charge the name of episcopacy with a faction, for the fact imputed to some few. Answ. 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. Remonst. Fie, brethren! are ye the presbyters of the church of England, and dare challenge episcopacy of faction? Answ. Yes, as oft as episcopacy dares be factious. and underhand way of procured subscriptions, so now in his defence more bitterly, as the practices and combinations of libelling separatists, and the miszealous advocates thereof, justly to be branded for incendiaries. Whether this be for the honour of our chief city to be noted with such an infamy for a petition, which not without some of the magistrates, and great numbers of sober and considerable men, was orderly and meekly presented, although our great clerks think that these men, because they have a trade, (as Christ himself and St. Paul had,) cannot therefore attain to some good measure of knowledge, and to a reason of their actions, as well as they that spend their youth in loitering, bezzling, and harlotting, their studies in unprofitable questions and barbarous sophistry, 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 itself, which thought this petition worthy, not only of receiving, but of voting to a commitment, after it had been advocated, and moved for by some honourable and learned gentleman of the house, to be called a combination of libelling separatists, 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. II. REMONST. After the overflowing of your gall, you descend to liturgy and episcopacy. Answ. The overflow being past, you cannot now in your own judgment impute any bitterness to their foling discourses. riots both in this and other places of your book? Nay, what if you still defend them as follows? Remonst. If a bishop have said that our liturgy hath been so wisely and charitably framed, as that the devotion of it yieldeth no cause of offence to a very pope's ear. Answ. O new and never heard of supererogative height of wisdom and charity in our liturgy! Is the Remonst. Dr. Hall, whom you name I dare say for wisdom of God or the charitable framing of God's bonour's sake. word otherwise inoffensive to the pope's ear, than as Answ. You are a merry man, sir, and dare say he may turn it to the working of his mysterious iniquity? much. Remonst. And why should not I speak of martyrs, s the authors and users of this holy liturgy? Answ. As the authors! the translators, you might perhaps have said: for Edward the sixth, as Hayward bath written in his story, 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 service was, and the same words in English which were in Latin, except a few things omitted, so fond, that it had been a shame 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 so absurd by the translators 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 say. Admit they were, they could not refine a scorpion into a fish, though they had drawn it, and rinced it with never so cleanly cookery, which made the fall at variance among themselves about the use ber of it, or the ceremonies belonging to it. Remonst. Slight you them as you please, we bless God for such patrons of our good cause. Answ. O Benedicite! Qui color ater erat, nunc est catrarius atro. Are not these they which one of your bishops in print scornfully terms the Foxian confessen? Are not these they whose acts and monuments ot only so contemptible, but so hateful to the prelates, that their story was almost come to be a probitted book, which for these two or three editions into the world by stealth, and at times of arantage, not without the open regret and vexation the bishops, as many honest men that had to do in wing forth the book will justify? And now at a dead for your liturgies you bless God for them: out upon sa hypocrisy! crept Retmonst. As if we were bound to make good every went that falls from the mouth of every bishop. Answ, Your faction then belike is a subtile Janus, sad hath two faces: your bolder face to set forward by innovations or scandals in the church, your cauis and wary face to disavow them if they succeed , that so the fault may not light upon the function, t it should spoil the whole plot by giving it an overable wound. Wherefore else did you not ago, as a good bishop should have done, disclaim protest against them? Wherefore have you sat and complied and hood-winked, till the general plaints of the land have squeezed you to a wretched, red, and bollow-hearted confession of some prelatical A little pulley would have stretched your wise and charitable frame it may be three inches further, that the devotion of it might have yielded no cause of offence to the very devil's ear, and that had been the same wisdom and charity surmounting to the highest degree. For Antichrist we know is but the devil's vicar, and therefore please him with your liturgy, and you please his master. Remonst. Would you think it requisite, that we should chide and quarrel when we speak to the God of peace? Answ. Fie, no sir, but forecast our prayers so, that Satan and his instruments may take as little exception against them as may be, lest they should chide and quarrel with us. Remonst. It is no little advantage to our cause and piety, that our liturgy is taught to speak several languages for use and example. Answ. The language of Ashdod is one of them, and that makes so many Englishmen have such a smattering of their Philistian mother. And indeed our liturgy hath run up and down the world like an English galloping nun proffering herself, but we hear of none yet that bids money for her. Remonst. As for that sharp censure of learned Mr. Calvin, it might well have been forborn by him in aliena republica. Answ. Thus this untheological remonstrant would divide the individual catholic church into several republics: know, therefore, that every worthy pastor of the church of Christ hath universal right to admonish over all the world within the church; nor can that care be aliened from him by any distance or distinction of nation, so long as in Christ all nations and languages are as one household. Remonst. Neither would you think it could become any of our greatest divines, to meddle with his charge. Answ. It hath ill become them indeed to meddle so maliciously, as many of them have done, though that patient and christian city hath borne hitherto all their profane scoffs with silence. Remonst. Our liturgy passed the judgment of no less reverend heads than his own. Answ. It bribed their judgments with worldly engagements, and so passed it. Remonst. As for that unparalleled discourse concerning the antiquity of liturgies, I cannot help your wonder, but shall justify mine own assertion. Answ. Your justification is but a miserable shifting off those testimonies of the ancientest fathers alleged |