Page images
PDF
EPUB

gage is too great that follows your camp; your hearts are there, you march heavily: how fhall we think you have not carnal fear, while we fee you fo fubject to carnal defires?

Remonft. I do gladly fly to the bar. Anfw. To the bar with him then. Gladly you fay. We believe you as gladly as your whole faction wifhed and longed for the affembling of this parliament, as gladly as your beneficiaries the priests came up to anfwer the complaints and outcries of all the fhires.

Remonft. The Areopagi! who were thofe? Truly, my mafters, I had thought this had been the name of the place, not of the men.

Anfw. A foar-eagle would not stoop at a fly; but fure fome pedagogue ftood at your elbow, and made it itch. with this parlous criticism; they urged you with a decree of the fage and fevere judges of Athens, and you cite them to appear for certain paragogical contempts, before a capacious pedanty of hot-livered grammarians. Miftake not the matter, courteous Remonftrant, they were not making Latin: if in dealing with an 'outlandish name, they thought it beft not to fcrew the English mouth to a harfh foreign termination, fo they kept the radical word, they did no more than the eleganteft authors among the Greeks, Romans, and at this day the Italians, in fcorn of fuch a fervility ufe to do. Remember how they mangle our British names abroad; what trefpafs were it, if we in requital fhould as much neglect theirs? And our learned Chaucer did not ftick to do fo, writing Semyramis for Semiramis, Amphiorax for Amphiaraus, K. Sejes for K. Ceyx the hufband of Alcyone, with many other names ftrangely metamorphofed from the true orthography, if he had made any account of that in these kind of words.

Remonft. Left the world fhould think the press had of late forgot to speak any language other than libellous, this honeft paper hath broken through the throng.

Anfw. Mince the matter while you will, it fhowed but green practice in the laws of difcreet rhetoric to blurt upon the ears of a judicious parliament with fuch a prefumptuous

fumptuous and overweening proem: but you do well to be the fewer of your own mess.

Remonft. That which you mifcall the preface, was a too juft complaint of the shameful number of libels.

Anfw. How long is it that you and the prelatical troop have been in fuch diftafte with libels? Afk your Lyfimachus Nicanor what defaming invectives have lately flown abroad against the fubjects of Scotland, and our poor expulfed brethren of New England, the prelates rather applauding than fhowing any diflike: and this hath been ever fo, infomuch that fir Francis Bacon in one of his difcourfes complains of the bifhops uneven hand over these pamphlets, confining thofe against bifhops to darknefs, but licenfing thofe against puritans to be uttered openly, though with the greater mischief of leading into contempt the exercise of religion in the perfons of fundry preachers, and difgracing the higher matter in the meaner person.

Remonft. A point no less effential to that propofed

remonftrance.

Anfw. We know where the fhoe wrings you, you fret and are galled at the quick; and O what a death it is to the prelates to be thus unvifarded, thus uncafed, to have the periwigs plucked off that cover your baldnefs, your infide nakedness thrown open to public view! The Romans had a time once every year, when their flaves 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 monkifh prohibitions, and expurgatorious indexes, your gags and fnaffles, your proud Imprimaturs not to be obtained without the fhallow furview, but not fhallow hand of fome mercenary, narrow-fouled, and illiterate chaplain ; when liberty of speaking, than which nothing is more sweet to man, was girded and ftrait-laced almost to a broken-winded phthific, if now at a good time, our time of parliament, the very jubilee and refurrection of the ftate, if now the concealed, the aggrieved, and long perfecuted truth, could not be fuffered to fpeak; and though fhe burst out with fome efficacy of words, could not be excufed

excufed after fuch an injurious ftrangle of filence, nor avoid the cenfure of libelling, it were hard, it were fomething pinching in a kingdom of free fpirits. Some princes, and great statifts, have thought it a prime piece of neceflary policy, to thrust themselves under difguife into a popular throng, to ftand the night long under eaves of houfes, and low windows, that they might hear every where the utterances of private breafts, and amongst them find out the precious gem of truth, as amongst the numberless pebbles of the fhore; whereby they might be the abler to difcover, and avoid, that deceitful and clofe-couched evil of flattery that ever attends them, and misleads them, and might fkilfully know how to apply the several redreffes to each malady of ftate, without trufiing the difloyal information of parafites and fycophants: whereas now this permiffion of free writing, were there no good elfe in it, yet at fome times thus licensed, is such an unripping, fuch an anatomy of the fhyeft and tendereft particular truths, as makes not only the whole nation in many points the wifer, but also prefents and carries home to princes, men moft remote from vulgar concourse, fuch a full infight of every lurking evil, or reftrained good among the commons, as that they fhall not need hereafter, in old cloaks and false beards, to ftand to the courtefy of a night-walking cudgeller for eaves-dropping, nor to accept quietly as a perfume, the overhead emptying of fome falt lotion. Who could be angry, therefore, but those that are guilty, with thefe freefpoken and plain-hearted men that are the eyes of their country, and the profpective-glaffes of their prince? But thefe are the nettlers, thefe are the blabbing books that tell, though not half your fellows feats. You love toothless fatires; let me inform you, a toothless fatire is as improper as a toothed fleek-ftone, and as bullish.

Remonft. I beseech you, brethren, spend your logic upon your own works.

Anfw. The peremptory analysis that you call it, I believe will be fo hardy as once more to unpin your fpruce faftidious oratory, to rumple her laces, her frizzles, and her bobbins, though the wince and fling never fo peevishly.

Remonft.

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

Anfw. O rare fubtlety, beyond all that Cardan ever dreamed of! when, I befecch 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 please, whose divinity would reconcile England with Rome, and his philofophy make friends nature with the chaos, fine pondere habentia pondus.

Remonft. That fcum 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 these men do not endeavour to caft unjuft 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 impofers; these gracious interpreters would needs draw my words to the present and particular government of our monarchy.

Anfw. And deservedly 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? Bishop Downam in his dialectics will tell you it is a general axiom, though the univerfal particle be not expreffed, and you yourself in your defence fo explain in thefe words as in general notion. is juftly inferred, he that fays civil polity is arbitrary, fays 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.

Hence

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

Answ. 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.

Anfw.

Anfw. I never found that logical maxims were uncharitable before; yet fhould a jury of logicians pass 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 difcover: 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 ranfom.

Remonft. And what fays Antichrift?

Anfw. Afk your brethren the prelates, that hold intelligence with him, ask 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 againft epifcopacy.

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 againft 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,

« PreviousContinue »