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torture their heads with that which others have taken so strictly, and so unalterably into their own purveying? These are the fruits, which a dull ease and cessation of our knowledge will bring forth among the people. How goodly, and how to be wished were such an obedient unanimity as this! What a fine conformity would it starch us all into Doubtless a staunch and solid piece of framework, as any January could freeze together.

57. Nor much better will be the consequence even among the clergy themselves: it is no new thing never heard of before, for a parochial minister, who has his reward, and is at his Hercules' pillars in a warm benefice, to be easily inclinable, if he have nothing else that may rouse up his studies, to finish his circuit in an English Concordance and a topic folio, the gatherings and savings of a sober graduateship, a Harmony and a Catena, treading the constant round of certain common doctrinal heads, attended with their uses, motives, marks, and means; out of which, as out of an alphabet or sol fa, by forming and transforming, joining and disjoining variously, a little bookcraft, and two hours' meditation, might furnish him unspeakably to the performance of more than a weekly charge of sermoning: not to reckon up the infinite helps of interliniaries, breviaries, synopses, and other loitering gear. (48) But as for

(48) In a curious old book, entitled "Microcosmographie, or a Piece of the World discovered," we have the following picture of what the author terms "a young raw preacher," who, he says, "is a bird not yet fledged, that hath hopped out of his nest to be

the multitude of sermons ready printed and piled up, on every text that is not difficult, our London trading St. Thomas in his vestry, and add to boot St. Martin and St. Hugh, have not within their hallowed limits more vendible ware of all sorts ready made: so that penury he never need fear of pulpit provision, having where so plenteously to refresh his magazine. But if his rear and flanks be not impaled, if his back door be not secured by the rigid licenser, but that a bold book may now and then issue forth, and give the assault to some of his old collections in their trenches, it will concern him then to keep waking, to stand in watch, to set good guards and sentinels about his received opinions, to walk the round and counter-round with his fellow inspectors, fearing lest any of his flock

chirping on a hedge, and will be straggling abroad at what peril soever. His backwardness in the university hath set him thus forward; for had he not truanted there, he had not been so hasty a divine. His small standing and time hath made him a proficient only in boldness, out of which, and his table-book, he is furnished for a preacher. His collections of study are the notes of sermons, which, taken up at St. Mary's, he utters in the country. And if he write Brachigraphy, his stock is so much the better. His writing is more than his reading; for he reads only what he gets without book. Thus accomplished, he comes down to his friends, and his first salutation is grace and peace out of the pulpit. His prayer is conceited, and no man remembers his college more at large. The pace of his sermon is a full career, and he runs wildly over hill and dale until the clock stop him. The labours of it is chiefly in his lungs; and the only thing he has made of it himself is the faces. He takes on against the Pope without mercy, and has a jest still in lavender for Bellarmine. His action is all passion, and his speech interjections: he has an excellent faculty in bemoaning the people, and spits

be seduced, who also then would be better instructed, better exercised, and disciplined. And God send that the fear of this diligence, which must then be used, do not make us affect the laziness of a licensing church!

58. For if we be sure we are in the right, and do not hold the truth guiltily, which becomes not, if we ourselves condemn not our own weak and frivolous teaching, and the people for an untaught and irreligious gadding rout; what can be more fair, than when a man judicious, learned, and of a conscience, for aught we know, as good as theirs that taught us what we know, shall not privily from house to house, which is more dangerous, but openly by writing, publish to the world what his opinion is, what his reasons, and wherefore that

with a very good grace. He will not draw his handkerchief out of its place, nor blow his nose without discretion. His commendation is, that he never looks upon book, and indeed he was never used to it. He preaches but once a year, though twice on Sunday for the stuff is still the same, only the dressing a little altered. He has more tricks with a sermon, than a tailor with an old cloak, to turn it, and piece it, and at last quite disguise it with a new preface. If he has waded further in his profession, and would show reading of his own, his authors are postils, and his school divinity a catechism. His fashion and demure habit get him in with some town-precisian, and make him a guest on Friday nights. You shall know him by his narrow velvet cape, and serge facing, and his ruff, next his hair, the shortest thing about him. The companion of his walks is some zealous tradesman, whom he astonisheth with strange points, which they both understand alike. His friends, and much painfulness, may prefer him to thirty pounds a year; and this means, to a chambermaid: with whom we leave him now in the bonds of wedlock Next Sunday you shall have him again."

which is now thought cannot be sound? Christ urged it as wherewith to justify himself, that he preached in public; yet writing is more public than preaching; and more easy to refutation if need be, there being so many whose business and profession merely it is to be the champions of truth; which if they neglect, what can be imputed but their sloth or inability?

59. Thus much we are hindered and disinured by this course of licensing towards the true knowledge of what we seem to know. For how much it hurts and hinders the licensers themselves in the calling of their ministry, more than any secular employment, if they will discharge that office as they ought, so that of necessity they must neglect either the one duty or the other, I insist not, because it is a particular, but leave it to their own conscience, how they will decide it there.

60. There is yet behind of what I purposed to lay open, the incredible loss and detriment that this plot of licensing puts us to, more than if some enemy at sea should stop up all our havens, and ports, and creeks; it hinders and retards the importation of our richest merchandise,-truth: nay, it was first established and put in practice by antichristian malice and mystery, on set purpose to extinguish, if it were possible, the light of reformation, and to settle falsehood; little differing from that policy wherewith the Turk upholds his Alcoran, by the prohibiting of printing. (49) It is

(49) We have lived to witness a change even in the Turkish

not denied, but gladly confessed, we are to send our thanks and vows to heaven, louder than most of nations, for that great measure 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 prospect of reformation, that the mortal glass wherein we contemplate can show us, till we come to beatific vision; that man by this very opinion declares, that he is yet far short of truth.

61. Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on: but when he ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. (5o) From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth,

policy on this question. Abdoul Hamid sought to derive from the press a powerful means of civilizing his subjects; but was defeated by bigotry. Mahmood has pursued the same policy with better success; and we have ourselves beheld with pleasure this great palladium of knowledge at work within the palace of a Turkish prince. It was not merely in support of their religion, however, that the more ancient sultans prohibited the introduction of printing: "Le Grand Turc s'est bien avise de cela-que les livres et la doctrine donnent plus que toute autre chose, aux hommes, le sens de se reconnoitre, et de hair la tyrannie.”—(La Beotie, Discours sur la Servitude Volontaire.) · (50) On this curious fable, see Plutarch's Treatise on Isis and Osiris.

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