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S a gilded pill, compos'd of two vertuous ingredients, naturall dishonesty, and

artificiall dissimulation. Simple fruit,

plant, or drug, he is none, but a deformed mixture, bred betwixt evill nature and false art, by a monstrous generation; and may well bee put into the reckoning of those creatures that God never made. In church or commonwealth (for in both these this mongrell-weed will shoot) it is hard to say whether hee be physicke or a disease: for he is both in divers respects.

As he is gilt with an outside of seeming purity, or as he offereth himselfe to you to be taken downe in a cup or taste of golden zeale and simplicity, you may call him physicke. Nay, and never let potion give patient good stoole, if being truly tasted and relisht, he be not as lothsome to the stomake of any honest man.

He is also physicke, in being as commodious for use, as hee is odious in taste, if the body of the company into which he is taken, can make true use of him. For the malice of his nature makes him so

informer-like-dangerous, in taking advantage of any thing done or said: yea, even to the ruine of his makers, if hee may have benefit; that such a crea

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ture in a society makes men as carefull of their speeches and actions, as the sight of a knowne cutpurse in a throng makes them watchfull over their purses and pockets: hee is also in this respect profitable physicke, that his conversation being once truly tasted and discovered, the hatefull foulnes of it will make those that are not fully like him, to purge all such diseases as are ranke in him, out of their own lives; as the sight of some citizens on horseback, make a judicious man amend his owne faults in horsemanship. If none of these uses can bee made of him, let him not long offend the stomack of your company; your best way is to spue him out. That he is a discase in the body where he liveth, were as strange a thing to doubt, as whether there be knavery in horse-coursers. For if among sheep, the rot; among dogs, the mange; amongst horses, the glaunders; amongst men and women, the Northerne itch, and the French ache be diseases; an hypocrite cannot but be the like in all states and societies that breed him. If hee bee a clergy hypocrite, then all manner of vice is for the most part so proper to him, as hee will grudge any man the practice of it but himselfe; like that grave burgesse, who being desired to lend his clothes to represent a part in a comedy, answered: No by his leave, he would have no body play the foole in his clothes but himselfe. Hence are his so austere reprehensions

of drinking healths, lascivious talke, usury and unconscionable dealing; when as himself hating the prophane mixture of malt and water, will by his good wil let nothing come to him, but the purity of the grape, when he can get it of anothers cost: but this must not be done neither, without a preface of seeming lothnesse, turning up the eyes, moving the head, laying hand on the brest, and protesting that he would not do it but to strengthen his body, being even consumed with dissembled zcale, and tedious and thanklesse babbling to God and his auditors. And for the other vices, doe but venture the making your selfe private with him, or trusting of him, and if you come off without a savour of the ayre which his soule is infected with, you have great fortune. The fardle of all this ware that is in him, you shall commonly see carried upon the backe of these two beasts, that live within him, ignorance and imperiousnesse and they may well serve to carry other vices, for of themselves they are insupportable. His ignorance acquites him of all science, humane or divine, and of all language, but his mothers; holding nothing pure, holy or sincere, but the senselesse collections of his owne crazed braine, the zealous fumes of his enflamed spirit, and the endlesse labours of his eternall tongue; the motions whereof, when matter and words faile, (as they often doe) must be patched up, to accomplish his foure houres in a day

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at the least, with long and fervent hummes. Any thing else, either for language or matter, he cannot abide, but thus censureth: Latine, the language of the beast; Greeke, the tongue wherein the heathen poets wrote their fictions; Hebrew the speech of the Jewes that crucified Christ: controversies doe not edifie; logicke and philosophie, are the subtilties of Sathan to deceive the simple. Humane stories prophane, and not savouring of the spirit: in a word, all decent and sensible forme of speech and perswasion, (though in his owne tongue) vaine ostentation. And all this is the burthen of his ignorance: saving that sometimes idlenesse will put in also to beare a part of the baggage.

His other beast imperiousnes, is yet more proudly loaden, it carryeth a burthen, that no cords of authority, spirituall nor temporall, should bind, if it might have the full swinge: no pilat, no prince should command him: nay, he will command them, and at his pleasure censure them, if they will not suffer their eares to be fettered with the long chaines of his tedious collations, their purses to be emptied with the inundations of his unsatiable humour, and their judgements to be blinded with the muffler of his zealous ignorance. For this doth he familiarly insult over his maintainer that breeds him, his patron that feeds him, and in time over all them that will suffer him to set a foot within their doores, or

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put a finger in their purses. All this, and much more is in him, that abhorring degrees and Universities, as reliques of superstition, hath leapt from a shopboord, or a cloake-bag, to a deske, or pulpit, and that like a sea-god in a pageant, hath the rotten laths of his culpable life, and palpable ignorance, covered over with the painted-cloth of a pure gowne, and a night-cap; and with a false trumpet of fained zeale, draweth after him some poore nymphs and madmen, that delight more to resort to darke caves and secret places, then to open and publike assemblies. The lay-hypocrite, is to the other a champion, disciple, and subject; and will not acknowledge the tythe of the subjection to any miter; no, not to any scepter, that he will doe to the hooke and crooke of his zeale-blind shepheard. No Jesuites demand more blind and absolute obedience from their vassals, no magistrates of the canting society, more slavish subjection from the members of that travelling state, then the clerke hypocrites expect from these lay pupils. Nay, they must not only be obeyd, fed, and defended, but admired too: and that their lay-followers doe sincerely, as a shirtlesse fellow with a cudgell under his arme doth a face-wringing ballet-singer; a water-bearer on the floore of a play-house, a wide mouth'd poet, that speakes nothing but bladders and bumbast. Otherwise, for life and profession, nature and art, inward

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