more than any fecular employment, if they will difcharge that office as they ought, fo that of neceffity they muft neglect either the one duty or the other; I infift not, because it is a particular, but leave it to their own confcience, how they will decide it there.

There is yet behind of what I purpofed to lay open, the incredible lofs and detriment that this plot of licenfing puts us to, more than if fome enemy at fea fhould flop up all our havens, and ports, and creeks; it hinders and retards the importation of our richest merchandize, truth: nay, it was firft established and put in practice by antichristian malice and mystery on fet purpose to extinguish, if it were poffible, the light of reformation, and to fettle falfehood; little differing from that policy wherewith the Turk upholds his Alcoran, by the prohibiting of printing. It is not denied, but gladly confeffed, we are to fend our thanks and vows to Heaven, louder than most of nations, for that great meafure of truth which we enjoy, especially in those main points between us and the pope, with his appurtenances the prelates: but he who thinks we are to pitch our tent here, and have attained the utmost profpect of reformation, that the mortal glafs wherein we contemplate can fhow us, till we come to beatific vifion; that man by this very opinion declares, that he is yet far fhort of truth.

Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine mafter, and was a perfect fhape moft glorious to look on but when he afcended, and his apoftles after him were laid asleep, then ftraight arofe a wicked race of deceivers, who as that ftory goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his confpirators, how they dealt with the good Ofyris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever fince, the fad friends of Truth, fuch as durfi appear, imitating the careful search that Ifis made for the mangled body of Ofiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb ftill as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, lords and commons, nor ever fhall do, till her mafter's fecond coming; he thall bring together every joint and member, and fhall mould them into an immortal feature of lovelinefs

linefs and perfection. Suffer not thefe licenfing prohibitions to ftand at every place of opportunity forbidding and disturbing them that continue feeking, that continue to do our obfequies to the torn body of our martyred faint. We boaff our light; but if we look not wifely on the fun itself, it fmites us into darknefs. Who can difcern those planets that are oft combuft, and those ftars of brightest magnitude that rife and fet with the fun, until the oppofite motion of their orbs bring them to fuch a place in the firmament, where they may be seen evening or morning? The light which we have gained, was given us, not to be ever ftaring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge. It is not the unfrocking of a prieft, the unmitring of a bishop, and the removing him from off the prefbyterian fhoulders, that will make us a happy nation; no, if other things as great in the church, and in the rule of life both economical and political be not looked into and reformed, we have looked fo long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and Calvin have beaconed up to us, that we are ftark blind. There be who perpetually complain of fchifms and fects, and make it fuch a calamity, that any man diffents from their maxims. It is their own pride and ignorance which causes the difturbing, who neither will hear with meeknefs, nor can convince, yet all must be fuppreffed which is not found in their Syntagma. They are the troublers, they are the dividers of unity, who neglect and permit not others to unite those diffevered pieces, which are yet wanting to the body of truth. To be still searching what we know not, by what we know, ftill clofing up truth to truth as we find it, (for all her body is homogeneal, and proportional) this is the golden rule in theology as well as in arithmetic, and makes up the best harmony in a church; not the forced and outward union of cold, and neutral, and inwardly divided minds.

Lords and commons of England! confider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a nation not flow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit; acute to invent, fubtile and finewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any

point the highest that human capacity can foar to. Therefore the ftudies of learning in her deepeft fciences have been fo ancient, and fo eminent among us, that writers of good antiquity and able judgment have been perfuaded, that even the school of Pythagoras, and the Perfian wisdom, took beginning from the old philofophy of this ifland. And that wife and civil Roman, Julius Agricola, who governed once here for Cæfar, preferred the natural wits of Britain, before the laboured studies of the French. Nor is it for nothing that the grave and frugal Tranfilvanian fends out yearly from as far as the mountainous borders of Ruffia, and beyond the Hercynian wilderness, not their youth, but their ftaid men, to learn our language, and our theologic arts. Yet that which is above all this, the favour and the love of Heaven, we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propending towards us. Why elfe was this nation chofen before any other, that out of her, as out of Sion, should be proclaimed and founded forth the first tidings and trumpet of reformation to all Europe? And had it not been the obftinate perverseness of our prelates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wickliff, to fupprefs him as a fchifmatic and innovator, perhaps, neither the Bohemian Huffe and Jerom, no nor the name of Luther or of Calvin, had been ever known : the glory of reforming all our neighbours had been completely ours. But now, as our obdurate clergy have with violence demeaned the matter, we are become hitherto the latest and the backwardeft scholars, of whom God offered to have made us the teachers. Now once again by all concurrence of figns, and by the general inftinct of holy and devout men, as they daily and folemnly exprefs their thoughts, God is decreeing to begin fome new and great period in his church, even to the reforming of reformation itfelf; what does he then but reveal himself to his fervants, and as his manner is, first to his Englishmen? I fay as his manner is, firft to us, though we mark not the method of his counfels, and are unworthy. Behold now this vaft city; a city of refuge, the manfion-house of liberty, encompaffed and furrounded with his protection; the fhop of war hath VOL. I.

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not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and inftruments of armed juftice in defence of beleagured truth, than there be pens and heads there, fitting by their ftudious lamps, mufing, fearching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to prefent, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation: others as faft reading, trying all things, affenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a nation fo pliant and fo prone to feek after knowledge? What wants there to fuch a towardly and pregnant foil, but wife and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of fages, and of worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to harveft; there need not be five weeks, had we but eyes to lift up, the fields are white already. Where there is much defire to learn, there of neceffity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. Under these fantastic terrours of fect and fchifm, we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and understanding, which God hath ftirred up in this city. What fome lament of, we rather fhould rejoice at, fhould rather praife this pious forwardness among men, to reaffume the ill-deputed care of their religion into their own hands again. A little generous prudence, a little forbearance of one another, and fome grain of charity might win all thefe diligencies to join and unite into one general and brotherly fearch after truth; could we but forego this prelatical tradition of crowding free confciences and chriftian liberties into canons and precepts of men. I doubt not, if fome great and worthy ftranger fhould come among us, wife to difcern the mould and temper of a people, and how to govern it, obferving the high hopes and aims, the diligent alacrity of our extended thoughts and reasonings in the pursuance of truth and freedom, but that he would cry out as Pyrrhus did, admiring the Roman docility and courage; if fuch were my Epirots, I would not defpair the greatest design that could be attempted to make a church or kingdom happy. Yet these are the men cried out against for fchifmatics and fectaries, as if, while the temple of the Lord was building,

fome

fome cutting, fome fquaring the marble, others hewing the cedars, there fhould be a fort of irrational men, who could not confider there must be many fchifms and many diffections made in the quarry and in the timber, ere the houfe of God can be built. And when every ftone is laid artfully together, it cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous in this world: neither can every piece of the building be of one form; nay rather the perfection confifts in this, that out of many moderate varieties and brotherly diffimilitudes that are not vaftly difproportional, arifes the goodly and the graceful fymmetry that commends the whole pile and ftructure. Let us therefore be more confiderate builders, more wife in spiritual architecture, when great reformation is expected. For now the time feems come, wherein Mofes the great prophet may fit in Heaven rejoicing to fee that memorable and glorious wifh of his fulfilled, when not only our feventy elders, but all the Lord's people are become prophets. No marvel then though fome men, and fome good men too perhaps, but young in goodness, as Joshua then was, envy them. They fret and out of their own weakness are in agony, left thefe divifions and fubdivifions will undo us. The adversary again applauds, and waits the hour; when they have branched themselves out, faith he, small enough into parties and partitions, then will be our time. Fool! he fees not the firm root, out of which we all grow, though into branches; nor will beware until he fee our fmall divided maniples cutting through at every angle of his ill-united and unwieldy brigade. And that we are to hope better of all these fuppofed fects and fchifms, and that we fhall not need that folicitude, honeft perhaps, though overtimorous, of them that vex in this behalf, but shall laugh in the end at those malicious applauders of our differences, I have these reasons to perfuade me.

Firft, when a city fhall be as it were befieged and blocked about, her navigable river infefted, inroads and incurfions round, defiance and battle oft rumoured to be marching up, even to her walls and fuburb trenches; that then the people, or the greater part, more than at other times, wholly taken up with the ftudy of highest Y 2

and