sire to win proselytes by conforming to them unlawfully like the desire of Tamar, who, to raise up seed to her hus band, sate in the common road drest like a courtezan, and he that came to her committed incest with her. This was that which made the old Christians paganize, while by their scandalous and base conforming to heathenism they did no more, whe. they had done their utmost, but bring some pagans to Christianize; for true Christians they neither were themselves, nor could make other such in this fashion.

Remonst. If there be found aught in liturgy that may endanger a scandal, it is under careful hands to remove it.

Answ. Such careful hands as have shewn themselves sooner bent to remove and expel the men from the scandals, than the scandals from the men; and to lose a soul rather than a syllable or a surplice.

Remonst. It is idolized, they say, in England, they mean at Amsterdam.

Answ. Be it idolized therefore where it will, it is only idolatrized in England.

Remonst. Multitudes of people they say distaste it; more shame for those that have so mistaught them.

Answ. More shame for those that regard not the troubling God's church with things by themselves confessed to be indifferent, since true charity is afflicted, and burns at the offence of every little one. As for the Christian multitude, which you affirm to be so mistaught, it is evident enough, though you would declaim never so long to the contrary, that God hath now taught them to detest your liturgy and prelacy; God who hath promised to teach all his children, and to deliver them out of your hands that hunt and worry their souls: hence is it that a man shall commonly find more savoury knowledge in one layman, than in a dozen of cathedral prelates; as we read in our Saviour's time that the common people had a reverend esteem of him, and held him a great prophet, whilst the gowned rabbies, the incomparable and invincible doctors, were of opinion that he was a friend of Beelzebub.

Remonst. If the multitude distaste wholesome doctrine, shall we, to humour them, abandon it'

Answ. Yet again! as if there were like necessity of saving doctrine, and arbitrary, if not unlawful, or inconvenient li

turgy: who would have thought a man could have thwacked together so many incongruous similitudes, had it not been to defend the motley incoherence of a patched missal?

Remonst. Why did not other churches conform to us? may boldly say ours was, and is, the more noble church.

I

Answ. O Laodicean, how vainly and how carnally dost thou boast of nobleness and precedency! more lordly you have made our church indeed, but not more noble.

Remonst. The second quære is so weak, that I wonder it could fall from the pens of wise men.

Answ. You are but a bad fencer, for you never make a proffer against another man's weakness, but you leave your own side always open: mark what follows.

Remonst. Brethren, can ye think that our reformers had any other intentions than all the other founders of liturgies, the least part of whose care was the help of the minister's weakness?

Answ. Do you not perceive the noose you have brought yourself into, whilst you were so brief to taunt other men with weakness? Is it clean out of your mind what you cited from among the councils; that the principal scope of those liturgy-founders was to prevent either the malice or the weakness of the ministers; their malice, of infusing heresy in their forms of prayer; their weakness, lest something might be composed by them through ignorance or want of care contrary to the faith? Is it not now rather to be wondered, that such a weakness could fall from the pen of such a wise remonstrant man?

Remonst. Their main drift was the help of the people's devotion, that they knowing before the matter that should be sued for,

Answ. A solicitous care, as if the people could be ignorant of the matter to be prayed for, seeing the heads of public prayer are either ever constant, or very frequently the same. Remonst. And the words wherewith it should be clothed, might be the more prepared, and be so much the more intent and less distracted.

Answ. As for the words, it is more to be feared lest the same continually should make them careless or sleepy, than that variety on the same known subject should distract; variety (as both music and rhetoric teacheth us) erects and

rouses an auditory, like the masterful running over many chords and divisions; whereas if men should ever be thumbing the drone of one plain song, it would be a dull opiate to the most wakeful attention.

Remonst. Tell me, is this liturgy good or evil?

Answ. It is evil. Repair the acheloian horn of your dilemma how you can against the next push.

Remonst. If it be evil, it is unlawful to be used.

Answ. We grant you; and we find you have not your salve about you.

Remonst. Were the imposition amiss, what is that to the people?

Answ. Not a little; because they bear an equal part with the priest in many places, and have their cues and verses as well as he.

Remonst. The ears and hearts of our people look for a settled liturgy.

Answ. You deceive yourself in their ears and hearts; they look for no such matter.

Remonst. The like answer serves for homilies; surely, they were enjoined to all, &c.

Answ. Let it serve for them that will be ignorant; we know that Hayward their own creature writes, that for defect of preachers, homilies were appointed to be read in churches while Edward VI. reigned.

Remonst. Away then with the book, whilst it may be supplied with a more profitable nonsense.

Answ. Away with it rather, because it will be hardly supplied with a more unprofitable nonsense, than is in some passages of it to be seen.

SECTION III.

REMONST. Thus their cavils concerning liturgy are vanished.

Answ. You wanted but hey pass, to have made your transition like a mystical man of Sturbridge. But for all your sleight of hand, our just exceptions against liturgy are not vanished, they stare you still in the face.

Remonst. Certainly had I done so, I had been no less

worthy to be spitten upon for my saucy uncharitableness, than they are now for their uncharitable falsehood.

Answ. We see you are in a choler, therefore till you cool awhile we turn us to the ingenuous reader. See how this Remonstrant would invest himself conditionally with all the rheum of the town, that he might have sufficient to bespaul his brethren. They are accused by him of uncharitable falsehood, whereas their only crime hath been, that they have too credulously thought him, if not an over-logical, yet a well-meaning man; but now we find him either grossly deficient in his principles of logic, or else purposely bent to delude the parliament with equivocal sophistry, scattering among his periods ambiguous words, whose interpretation he will afterwards dispense according to his pleasure, laying before us universal propositions, and then thinks when he will to pinion them with a limitation: for say, Remonstrant, Remonst. Episcopal government is cried down abroad by either weak or factious persons.

Answ. Choose you whether you will have his proposition proved to you to be ridiculous or sophistical; for one of the two it must be. Step again to bishop Downam, your patron, and let him gently catechise you in the grounds of logic; he will shew you that this axiom, "episcopal government is cried down abroad by either weak or factious persons," is as much as to say, they that cry down episcopacy abroad, are either weak or factious persons. He will tell you that this axiom contains a distribution, and that all such axioms are general; and lastly, that the distribution in which any part is wanting, or abundant, is faulty, and fallacious. If therefore distributing by the adjuncts of faction and weakness, the persons that decry episcopacy, and you made your distribution imperfect for the nonce, you cannot be guilty of fraud intended toward the honourable court to whom you wrote. If you had rather vindicate your honesty, and suffer in your want of art, you cannot condemn them of uncharitable falsehood, that attributed to you more skill than you had, thinking you had been able to have made a distribution, as it ought to be, general and full; and so any man would take it, the rather as being accompanied with that large word, (abroad,) and so take again either your manifest leasing, or manifest ignorance.

Remonst. Now come these brotherly slanderers.

Answ. Go on, dissembling Joab, as still your use is, call brother and sinite; call brother and smite, till it be said of you, as the like was of Herod, a man had better be your hog than your brother.

Remonst. Which never came within the verge of my thoughts.

Answ. Take a metaphor or two more as good-the precinct, or the diocese of your thoughts.

Remonst. Brethren, if you have any remainders of modesty or truth, cry God mercy.

Answ. Remonstrant, if you have no groundwork of logic, or plain dealing in you, learn both as fast as you can.

Remonst. Of the same strain is their witty descant of my confoundedness.

Answ. Speak no more of it: it was a fatal word that God put into your mouth when you began to speak for episcopacy, as boding confusion to it.

Remonst. I am still, and shall ever be thus self-confounded, as confidently to say, that he is no peaceable and right-affected son of the church of England, that doth not wish well to liturgy and episcopacy.

Answ. If this be not that saucy uncharitableness, with which, in the foregoing page, you voluntarily invested yourself, with thought to have shifted it off, let the parliament judge, who now themselves are deliberating whether liturgy and episcopacy be to be well wished to or no.

Remonst. This they say they cannot but rank amongst my notorious speak out, masters; I would not have that word stick in your teeth or in your throat.

Answ. Take your spectacles, sir, it sticks in the paper, and was a pectoral roule we prepared for you to swallow down to your heart.

Remonst. Wanton wits must have leave to play with their

own stern.

Answ. A meditation of yours doubtless observed at Lambeth from one of the archiepiscopal kittens.

Remonst. As for that form of episcopal government, surely could those look with my eyes, they would see cause to be ashamed of this their injurious misconceit.

Answ. We must call the barber for this wise seance; one