of a cruel disgospelling jurifdiction; who ingross many pluralities under a nonrefident and flubbering dispatch of fouls; 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 deareft treasure, and fending herds of fouls starveling to Hell, while they feast and riot upon the labours of hireling curates, confuming 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 fin of facrilege, from which mortal engagement we shall never be free, till we have totally removed with one labour, as one individual thing, prelaty and facrilege. And herein will the king be a true defender of the faith, not by paring or leffening, but by diftributing 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 ufurpation 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 fure marks of those false prophets which are to come; then boldly conclude these to be as great feducers 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 foundness of reason, or what force of argument foever will bring them to an ingenuous filence, ye think that which will never be. But if ye take that course which Erasmus was wont

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to say Luther took against the pope and monks; if ye denounce war against their mitres and their bellies, ye shall foon difcern that turban of pride, which they wear upon their heads, to be no helmet of salvation, but the mere metal and hornwork of papal jurifdiction; and that they have also this gift, like a certain kind of fome that are poffefsed, to have their voice in their bellies, which, being well drained and taken down, their great oracle, which is only there, will foon be dumb; and the divine right of epifcopacy, forthwith expiring, will put us no more to trouble with tedious antiquities and difputes.

OF OF

EDUCATION.

TO

MASTER SAMUEL HARTLIB.

MASTER HARTLIB,

I AM long fince perfuaded, that to say or do aught worth memory and imitation, no purpose or respect should fooner move us than fimply 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 purfuance of fome other affertions, 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 fee 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 occafion 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 fome 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 fway of nature, which also is God's working. VOL. I.

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Neither can I think that so reputed and so valued as you are, you would to the forfeit of your own difcerning ability, impose upon me an unfit and overponderous argument; but that the fatisfaction, which you profess to have received from those incidental discourses which we have wandered into, hath pressed and almost constrained you into a perfuafion, 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 fo 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 fet down in writing, as you request me, that voluntary idea, which hath long in filence presented itself to me, of a better education, in extent and comprehenfion 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 fooner 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 fearch of religious and civil knowledge, and fuch 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 poffeffing our fouls 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 fenfible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, the fame method is neceffarily to be followed in all difcreet teaching. And feeing 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 wifdom; fo 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 folid 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 wife in his mother dialect only. Hence appear the many mistakes which have made learning generally so unpleafing and so unsuccessful; first, we do amiss to spend seven

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eight years merely in scraping together so much miferable Latin and Greek, as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year. And that which cafts our proficiency therein so much behind, is our time loft partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and universities; partly in a prepofterous 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; befides the ill habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom, with their untutored Anglicifms, odious to be read, yet not to be avoided without a well continued and judicious converfing among pure authors digefted, 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 account to God of our youth spent herein. And for the usual method of teaching arts, I deem it to be an old errour of universities, not yet well recovered from

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