dress up and garnish with a devised bravery abolished | it pleases him much, that he had descried me, as be in the law, and disclaimed by the gospel, adds nothing conceives, to be unread in the councils. Concernbut a deformed ugliness; and hath ever afforded a ing which matter it will not be unnecessary to shape colourable pretence to bring in all those traditions him this answer; that some years I had spent in the and carnalities that are so killing to the power and stories of those Greek and Roman exploits, wherein I virtue of the gospel. What was that which made the found many things both nobly done, and worthily Jews, figured under the names of Aholah and Abolibah, spoken; when coming in the method of time to that go a whoring after all the heathen's inventions, but age wherein the church had obtained a christian emthat they saw a religion gorgeously attired and de- peror, I so prepared myself, as being now to read exsirable to the eye? What was all that the false doc- amples of wisdom and goodness among those who were tors of the primitive church and ever since have foremost in the church, not elsewhere to be paralleled; done, but “to make a fair shew in the flesh," as St. but, to the amazement of what I expected, I found it Paul's words are? If we have indeed given a bill all quite contrary; excepting in some very few, nothing of divorce to popery and superstition, why do we not but ambition, corruption, contention, combustion; insay as to a divorced wife, Those things which are yours somuch that I could not but love the historian Socrates, take them all with you, and they shall sweep after who, in the proem to his fifth book professes," he was yon? Why were not we thus wise at our parting from fain to intermix affairs of state, for that it would be Rome? Ab! like a crafty adulteress she forgot not all else an extreme annoyance to hear in a continued disher smooth looks and enticing words at her parting; course the endless brabbles and counter-plottings of the yet keep these letters, these tokens, and these few orna- bishops." Finding, therefore, the most of their actions ments; I am not all so greedy of what is mine, let in single to be weak, and yet turbulent; full of strife, them preserve with you the memory of what I am? and yet flat of spirit; and the sum of their best counNo, but of what I was, once fair and lovely in your cils there collected, to be most commonly in questions eyes. Thus did those tender-hearted reformers dotingly either trivial and vain, or else of short and easy decisuffer themselves to be overcome with harlot's language. sion, without that great bustle which they made; I And she like a witch, but with a contrary policy, did concluded that if their single ambition and ignorance not take something of theirs, that she still might have was such, then certainly united in a council it would power to bewitch them, but for the same intent left be much more; and if the compendious recital of what something of her own behind her. And that her they there did was so tedious and unprofitable, then whorish cunning should prevail to work upon us her surely to set out the whole extent of their tattle in a deceitful ends, though it be sad to speak, yet such is dozen volumes would be a loss of time irrecoverable. our blindness, that we deserve. For we are deep in Besides that which I had read of St. Martin, who for his detage. We cry out sacrilege and misdevotion against last sixteen years could never be persuaded to be at any these who in zeal have demolished the dens and cages council of the bishops. And Gregory Nazianzen betook of her unclean wallowings. We stand for a popish him to the same resolution, affirming to Procopius, turgy as for the ark of our covenant. And so little "that of any council or meeting of bishops he never does it appear our prayers are from the heart, that mul- saw good end; nor any remedy thereby of evil in the todes of us declare, they know not how to pray but church, but rather an increase. For," saith he, "their byte. Yet they can learnedly invent a prayer of contentions and desire of lording no tongue is able to their own to the parliament, that they may still ig-express." I have not therefore, I confess, read more of the councils save here and there; I should be sorry to have been such a prodigal of my time: but that which is better, I can assure this confuter, I have read into them all. And if I want any thing yet, I shall reply something toward that which in the defence of Muræna was answered by Cicero to Sulpitius the lawyer. If ye provoke me (for at no hand else will I undertake such a frivolous labour) I will in three months be an expert councilist. For, be not deceived, readers, by men that would overawe your ears with big names and huge tomes that contradict and repeal one another, because they can cram a margin with citations. Do but winnow their chaff from their wheat, ye shall see their great heap shrink and wax thin past belief. From hence he passes to inquire wherefore I should blame the vices of the prelates only, seeing the inferiour clergy is known to be as faulty. To which let him hear in brief; that those priests whose vices have been notorious, are all prelatical, which argues both the impiety of that opinion, and the wicked remissness of that government. We hear not of any norantly read the prayers of other men to God. They object, that if we must forsake all that is Rome's, we must bid adieu to our creed; and I had thought our red had been of the Apostles, for so it bears title. But if it be hers, let her take it. We can want no creed, long as we want not the Scriptures. We magnify those who, in reforming our church, have inconsiderately and blamefully permitted the old leaven to remain and sour our whole lump. But they were martyrs; tre, and he that looks well into the book of God's providence, if he read there that God for this their negligence and halting brought all that following persecuupon this church, and on themselves, perhaps will be found at the last day not to have read amiss. tion SECT. XII. Ber now, readers, we have the port within sight; bis last section, which is no deep one, remains only to be forded, and then the wished shore. And here first which are called nonconformists, that have been ac- "This Constantine which heal hath found, 66 not come at all, when they shall see the cr So they prove to the prelates, who, a "Two churches which he did make But there were beasts of prey, saith he, before wealth was bestowed on the church. What, though, because the vultures had then but small pickings, shall we therefore go and fling them a full gorge? If they for lucre use to creep into the church undiscernibly, the more wisdom will it be so to provide that no revenue there may exceed the golden mean; for so, good pastors will be content, as having need of no more, and knowing withal the precept and example of Christ and his apostles, and also will be less tempted to ambition. The bad will have but small matter whereon to set their mischief awork; and the worst and subtlest heads will forced to entice them as children with childish enticements. But the gospel is our manhood, and the ministry should be the manhood of the gospel, not to look after, much less so basely to plead for earthly rewards. "But God incited the wisest man Solomon with these means." Ah, confuter of thyself, this example bath undone thee; Solomon asked an understanding heart, which the prelates have little care to ask. He asked no riches, which is their chief care; therefore was the prayer of Solomon pleasing to God; he gave him wisdom at his request, and riches without asking, as now he gives the prelates riches at their seeking, and no wisdom because of their perverse asking. But he gives not over yet, "Moses had an eye to the reward." To what reward, thou man that lookest with Balaam's eyes? To what reward had the faith of Moses an eye? He that had forsaken all the greatness of Egypt, and chose a troublesome journey in his old age through the wilderness, and yet arrived not at his journey's end. His faithful eyes were fixed upon that incorruptible reward, promised to Abraham and his seed in the Messiah; he sought a heavenly reward, which could make him happy, and never hurt him, and to such a reward every good man may have a respect; but the prelates are eager of such rewards as cannot make them happy, but can only make them worse. Jacob, a prince born, vowed that if God would *hat give him bread to eat and raiment to put on, then the Lord should be his God." But the prelates of mean birth, and ofttimes of lowest, making shew as if they were called to the spiritual and humble ministry of the gospel, yet murmur, and think it a hard service, less, contrary to the tenour of their profession, they may eat the bread and wear the honours of princes: much more covetous and base they are than Simon Mags, for he proffered a reward to be admitted to that wet which they will not be meanly hired to. But, saith be, Are not the clergy members of Christ, why should not each member thrive alike?" Carnal textman! as if worldly thriving were one of the privileges we bare by being in Christ, and were not a providence frimes extended more liberally to the Infidel than to the Christian. Therefore must the ministers of Christ not be over rich or great in the world, because their alling is spiritual, not secular; because they have a special warfare, which is not to be entangled with many rampediments; because their master Christ gave them this precept, and set them this example, told them this was the mystery of his coming, by mean things and persons to subdue mighty ones and lastly, because a nidle estate is most proper to the office of teaching, whereas higher dignity teaches far less, and blinds the teacher. Nay, saith the confuter, fetching his last endeavour," the prelates will be very loth to let go their baronies, and votes in parliament," and calls it God's cause," with an insufferable impudence. "Not that they love the honours and the means," good men and generous! but that they would not have their ntry made guilty of such a sacrilege and injuse! A worthy patriot for his own corrupt ends. That which he imputes as sacrilege to his country, is the only way left them to purge that abominable sacrilege out of the land, which none but the prelates are guilty of; who for the discharge of one single duty, receive and keep that which might be enough to satisfy the labours of many painful ministers better deserving than themselves; who possess huge benefices for lazy performances, great promotions only for the execution of a cruel disgospelling jurisdiction; who ingross many pluralities under a nonresident and slubbering dispatch of souls; who let hundreds of parishes famish in one diocese, while they the prelates are mute, and yet enjoy that wealth that would furnish all those dark places with able supply: and yet they eat, and yet they live at the rate of earls, and yet hoard up; they who chase away all the faithful shepherds of the flock, and bring in a dearth of spiritual food, robbing thereby the church of her dearest treasure, and sending herds of souls starveling to hell, while they feast and riot upon the labours of hireling curates, consuming and purloining even that which by their foundation is allowed, and left to the poor, and to reparations of the church. These are they who have bound the land with the sin of sacrilege, from which mortal engagement we shall never be free, till we have totally removed with one labour, as one individual thing, prelaty and sacrilege. And herein will the king be a true defender of the faith, not by paring or lessening, but by distributing in due proportion the maintenance of the church, that all parts of the land may equally partake the plentiful and diligent preaching of the faith, the scandal of ceremonies thrown out that delude and circumvent the faith; and the usurpation of prelates laid level, who are in words the fathers, but in their deeds, the oppugners of the faith. This is that which will best confirm him in that glorious title. Thus ye have heard, readers, how many shifts and wiles the prelates have invented to save their ill-got booty. And if it be true, as in Scripture it is foretold, that pride and covetousness are the sure marks of those false prophets which are to come; then boldly conclude these to be as great seducers as any of the latter times. For between this and the judgment day do not look for any arch deceivers, who in spite of reformation will use more craft, or less shame to defend their love of the world and their ambition, than these prelates have done. And if ye think that soundness of reason, or what force of argument soever, will bring them to an ingenuous silence, ye think that which will never be. But if ye take that course which Erasmus was wont to say Luther took against the pope and monks; if ye denounce war against their mitres and their bellies, ye shall soon discern that turban of pride, which they wear upon their heads, to be no helmet of salvation, but the mere metal and hornwork of papal jurisdiction; and that they have also this gift, like a certain kind of some that are possessed, to have their voice in their bellies, which, being well drained and taken down, their great oracle, which is only there, will soon be dumb; and the divine right of episcopacy, forthwith expiring, will put us no more to trouble with tedious antiquities and disputes. OF EDUCATION. TO MASTER SAMUEL HARTLIB. MASTER HARTLIB, I AM long since persuaded, that to say or do aught worth memory and imitation, no purpose or respect should sooner move us than simply the love of God, and of mankind. Nevertheless to write now the reforming of education, though it be one of the greatest and noblest designs that can be thought on, and for the want whereof this nation perishes; I had not yet at this time been induced, but by your earnest entreaties and serious conjurements; as having my mind for the present half diverted in the pursuance of some other assertions, the knowledge and the use of which cannot but be a great furtherance both to the enlargement of truth, and honest living with much more peace. Nor should the laws of any private friendship have prevailed with me to divide thus, or transpose my former thoughts, but that I see those aims, those actions, which have won you with me the esteem of a person sent hither by some good providence from a far country to be the occasion and incitement of great good to this island. And, as I hear, you have obtained the same repute with men of most approved wisdom, and some of the highest authority among us; not to mention the learned correspondence which you hold in foreign parts, and the extraordinary pains and diligence, which you have used in this matter both here and beyond the seas; either by the definite will of God so ruling, or the peculiar sway of nature, which also is God's working. Neither can I think that so reputed and so valued as you are, you would to the forfeit of your own discerning ability, impose upon me an unfit and overponderous argument; but that the satisfaction, which you profess to have received from those incidental discourses which we have wandered into, hath pressed and almost constrained you into a persuasion, that what you require from me in this point, I neither ought nor can in conscience defer beyond this time both of so much need at once, and so much opportunity to try what God hath determined. I will not resist therefore whatever it is, either of divine or human obligement, that you lay upon me; but will forthwith set down in writing, as you request me, that voluntary idea, which hath long in silence presented itself to me, of a better education, in extent and comprehension far more large, and yet of time far shorter, and of attainment far more certain, than hath been yet in practice. Brief I shall endeavour to be; for that which I have to say, assuredly this nation hath extreme need should be done sooner than spoken. To tell you therefore what I have benefited herein among old renowned authors, I shall spare; and to search what many modern Januas and Didactics, more than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination leads me not. But if you can accept of these few observations which have flowered off, and are as it were the burnishing of many studious and contemplative years altogether spent in the search of religious and civil knowledge, and such as pleased you so well in the relating, I here give you them to dispose of. The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the highest perfection. But because our understanding cannot in this body found itself but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by orderly. conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet, teaching. And seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough for all kind of learning, therefore we are chiefly taught the languages of those people who have at any time been most industrious after wisdom; so that language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known. And though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet if he have not studied the solid things in them as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man, as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only. Hence appear the many mistakes which have made learning generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful; first, we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek, as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year. And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind, is our time lost partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and universities; partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled by long reading and observing, with elegant maxims and copious invention. These are not matters to be wrung from poor striplings, like blood out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit; besides the ill habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms, odious to be read, yet not to be avoided without a well-continued and judicious conversing among pure authors digested, which they scarce taste: whereas, if after some preparatory grounds of speech by their certain forms got into memory, they were led to the praxis thereof in some chosen short book lessoned thoroughly to them, they might then forthwith proceed to learn the substance of good things, and arts in due order, which would bring the whole language quickly into their power. This I take to be the most rational and most profitable way of learning languages, and whereby we may best hope to give actent to God of our youth spent herein. And for the sal method of teaching arts, I deem it to be an old error of universities, not yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages, that instead of beginning with arts most easy, (and those be such as are most obvious to the sense,) they present their young matriculated novices at first coming with the most intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics; so that they having but newly left those grammatic flats and shallows where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable construction, and now on the sadden transported under another climate to be tred and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in fless and unquiet deeps of controversy, do for the at part grow into hatred and contempt of learning, cked and deluded all this while with ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge; till poverty or youthful years call them importunately their several ways, and hasten them with the sway of friends either to an ambitious and mercenary, or ignorantly zealous divinity; some and to the trade of law, grounding their purposes the prudent and heavenly contemplation of juste and equity, which was never taught them, but on de promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees; others betake them state affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue true generous breeding, that flattery and courtsafa and tyrannous aphorisms appear to them the highest points of wisdom; instilling their barren hearts with a conscientious slavery; if, as I rather think, it be ta feigned. Others, lastly, of a more delicious and tary spirit, retire themselves (knowing no better) to the yments of ease and luxury, living out their days feast and jollity; which indeed is the wisest and the safest course of all these, unless they were with re integrity undertaken. *And these are the errours, • Thus it is in the first edition H and these are the fruits of mispending our prime youth at the schools and universities as we do, either in learning mere words, or such things chiefly as were better unlearned. I shall detain you now no longer in the demonstration of what we should not do, but straight conduct you to a hill-side, where I will point you out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect, and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming. I doubt not but ye shall have more ado to drive our dullest and laziest youth, our stocks and stubs, from the infinite desire of such a happy nurture, than we have now to hale and drag our choicest and hopefullest wits to that asinine feast of sowthistles and brambles, which is commonly set before them as all the food and entertainment of their tenderest and most docible age. I call therefore a complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war. And how all this may be done between twelve and one and twenty, less time than is now bestowed in pure trifling at grammar and sophistry, is to be thus ordered. First, to find out a spacious house and ground about it fit for an academy, and big enough to lodge a hundred and fifty persons, whereof twenty or thereabout may be attendants, all under the government of one, who shall be thought of desert sufficient, and ability either to do all, or wisely to direct and oversee it done. This place should be at once both school and university, not needing a remove to any other house of scholarship, except it be some peculiar college of law, or physic, where they mean to be practitioners; but as for those general studies which take up all our time from Lilly to commencing, as they term it, master of art, it should be absolute. After this pattern, as many edifices may be converted to this use as shall be needful in every city throughout this land, which would tend much to the increase of learning and civility every where. This number, less or more thus collected, to the convenience of a foot company, or interchangeably two troops of cavalry, should divide their day's work into three parts as it lies orderly; their studies, their exercise, and their diet. For their studies; first, they should begin with the chief and necessary rules of some good grammar, either that now used, or any better; and while this is doing, their speech is to be fashioned to a distinct and clear pronunciation, as near as may be to the Italian, especially in the vowels. For we Englishmen being far northerly, do not open our mouths in the cold air wide enough to grace a southern tongue; but are observed by all other nations to speak exceeding close and inward; so that to smatter Latin with an English mouth, is as ill a hearing as law French. Next, to make them expert in the usefullest points of grammar; and withal to season them and win them early to the love of virtue and true labour, erè any flattering seducement or vain |
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