we cannot therefore do better than to leave this care of ours to God, he can easily fend labourers into his harvest, that shall not cry Give, give, but be contented with a moderate and befeeming allowance; nor will he suffer true learning to be wanting, where true grace and our obedience to him abounds: for if he give us to know him aright, and to practise this our knowledge in right eftablished difcipline, how much more will he replenish us with all abilities in tongues and arts, that may conduce to his glory and our good! He can ftir up rich fathers to bestow exquifite education upon their children, and fo dedicate them to the fervice of the gospel; he can make the fons of nobles his minifters, and princes to be his Nazarites; for certainly there is no employment more honourable, more worthy to take up a great spirit, more requiring a generous and free nurture, than to be the meffenger and herald of heavenly truth from God to man, and, by the faithful work of holy doctrine, to procreate a number of faithful men, making a kind of creation like to God's, by infufing his fpirit and likeness into them, to their falvation, as God did into him; arifing to what climate foever he turn him, like that Sun of righteousness that fent him, with healing in his wings, and new light to break in upon the chill and gloomy hearts of his hearers, raifing out of darkfome barrenness a delicious and fragrant fpring of faving knowledge, and good works. Can a man, thus employed, find himself difcontented, or dishonoured for want of admittance to have a pragmatical voice at feffions and jail deliveries? Or because he may not as a judge fit out the wrangling noise of litigious courts to fhrive the purfes of unconfeffing and unmortified finners, and not their fouls, or be dif couraged though men call him not lord, whenas the due performance of his office would gain him, even from lords and princes, the voluntary title of father? Would he tug for a barony to fit and vote in parliament, knowing that no man can take from him the gift of wisdom and found doctrine, which leaves him free, though not to be a member, yet a teacher and perfuader of the parliament? And in all wife apprehenfions the perfuafive power in man to win others to goodness by inftruction is greater,

and

and more divine, than the compulfive power to restrain men from being evil by terrour of the law; and therefore Chrift left Mofes to be the lawgiver, but himself came down amongst us to be a teacher, with which office his heavenly wisdom was fo well pleased, as that he was angry with those that would have put a piece of temporal judicature into his hands, difclaiming that he had any commiffion from above for fuch matters.

Such a high calling therefore as this, fends not for thofe droffy fpirits that need the lure and whistle of earthly preferment, like those animals that fetch and carry for a morfel; no. She can find fuch as therefore study her precepts, because the teaches to defpife preferment. And let not those wretched fathers think they fhall impoverish the church of willing and able supply, though they keep back their fordid fperm, begotten in the luftinefs of their avarice, and turn them to their malting kilns; rather let them take heed what leffons they inftil into that lump of flesh which they are the caufe of; left, thinking to offer him as a prefent to God, they dish him out for the devil. Let the novice learn firft to renounce the world, and fo give himself to God, and not therefore give himself to God, that he may close the better with the world, like that falfe fhepherd Palinode in the eclogue of May, under whom the poet lively perfonates our prelates, whose whole life is a recantation of their pastoral vow, and whofe profeffion to forfake the world, as they use the matter, bogs them deeper into the world. Thofe our admired Spenfer inveighs against, not without some prefage of these reforming times:

The time was once and may again return,
(For oft may happen that hath been beforn)
When fhepherds had none inheritance,
Ne of land nor fee in fufferance,
But what might arise of the bare sheep,
(Were it more or lefs,) which they did keep.
Well ywis was it with fhepherds tho,
Nought having, nought feared they to forego:
For Pan himself was their inheritance,
And little them ferv'd for their maintenance :
The fhepherds God fo well them guided,
That of nought they were unprovided.

O 3

Butter

Butter enough, honey, milk and whey,
And their flock fleeces them to array.
But tract of time, and long profperity
(That nurfe of vice, this of infolency)
Luild the fhepherds in fuch fecurity,
That not content with loyal obeyfance,
Some gan to gape for greedy governance,
And match themselves with mighty potentates,
Lovers of lordships, and troublers of ftates.
Tho gan fhepherds fwains to looke aloft,
And leave to live hard, and learne to lig foft.
Tho under colour of thepherds some while
There crept in wolves full of fraud and guile,
That often devoured their own fheep,
And often the fhepherd that did them keep.
This was the first fource of fhepherds forrow,
That now nill be quit with bale, nor borrow.

By all this we may conjecture, how little we need fear that the ungilding of our prelates will prove the woodening of our priefis. In the mean while let no man carry in his head either fuch narrow or fuch evil eyes, as not to look upon the churches of Belgia and Helvetia, and that envied city Geneva: where in the chriftian world doth learning more flourish than in these places? Not among your beloved jefuits, nor their favourers, though you take all the prelates into the number, and infiance in what kind of learning you please. And how in England all noble fciences attending upon the train of christian doctrine may flourish more than ever; and how the able profeffors of every art may with ample fiipends be honestly provided; and finally, how there may be better care had that their hearers may benefit by them, and all this without the prelates; the courses are fo many and so easy, that I fhall pass them over.

Remonft. It is God that makes the bishop, the king that gives the bishopric; what can you fay to this?

Anfw. What you fhall not long ftay for: we fay it is God that makes a bishop, and the devil that makes him take a prelatical bifhopric; as for the king's gift, regal bounty may be excufable in giving, where the bishop's covetousness is damnable in taking.

Remonft. Many eminent divines of the churches abroad have earnestly wished themselves in our condition.

Anfw.

Answ. I cannot blame them, they were not only eminent but fupereminent divines, and for ftomach much like to Pompey the great, that could endure no equal.

Remonft. The Babylonian note founds well in your ears, "Down with it, down with it, even to the ground." Anfw. You mistake the matter, it was the Edomitifh note; but change it, and if you be an angel, cry with the angel," It is fallen, it is fallen."

Remonft. But the God of Heaven will, we hope, vindicate his own ordinance fo long perpetuated to his church.

Anfw. Go rather to your god of this world, and fee if he can vindicate your lordfhips, your temporal and spiritual tyrannies, and all your pelf; for the God of Heaven is already come down to vindicate his ordinance from your fo long perpetuated ufurpation.

Remonft. If yet you can blufh.

Anfw. This is a more Edomitish conceit than the former, and must be filenced with a counter quip of the fame country. So often and fo unfavourily has it been repeated, that the reader may well cry, Down with it, down with it, for fhame. A man would think you had eaten overliberally of Efau's red porridge, and from thence dream continually of blufhing; or perhaps, to heighten your fancy in writing, are wont to fit in your doctor's fcarlet, which through your eyes infecting your pregnant imaginative with a red fuffufion, begets a continual thought of blufhing: that you thus perfecute ingenuous men over all your book, with this one overtired rubrical conceit ftill of blufhing; but if you have no mercy upon them, yet fpare yourself, left you bejade the good galloway, your own opiniatre wit, and make very conceit itfelf blush with spurgalling.

the

Remonft. The fcandals of our inferiour minifters I defired to have had lefs public..

Anfw. And what your fuperiour archbishop or bifhops? O forbid to have it told in Gath fay you. O dauber! and therefore remove not impieties from Ifrael. Conftantine might have done more juftly to have punished those clergical faults which he could not conceal, than to leave them unpunished, that they might remain

concealed: better had it been for him, that the heathen had heard the fame of his juftice, than of his wilful connivance and partiality; and fo the name of God and his truth had been lefs blafphemed among his enemies, and the clergy amended, which daily, by this impunity, grew worse and worfe. But, O to publifh in the streets of Afcalon! fure fome colony of puritans have taken Afcalon from the Turk lately, that the Remonftrant is fo afraid of Afcalon. The papifts we know condole you, and neither Conftantinople nor your neighbours of Morocco trouble you. What other Afcalon can you allude to?

Remonft. What a death it is to think of the sport and advantage thefe watchful enemies, thefe oppofite fpectators, will be fure to make of our fin and fhame ?

Anfw. This is but to fling and struggle under the inevitable net of God, that now begins to environ you round.

Remonft. No one clergy in the whole chriftian world yields fo many eminent scholars, learned preachers, grave, holy, and accomplished divines, as this church of England doth at this day.

Anfw. Ha, ha, ha!

Remonft. And long, and ever may it thus flourish. Anfw. O peftilent imprecation! flourish as it does at this day in the prelates?

Remonft. But O forbid to have it told in Gath!

Anfw. Forbid him rather, facred parliament, to violate the fenfe of fcripture, and turn that which is spoken of the afflictions of the church under her pagan enemies, to a pargetted concealment of thofe prelatical crying fins: for from these is prophanenefs gone forth into all the land; they have hid their eyes from the fabbaths of the Lord; they have fed themselves, and not their flocks; with force and cruelty have they ruled over God's people: they have fed his fheep (contrary to that which St. Peter writes) not of a ready mind, but for filthy lucre; not as examples to the flock, but as being lords over God's heritage: and yet this dauber would daub ftill with his untempered mortar. But hearken what God fays by the prophet Ezekiel," Say unto them that daub