gence, to seek for wisdom as for hidd'n treasures early and late, that another order fhall enjoyn us to know nothing but by ftatute. When a man hath bin labouring the hardeft labour in the deep mines of knowledge, hath furnisht out his findings in all their equipage, drawn forth his reafons as it were a battell raung'd, fcatter'd and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his adverfary into the plain, offers him the advantage of wind and fun, if he please; only that he may try the matter by dint of argument, for his opponents then to fculk, to lay ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge of licencing where the challenger fhould paffe, though it be valour anough in fouldierfhip, is but

weaknes and cowardife in the wars of Truth. For who knows not that Truth is ftrong next to the Almighty? fhe needs no policies, nor ftratagems, nor licencings, to make her victorious, thofe are the fhifts and defences that error ufes against her power give her but room, & do not bind her when the fleeps, for then the fpeaks not true, as the old Proteus did, who fpake oracles only when he was caught & bound, but then rather fhe turns herself into all fhapes, except her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time, as Micaiah did before Ahab, untill fhe be adjur'd into her own likenes. Yet is it not impoffible that he may have more fhapes than one. What elfe is all that rank of

things indifferent, wherein Truth may be on this fide, or on the other, without being unlike her felf? What but a vain fhadow elfe is the abolition of thoje ordinances, that hand-writing nayl'd to the croffe? what great purchafe is this Chrif tian liberty which Paul so often boafts of? His doctrine is, that he who eats or eats not, regards a day, or regards it not, may doe either to the LORD. How many other things might be tolerared in peace, and left to confcience, had we but charity, and were it not the chief strong hold of our hypocrifie to be ever judging one another. I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a flavifh print upon our necks; the ghoft of a linnen decency yet haunts us. We ftumble

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ftumble and are impatient at the leaft dividing of one vifible congregation from another, though it be not in fundamentalis; and through our forwardnes to fuppreffe, and our backwardnes to recover any enthrall'd peece of truth out of the gripe of cuftom, we care not to keep truth feparated from truth, which is the fierceft rent and difunion of all. We doe not fee that while we ftill affect by all means a rigid externall formality, we may as foon fall into a groffe conforming ftupidity, a stark and dead congealment of wood and hay and Stubble forc't and frozen together, which is more to the fudden degenerating of a Church than many fubdichotomies of petty fchifms. Not that I can think well of

every light feparation, or that all in a Church is to be expected gold and filver and pretious ftones: it is not poffsible for a man to fever the wheat from the tares, the good fish from the other frie; that must be the Angels Miniftery at the end of mortall things. Yet if all cannot be of one mind, as who looks they should be? this doubtles is more wholfome, more prudent, and more Chriftian, that many be tolerated, rather then all compell'd. I mean not tolerated Popery, and open fuperftition, which as it extirpates all religions and civill fupremacies, fo it felf fhould be extirpat, provided firft that all charitable and compaffionat means be us'd to win and regain the weak and the mifled: that also which is