Anfw. I cannot blame them, they were not only eminent but fupereminent divines, and for ftomach much like to Pompey the great, that could endure no equal.

Remonft. The Babylonian note founds well in your ears, "Down with it, down with it, even to the ground." Anfw. You mistake the matter, it was the Edomitish note; but change it, and if you be an angel, cry with the angel," It is fallen, it is fallen."

Remonft. But the God of Heaven will, we hope, vindicate his own ordinance fo long perpetuated to his church.

Antw. Go rather to your god of this world, and fee if he can vindicate your lordships, your temporal and fpiritual tyrannies, and all your pelf; for the God of Heaven is already come down to vindicate his ordinance' from your fo long perpetuated ufurpation.

Remonft. If yet you can blufh.

Anfw. This is a more Edomitifh conceit than the former, and must be filenced with a counter quip of the fame country. So often and fo unfavourily has it been repeated, that the reader may well cry, Down with it, down with it, for fhame. A man would think you had eaten overliberally of Efau's red porridge, and from thence dream continually of blufhing; or perhaps, to heighten your fancy in writing, are wont to fit in your doctor's fcarlet, which through your eyes infecting your pregnant imaginative with a red fuffufion, begets a continual thought of blufhing: that you thus perfecute ingenuous men over all your book, with this one overtired rubrical conceit ftill of blufhing; but if you have no mercy upon them, yet fpare yourfelf, left you bejade the good galloway, your own opiniatre wit, and make the very conceit itfelt blush with purgalling.

Remonft. The fcandals of our inferiour minifters I defired to have had lefs public.

Anfw. And what your fuperiour archbishop or bifhops? O forbid to have it told in Gath! fay you. O dauber! and therefore remove not impieties from Ifrael. Constantine might have done more juftly to have punished those clergieal faults which he could not conceal, than to leave them unpunished, that they might remain concealed:

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concealed: better had it been for him, that the heathen had heard the fame of his juftice, than of his wilful connivance and partiality; and fo the name of God and his truth had been lefs blafphemed among his enemies, and the clergy amended, which daily, by this impunity, grew worfe and worse. But, O to publish in the streets of Afcalon! fure fome colony of puritans have taken Afcalon from the Turk lately, that the Remonftrant is fo afraid of Afcalon. The papifts we know condole you, and neither Conftantinople nor your neighbours of Morocco trouble you. What other Afcalon can you allude to?

Remonft. What a death it is to think of the sport and advantage these watchful enemies, these oppofite fpectators, will be fure to make of our fin and flame?

Anfw. This is but to fling and struggle under the inevitable net of God, that now begins to environ you round.

Remonft. No one clergy in the whole chriftian world yields fo many eminent scholars, learned preachers, grave, holy, and accomplished divines, as this church of England doth at this day.

Anfw. Ha, ha, ha!

Remonft. And long, and ever may it thus flourish. Anfw. O peftilent imprecation! flourish as it does at this day in the prelates?

Remonft. But O forbid to have it told in Gath!

Anfw. Forbid him rather, facred parliament, to violate the fenfe of fcripture, and turn that which is spoken of the afflictions of the church under her pagan enemies, to a pargetted concealment of thofe prelatical crying fins: for from thefe is prophaneness gone forth into all the land; they have hid their eyes from the fabbaths of the Lord; they have fed themselves, and not their flocks; with force and cruelty have they ruled over God's people: they have fed his fheep (contrary to that which St. Peter writes) not of a ready mind, but for filthy lucre; not as examples to the flock, but as being lords over God's heritage: and yet this, dauber would daub ftill with his untempered mortar. But hearken what God fays by the prophet Ezekiel," Say unto them that daub

this wall with untempered mortar, that it fhall fall; there fhall be an overflowing fhower, and ye, O great hailftones, fhall fall, and a ftormy wind fhall rend it, and I will lay unto you, the wall is no more, neither they that daubed it."

Remonft. Whether of us fhall give a better account of our charity to the God of peace, I appeal.

Anfw. Your charity is much to your fellow-offenders, but nothing to the numberless fouls that have been loft by their falfe feeding: ufe not therefore fo fillily the name of charity, as most commonly you do, and the peaceful attribute of God to a prepofterous end.

Remonft. In the next fection, like illbred fons, you spit in the face of your mother the church of England.

Anfw. What should we do or fay to this Remonftrant, that by his idle and fhallow reafonings, feems to have been converfant in no divinity, but that which is colourable to uphold bishoprics? we acknowledge, and believe, the catholic reformed church; and if any man be difpofed to use a trope or figure, as St. Paul did in calling her the common mother of us all, let him do as his own rhetoric fhall perfuade him If therefore we must needs have a mother, and if the catholic church only be, and must be she, let all genealogy tell us, if it can, what we muft call the church of England, unlets we shall make every english proteftant a kind of poetical Bacchus, to have two mothers: but mark, readers, the crafty scope of these prelates; they endeavour to imprefs deeply into weak and fuperftitious fancies, the awful notion of a mother, that hereby they might cheat them into a blind and implicit obedience to whatfoever they fhall decree or think fit. And if we come to ask a reason of aught from our dear mother, the is invifible, under the lock and key of the prelates her spiritual adulterers; they only are the internuncios, or the gobetweens, of this trim devised mummery: whatfoever they fay, fhe fays muft be a deadly fin of difobedience not to believe. So that we, who by God's fpecial grace have fhaken off the fervitude of a great male tyrant, our pretended father the pope, fhould now, if we be not betimes aware of these

wily teachers, fink under the flavery of a female notion, the cloudy conception of a demy-ifland mother; and, while we think to be obedient fons, fhould make ourfelves rather the baftards, or the centaurs of their fpiritual fornications.

Remonft. Take heed of the ravens of the valley.

Anfw. The ravens we are to take heed of are yourfelves, that would peck out the eyes of all knowing christians.

Remonft. Sit you merry, brethren.

Anfw. So we shall when the furies of prelatical confciences will not give them leave to do fo.

Queries. Whether they would not jeopard their cars rather, &c.

Anfw. A punishment that awaits the merits of your bold accomplices, for the lopping, and ftigmatizing of fo many freeborn christians.

Remonft. Whether the profeffed flovenlinefs in God's fervice, &c.

Anfw. We have heard of Aaron and his linen amice, but those days are paft; and for your priest under the gofpel, that thinks himself the purer or the cleanlier in his office for his newwashed furplice, we esteem him for fanctity little better than Apollonius Thyanæus in his white frock, or the priest of Ifis in his lawn fleeves; and they may all for holiness lie together in the fuds.

Remonft. Whether it were not most lawful and just to punish your presumption and disobedience.

Anfw. The punishing of that which you call our prefumption and difobedience, lies not now within the execution of your fangs; the merciful God above, and our juft parliament will deliver us from your Ephefian beafts, your cruel Nimrods, with whom we fhall be ever fearlefs to encounter.

Remonft. God give you wisdom to see the truth, and grace to follow it."

Anfw. I wish the like to all thofe that refift not the Holy Ghoft; for of fuch God commands Jeremiah, faying, "Pray not thou for them, neither lift up cry or prayer for them, neither make interceffion to me, for I will not

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hear thee;" and of fuch St John faith, "He that bids them God fpeed, is partaker of their evil deeds.'

TO THE POSTCRIPT.

Remonft. A goodly pafquin borrowed for a great part out of Sion's plea, or the breviate confifting of a rhapfody of hiftories.

Anfw. How wittily you tell us what your wonted courfe is upon the like occafion: the collection was taken, be it known to you, from as authentic authors in this kind, as any in a bishop's library; and the collector of it fays moreover, that if the like occafion come again, he fhall lets need the help of breviates, or hiftorical rhapsodies, than your reverence to eke out your fermonings fhall need repair to poftils or poliantheas.

Remonft. They were bifhops, you fay, true, but they were popish bishops.

Antw. Since you would bind us to your jurifdiction by their canon law, fince you would enforce upon us the old riffraff of Sarum, and other monaftical reliques; fince you live upon their unjust purchases, al allege their · authorities, boast of their fucceffion, walk in their steps, their pride, their titles, their covetoufnefs, their perfecuting of God's people; fince you difclaim their actions, and build their fepulchres, it is most just that all their faults should be imputed to you, and their iniquities vifited upon you.

Remonft. Could you fee no colleges, no hofpitals built?

Anfw. At that primero of piety, the pope and cardinals are the better gamefters, and will cog a die into Heaven before you.

Remonft. No churches reedified?

Anfw. Yes, more churches than fouls.

Remonft. No learned volumes writ?

Anfw. So did the mifcreant bishop of Spalato write learned volumes againft the pope, and run to Rome when he had done: ye write them in your clofets, and unwrite them in your courts; hot volumifts and cold bifhops; a fwashbuckler against the pope, and a dormouse against the devil, while the whole diocefe be fown