dient, but in the idolatrous erection of temples beautified exquifitely to outvie the papifts, the coftly and dearbought fcandals and fnares of images, pictures, rich copes, gor geous altarcloths: and by the courfes they took, and the opinions they held, it was not likely any ftay would be, or any end of their madness, where a pious pretext is fo ready at hand to cover their infatiate defires. What can we suppose this will come to? What other materials than thefe have built up the spiritual Babel to the height of her abominations? Believe it, fir, right truly it may be faid, that Antichrift is Mammon's fon. The four leaven of human traditions, mixed in one putrefied mafs with the poifonous dregs of hypocrify in the hearts of prelates, that lie basking in the funny warmth of wealth and promotion, is the ferpent's egg that will hatch an Antichrift wherefoever, and engender the fame monfter as big, or little, as the lump is which breeds him. If the fplendour of gold and filver begin to lord it once again in the church of England, we fhall fee Antichrift fhortly wallow here, though his chief kennel be at Rome. If they had one thought upon God's glory, and the advancement of Chriftian faith, they would be a means that with thefe expenfes, thus profufely thrown away in trafh, rather churches and fchools might be built, where they cry out for want, and more added where too few are; a moderate maintenance diftributed to every painful minifter, that now fcarce fuftains his family with bread, while the prelates revel like Belshazzar with their full caroufes in goblets, and veffels of gold fnatched from God's temple; which (I hope) the worthy men of our land will confider. Now then for their courts... What a mass of money is drawn from the veins into the ulcers of the kingdom this way; their extortions, their open corruptions, the multitude of hungry and ravenous harpies that fwarm about their offices, declare fufficiently. And what though all this go not over fea? It were better it did better a penurious kingdom, than where exceffive wealth flows into the graceless and injurious hands of common sponges, to the impoverishing of good and loyal men, and that by fuch execrable, fuch irreligious courfes.

If the facred and dreadful works of holy difcipline, cenfure,

cenfure, penance, excommunication, and abfolution, where no prophane thing ought to have access, nothing to be affiftant but fage and chriftianly admonition, brotherly love, flaming charity and zeal; and then according to the effects, paternal forrow, or paternal joy, mild severity, melting compaffion; if fuch divine ministeries as thefe, wherein the angel of the church represents the perfon of Christ Jefus, muft lie proftitute to fordid fees and not pass to and fro between our Saviour that of free grace redeemed us, and the fubmiffive penitent without the truckage of perishing coin, and the butcherly execution of tormentors, rooks, and rakeshames fold to lucre; then have the Babylonish merchants of fouls just excuse. Hitherto, fir, you have heard how the prelates have weakened and withdrawn the external accomplishments of kingly profperity, the love of the people, their multitude, their valour, their wealth; mining and fapping the outworks and redoubts of monarchy. Now hear how they ftrike at the very heart and vitals.

We know that monarchy is made up of two parts, the liberty of the fubject, and the fupremacy of the king. I begin at the root. See what gentle and benign fathers they have been to our liberty! Their trade being by the fame alchymy that the pope uses, to extract heaps of gold and filver out of the droffy bullion of the people's fins; and juftly fearing that the quick fighted proteftant's eye cleared in great part from the mift of fuperftition, may at one time or other look with a good judgment into thefe their deceitful pedleries; to gain as many affociates of guiltinefs as they can, and to infect the temporal magiftrate with the like lawless, though not facrilegious extortion, fee awhile what they do; they engage themfelves to preach, and perfuade an affertion for truth the most falfe, and to this monarchy the moft pernicious and deftructive that could be chofen. What more baneful to monarchy than a popular commotion, for the diffolution of monarchy flides apteft into a democracy; and what ftirs the Englishmen, as our wifeft writers have obferved, fooner to rebellion, than violent and heavy hands upon their goods and purfes? Yet these devout prelates, spight of our great charter, and the fouls of our progenitors that

wrefted

wrefted their liberties out of the Norman gripe with their deareft blood and highest prowefs, for these many years have not ceased in their pulpits wrenching and fpraining the text, to fet at naught and trample under foot all the moft facred and lifeblood laws, ftatutes, and acts of parliament, that are the holy covenant of union and marriage between the king and his realm, by profcribing and confifcating from us all the right we have to our own bodies, goods, and liberties. What is this but to blow a trumpet, and proclaim a firecrofs to an hereditary and perpetual civil war? Thus much against the subjects liberty hath been affaulted by them. Now how they have fpared fupremacy, or are likely hereafter to fubmit to it, remains laftly to be confidered.

The emulation that under the old law was in the king towards the priest, is now fo come about in the gofpel, that all the danger is to be feared from the priest to the king. Whilft the priest's office in the law was fet out with an exterior luftre of pomp and glory, kings were ambitious to be priests; now priefts, not perceiving the heavenly brightness and inward fplendour of their more glorious evangelic miniftry, with as great ambition affect to be kings, as in all their courfes is eafy to be obferved. Their eyes ever eminent upon worldly matters, their defires ever thirsting after worldly employments, inftead of diligent and fervent study in the Bible, they covet to be expert in canons and decretals, which may enable them to judge and interpofe in temporal caufes, however pretended ecclefiaftical. Do they not hoard up pelf, feek to be potent in fecular ftrength, in ftate affairs, in lands, lordships, and demains, to fway and carry all before them in high courts and privy councils, to bring into their grafp the high and principal offices of thekingdom? Have they not been bold of late to check the common law, to flight and brave the indiminishable majefty of our higheft court, the lawgiving and facred parliament? Do they not plainly labour to exempt churchmen from the magiftrate? Yea, fo prefumptuously as to queftion and menace officers that reprefent the king's perfon for ufing their authority against drunken priefts? The caufe of protecting murderous clergymen was the firft heartburn

ing

ing that fwelled up the audacious Becket to the peftilent and odious vexation of Henry the Second. Nay more, have not fome of their devoted fcholars begun, I need not fay to nibble, but openly to argue againft the king's fu. premacy? Is not the chief of them accufed out of his own book, and his late canons, to affect a certain unquestionable patriarchate, independent, and unfubordinate to the crown? From whence having firft brought us to a fervile ftate of religion and manhood, and having predif pofed his conditions with the pope, that lays claim to this land, or fome Pepin of his own creating, it were all as likely for him to afpire to the monarchy among us, as that the pope could find means fo on the fudden both to bereave the emperor of the Roman territory with the favour of Italy, and by an unexpected friend out of France, while he was in danger to lofe his newgot purchase, beyond hope to leap into the fair exarchate of Ravenna.

3

A good while the pope fubtly acted the lamb, writing to the emperor " my lord Tiberius, my lord Mauritius;" but no fooner did this his lord pluck at the images and idols, but he threw off his fheep's clothing, and started up a wolf, laying his paws upon the emperor's right, as forfeited to Peter. Why may not we as well, having been forewarned at home by our renowned Chaucer, and from abroad by the great and learned Padre Paolo, from the like beginnings, as we fee they are, fear the like events? Certainly a wife and provident king ought to fufpect a hierarchy in his realm, being ever attended, as it is, with two fuch greedy purveyors, ambition and ufurpation; I fay, he ought to fufpect a hierarchy to be as dangerous and derogatory from his crown as a tetrarchy or a heptarchy. Yet now that the prelates had almoft attained to what their infolent and unbridled minds had hurried them; to thrust the laity under the defpotical rule of the monarch, that they themfelves might confine the monarch to a kind of pupillage under their hierarchy, obferve but how their own principles combat one another, and supplant each one his fellow.

Having fitted us only for peace, and that a fervile peace, by leffening our numbers, draining our eftates,

enfee

enfeebling our bodies, cowing our free fpirits by those ways as you have heard, their impotent actions cannot fuftain themselves the leaft moment, unless they would rouse us up to a war fit for Cain to be the leader of; an abhorred, a curfed, a fraternal war. England and Scotland, dearest brothers both in nature and in Chrift, muft be fet to wade in one another's blood; and Ireland, our free Denizen, upon the back of us both, as occafion fhould ferve a piece of fervice that the pope and all his factors have been compaffing to do ever fince the Refor

mation.

But ever bleffed be he, and ever glorified, that from his high watchtower in the heavens, difcerning the crooked ways of perverfe and cruel men, hath hitherto maimed and infatuated all their damnable inventions, and deluded their great wizards with a delufion fit for fools and children; had God been fo minded, he could have sent a spirit of mutiny amongst us, as he did between Abimelech and the Sechemites, to have made our funerals, and flain heaps more in number than the miserable furviving remnant; but he, when we leaft deserved, fent out a gentle gale and meffage of peace from the wings of thofe his cherubims that fan his mercy feat. Nor fhall the wisdom, the moderation, the Chriftian piety, the conftancy of our nobility and commons of England, be ever forgotten, whole calm and temperate connivance could fit ftill and fimile out the ftormy blufter of men more audacious and precipitant than of folid and deep reach, until their own fury had run itself out of breath, affailing by rafh and heady approaches the impregnable fituation of our liberty and fafety, that laughed fuch weak enginery to fcorn, fuch poor drifts to make a national war of a furplice brabble, a tippet fcuffle, and engage the untainted honour of English knighthood to unfurl the ftreaming red cross, or to rear the horrid standard of those fatal guly dragons for fo unworthy a purpose, as to force upon their fellow fubjects that which themfelves are weary of, the skeleton of a mafs-book. Nor muft the patience, the fortitude, the firm obedience of the nobles and people of Scotland, ftriving against manifold provocations; nor muft their fincere and moderate proceedings hitherto be

unremem