carry for a morsel. No; she can find such as therefore study her precepts, because she teaches to despise preferment. And let not those wretched fathers think they shall impoverish the church of willing and able supply, though they keep back their sordid sperm begotten in the lustiness of their avarice, and turn them to their malting kilns. Rather let them take heed what lessons they instil into that lump of flesh which they are the cause of, lest, thinking to offer him as a present to God, they dish him out for the devil. Let the novice learn first to renounce the world, and so give himself to God, and not therefore give himself to God, that he may close the better with the world, like that false shepherd Palinode in the eclogue of May, under whom the poet lively personates our pre lates, whose whole life is a recantation of their pastoral vow, and whose profession to forsake the world, as they use the matter, bogs them deeper into the world. Those our admired Spenser inveighs against, not without some presage of these reforming times.

The time was once and may again retorn,
For ought may happen that hath been beforn,
When shepherds had none inheritance,

Ne of land nor fee in sufferance,

But what might arise of the bare sheep,
Were it more or less, which they did keep.
Well I wis was it with shepherds tho,
Nought having, nought feared they to forego.
For Pan himself was their inheritance,
And little them served for their maintenance.
The shepherd's God so well them guided,
That of nought they were unprovided;
Butter enough, honey, milk and whey,
And their flocks' fleeces them to array.
But tract of time, and long prosperity,
That nource of vice, this of insolency,
Lulled the shepherds in such security,
That not content with loyal obeysance,
Some gan to gape for greedy governance,

And match themselves with mighty potentates,
Lovers of lordships, and troublers of states.
Tho 'gan shepherds swains to looke aloft,
And leave to live hard, and learne to lig soft.
Tho under color of shepherds, some while
There crept in wolves, full of fraud and guile,
That often devoured their own sheep,
And often the shepherd that did 'em keep.
This was the first source of shepherds' sorrow,
That now nill be quit with bale, nor borrow.

By all this we may conjecture, how little we need fear that the ungilding of our prelates, will prove the woodening of our priests. In the mean while, let no man carry in his head either such narrow, or such evil eyes, as not to look upon the churches of Belgia and Helvetia, and that envied city Geneva. Where in the christian world doth learning more flourish than in these places? Not among your beloved Jesuits, nor their favorers, though you take all the prelates into the number, and instance in what kind of learning you please. And how in England all noble sciences attending upon the train of christian doctrine may flourish more than ever, and how the able professors of every art may with ample stipends be honestly provided, and finally, how there may be better care had that their hearers may benefit by them, and all this without the prelates, the courses are so many and so easy, that I shall pass them over.

AN

APOLOGY

FOR

SMECTYMNUUS.

IF, readers, to that same great difficulty of welldoing what we certainly know, were not added in most men as great a carelessness of knowing what they and others ought to do, we had been long ere this, no doubt but all of us, much farther on our way to some degree of peace and happiness in this kingdom. But since our sinful neglect of practising that which we know to be undoubtedly true and good, hath brought forth among us, through God's just anger, so great a difficulty now to know that which otherwise might be soon learned, and hath divided us by a controversy of great importance indeed, but of no hard solution, which is the more our punishment, I resolved, of what small moment soever I might be thought, to stand on that side where I saw both the plain authority of scripture leading, and the reason of justice and equity persuading, with this opinion, which esteems it more unlike a christian to be a cold neuter in the cause of the church, than the law of Solon made it punishable after a sedition in the state.

And because I observe that fear and dull disposition, lukewarmness and sloth, are not seldomer wont to cloak themselves under the affected name of moderation, than true and lively zeal is customably disparaged with the term of indiscretion, bitterness, and choler, I could not, to my thinking, honor a good cause

more from the heart, than by defending it earnestly, as oft as I could judge it to behoove me, notwithstanding any false name that could be invented to wrong or undervalue an honest meaning. Wherein although I have not doubted to single forth more than once such of them as were thought the chief and most nominated opposers on the other side, whom no man else undertook, if I have done well either to be confident of the truth, whose force is best seen against the ablest resistance, or to be jealous and tender of the hurt that might be done among the weaker by the entrapping authority of great names titled to false opinions; or that it be lawful to attribute somewhat to gifts of God's imparting, which I boast not, but thankfully acknowledge, and fear also lest at my certain account they be reckoned to me rather many than few; or if lastly it be but justice not to defraud of due esteem the wearisome labors and studious watchings, wherein I have spent and tired out almost a whole youth, I shall not distrust to be acquitted of presumption, knowing, that if heretofore all ages have received with favor and good acceptance the early industry of him that hath been hopeful, it were but hard measure now, if the freedom of any timely spirit should be oppressed merely by the big and blunted fame of his elder adversary, and that his sufficiency must be now sentenced, not by pondering the reason he shows, but by calculating the years he brings.

However, as my purpose is not, nor hath been formerly, to look on my adversary abroad, through the deceiving glass of other men's great opinion of him, but at home, where I may find him in the proper light of his own worth; so now against the rancor of an evil tongue, from which I never thought so absurdly as that I of all men should be exempt, I must be forced to proceed, from the unfeigned and diligent in

quiry of my own conscience at home, for better way I know not, readers, to give a more true account of myself abroad, than this modest confuter, as he calls himself, hath given of me. Albeit that in doing this, I shall be sensible of two things which to me will be nothing pleasant; the one is, that not unlikely I shall be thought too much a party in mine own cause, and therein to see least; the other, that I shall be put unwillingly to molest the public view with the vindication of a private name; as if it were worth the while that the people should care whether such a one were thus, or thus. Yet those I entreat who have found the leisure to read that name, however of small repute, unworthily defamed, would be so good and so patient as to hear the same person not unneedfully defended.

I will not deny but that the best apology against false accusers is silence and sufferance, and honest deeds set against dishonest words; and that I could at this time most easily and securely, with the least loss of reputation, use no other defence, I need not despair to win belief; whether I consider both the foolish contriving and ridiculous aiming of these his slanderous bolts, shot so wide of any suspicion to be fastened on me, that I have oft with inward contentment perceived my friends congratulating themselves in my innocence, and my enemies ashamed of their partners' folly; or whether I look at these present times wherein most men, now scarce permitted the liberty to think over their own concernments, have removed the seat of their thoughts more outward to the expectation of public events; or whether the examples of men, either noble or religious, who have sat down lately with a meek silence and sufferance, under many libellous endorsements, may be a rule to others, I might well appease myself to put up any