and most important matters to be reformed, fhould be difputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, difcourfing, even to a rarity and admiration, things not before dif courfed or written of, argues firft a fingular good will, contentedness and confidence in your prudent forefight, and fafe government, lords and commons; and from thence derives itself to a gallant bravery and well grounded contempt of their enemies, as if there were no fmall number of as great fpirits among us, as his was who when Rome was nigh befieged by Hannibal, being in the city, bought that piece of ground at no cheap rate, whereon Hannibal himself encamped his own regiment. Next, it is a lively and cheerful prefage of our happy fuccefs and victory. For as in a body when the blood is fresh, the fpirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and thofe in the acuteft, and the perteft operations of wit and fubtlety, it argues in what good plight and conftitution the body is; fo when the cheerfulness of the people is fo fprightly up, as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and fafety, but to spare, and to bestow upon the folideft and fublimeft points of controverfy and new invention, it betokens us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatal decay, by cafting off the old and wrinkled skin of corruption to outlive these pangs, and wax young again, entering the glorious ways of truth and profperous virtue, deftined to become great and honourable in these latter ages. Methinks I fee in my mind a noble and puiffant nation roufing herself like a ftrong man after fleep, and fhaking her invincible locks: methinks I fee her as an eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unfcaling her long abused fight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what fhe means, and in their envious gabble would prognofticate a year of fects and fchifms.

What should ye do then, fhould ye fupprefs all this flowery crop of knowledge and new light sprung up and yet fpringing daily in this city? Should ye fet an oli

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garchy of twenty engroffers over it, to bring a famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing but what is measured to us by their bufhel? Believe it, lords and commons! they who counfel ye to fuch a fuppreffing, do as good as bid ye fupprefs yourfelves; and I will foon fhow how. If it be defired to know the immediate cause of all this free writing and free fpeaking, there cannot be affigned a truer than your own mild, and free, and humane government; it is the liberty, lords and commons, which your own valorous and happy counfels have purchased us; liberty which is the nurfe of all great wits: this is that which hath rarified and enlightened our fpirits like the influence of Heaven; this is that which hath enfranchifed, enlarged, and lifted up our apprehenfions degrees above themfelves. Ye cannot make us now lefs capable, lefs knowing, lefs eagerly pursuing of the truth, unlefs ye firft make yourselves, that made us fo, lefs the lovers, lefs the founders of our true liberty. We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal, and flavish, as ye found us; but you then must firft become that which ye cannot be, oppreffive, arbitrary and tyrannous, as they were from whom ye have freed us. That our hearts are now more capacious, our thoughts more erected to the fearch and expectation of greatest and exacteft things, is the iffue of your own virtue propagated in us; ye cannot fupprefs that, unless ye reinforce an abrogated and mercilefs law, that fathers may dispatch at will their own children. And who fhall then stick clofeft to ye and excite others? Not he who takes up arms for coat and conduct, and his four nobles of Danegelt. Although I difpraise not the defence, of juft immunities, yet love my peace better, if that were all. Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to confcience, above all liberties.

What would be beft advised then, if it be found fo hurtful and fo unequal to fupprefs opinions for the newnefs or the unfuitableness to a cuftomary acceptance, will not be my task to fay; I fhall only repeat what I have learned from one of your own honourable number, a right noble and pious lord, who had he not facrificed his life and fortunes to the church and commonwealth, Y 3:

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we had not now miffed and bewailed a worthy and undoubted patron of this argument. Ye know him, I am fure; yet I for honour's fake, and may it be eternal to him, fhall name him, the lord Brook. He writing of epifcopacy, and by the way treating of fects and fchifms, left ye his vote, or rather now the laft words of his dying charge, which I know will ever be of dear and honoured regard with ye, fo full of meeknefs and breathing charity, that next to his laft teftament, who bequeathed love and peace to his difciples, I cannot call to mind where I have read or heard words more mild and peaceful. He there exhorts us to hear with patience and humility thofe, however they be mifcalled, that defire to live purely, in fuch a ufe of God's ordinances, as the beft guidance of their confcience gives them, and to tolerate them, though in fome difconformity to ourselves. The book itself will tell us more at large, being published to the world, and dedicated to the parliament by him, who both for his life and for his death deferves, that what advice he left be not laid by without perufal.

And now the time in fpecial is, by privilege to write and fpeak what may help to the further difcuffing of matters in agitation. The temple of Janus with his two controverfal faces might now not infignificantly be set open. And though all the winds of doctrine were let loofe to play upon the earth, fo truth be in the field, we do injurioufly by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her firength. Let her and falfehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and fureft fuppreffing, He who hears what praying there is for light and clear knowledge to be fent down among us, would think of other matters to be conftituted beyond the difcipline of Geneva, framed and fabricked already to our hands. Yet when the new light which we beg for fhines in upon us, there be who envy and oppose, if it come not firft in at their cafements. What a collufion is this, whenas we are exhorted by the wife man to ufe diligence, "to feek for wifdom as for hidden treasures" early and late, that another order fhall enjoin us, to know nothing but by ftatute? When a man hath been labouring the hardeft

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labour in the deep mines of knowledge, hath furnished out his findings in all their equipage, drawn forth his reasons as it were a battle ranged, fcattered and defeated all objections in his way, calls out his adverfary into the plain, offers him the advantage of wind and fun, if he please, only that he may try the matter by dint of argument; for his opponents then to fculk, to lay ambushments, to keep a narrow bridge of licenfing where the challenger fhould pafs, though it be valour enough in foldiership, is but weakness and cowardice in the wars of truth. For who knows not that truth is ftrong, next to the Almighty; fhe needs no policies, nor ftratagems, nor licenfings to make her victorious, thofe are the fhifts and the defences that errour ufes againft her power: give her but room, and do not bind her when the fleeps, for then she speaks not true, as the old Proteus did, who fpake oracles only when he was caught and bound, but then rather the turns herfelf into all fhapes, except her own, and perhaps tunes her voice according to the time, as Micaiah did before Ahab, until the be adjured into her own likeness. Yet is it not impoffible that she may have more shapes than one? What elfe is all that rank of things indifferent, wherein truth may be on this fide, or on the other, without being unlike herfelf? What but a vain fhadow elfe is the abolition of "thofe ordinances, that hand-writing nailed to the crofs ?" what great purchase is this chriftian liberty which Paul fo often boafts of? His doctrine is, that he who eats or eats not, regards a day or regards it not, may do either to the Lord. How many other things might be tolerated in peace, and left to confcience, had we but charity, and were it not the chief ftrong hold of our hypocrify to be ever judging one another? I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a, flavish print upon our necks; the ghoft of a linen decency yet haunts us. We ftumble, and are impatient at the leaft dividing of one vifible congregation from another, though it be not in fundamentals; and through our forwardnefs to fupprefs, and our backwardnefs to recover, any enthralled piece of truth out of the gripe of cuftom, we care not to keep truth feparated from truth, which is the fiercest rent and difunion

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difunion of all. We do not see that while we ftill affect by all means a rigid external formality, we may as foon fall again into a grofs conforming stupidity, a stark and dead congealment of "wood and hay and stubble" forced and frozen together, which is more to the fudden degenerating of a church than many fubdichotomies of petty fchifms. Not that I can think well of every light feparation; or that all in a church is to be expected" gold and filver and precious ftones:" it is not poffible for man to fever the wheat from the tares, the good fish from the other fry; that must be the angels ministry at the end of mortal things. Yet if all cannot be of one mind, as who looks they should be? this doubtlefs is more wholefome, more prudent, and more chriftian, that many be tolerated rather than all compelled. I mean not tolerated popery, and open fuperftition, which as it extirpates all religions and civil fupremacies, fo itself should be extirpate, provided first that all charitable and compaffionate means be used to win and regain the weak and the mifled: that alfo which is impious or evil abfolutely either against faith or manners, no law can poffibly. permit, that intends not to unlaw itfelf: but thofe neighbouring differences, or rather indifferences, are what I fpeak of, whether in fome point of doctrine or of difcipline, which though they may be many, yet need not interrupt the unity of fpirit, if we could but find among us the bond of peace. In the mean while, if any one would write, and bring his helpful hand to the flow moving reformation which we labour under, if truth have spoken to him before others, or but feemed at least to fpeak, who hath fo bejefuited us, that we should trouble that man with asking licence to do fo worthy a deed; and not confider this, that if it come to prohibit ing, there is not aught more likely to be prohibited than truth itself: whose first appearance to our eyes, bleared and dimmed with prejudice and cuftom, is more unfightly and unplaufible than many errours; even as the perfon is of many a great man flight and contemptible to fee to. And what do they tell us vainly of new opinions, when this very opinion of theirs, that none must be heard but whom they like, is the worst and newest opinion of all

others;