turns, or else makes two persons representative where there should be but one; which, if there were nothing else, must be a strange quaintness in ordinary prayer. It has, indeed, been pre

tended to be more ancient than the mass, but so little proved, that whereas other corrupt liturgies have had such a seeming antiquity that their publishers have ventured to ascribe them either to ST. PETER, ST. JAMES, ST. MARK, or at least to CHRYSOSTOME or BASIL, ours has been never able to find either age or author allowable, on whom to father those things which therein is least offensive, except the two creeds." Considering that Constantine corrupted religion, he says:"Of his Arianism we heard; and for the rest, a pretty scantling of his knowledge may be taken, by his deferring to be baptized so many years, a thing not unusual, and repugnant to the tenor of Scripture, Philip knowing nothing that should hinder the Eunuch to be baptized [immediately] after the profession of his belief." He quotes Dante, in his 19th Canto of Inferna, to prove that even men professing the Roman faith, had charged Constantine with having marred every thing in the church:

"Ah! Constantine, of how much ill the cause,

Not thy conversion, but those rich domains,

That the first wealthy Pope secured of thee."-p. 27.

He published another work in this year, en

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titled, "Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty;" which he commences, by proving, that "the Church Government is prescribed in the Gospel, and that to say otherwise is unsound." He takes up the hackneyed argument of churchmen, who contend that "church discipline is not platformed in the Bible, but is left to the discretion of men." To the first of these statements he answers: "If we could imagine that he [Christ] left it at random, without his providence and gracious ordering, who is he so arrogant, so presumptuous, that durst dispose and guide the living ark of the Holy Ghost, though he should find it wandering in the fields of Bethshemish, without the constant warrant of some high calling? But no profane insolence can parallel that which our prelates dare avouch, to drive outrageously, and shelter the holy ark of the church, not borne upon their shoulders with pains and labour in the word, but drawn with rude oxen, their officials and their own brute inventions. Let them make shews of reforming while they will, so long as the church is mounted upon the prelatical cart, and not as it ought, between the hands of the ministers, it will but shake and totter; and he that sets to his hand, though with a good intent, to hinder the shogging of it, in this unlawful waggonry wherein he rides, let him beware it be not fatal to him as it was to Uzza."

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In reply to quotations from the Fathers, he speaks most contemptuously. He calls them, "those more ancient than trusty Fathers, whose custom and fond opinion, weak principles, and the neglect of sounder knowledge, have exalted so high, as to have gained them a blind reverence, whose books in bigness and number are endless and immeasurable; I cannot think that either God or nature, either divine or human wisdom, did mean they should ever be a rule or reliance to us, in the decision of any weighty or positive doctrines; for certainly every rule and instrument of necessary knowledge that God has given us, ought to be so in proportion as may wielded and managed by the life of man, without penning him up from the duties of human society. But he that shall bind himself to make antiquity his rule, if he reads but part, (besides the difficulty of the choice,) his rule is deficient and utterly unsatisfying. For there may be other writers of another mind, which he has not seen; and if he undertakes all, the length of man's life cannot extend to give him a full and requisite knowledge of what was done in antiquity. Go, therefore, and use all your art, apply your sledges, your levers, and your iron crows, to heave your mighty Polyphemus of antiquity, to the delusion of novices and unexperienced Christians."

"But if any shall strive to set up his Ephod and Teraphim of antiquity against the brightness and perfection of the gospel, let him fear lest he and his Baal be turned into Bosheth. And thus much may suffice to shew that the pretended Episcopacy cannot be deduced from the apostolical times. '

Nor was he friendly to the system of ministers being paid from tythes and other church revenues, which the Puritans, who now possessed the livings, could prove to be jure Divino with infinite ease! not excelled in their conclusive arguments even by their predecessors, whether Episcopalians or Papists. "The present ecclesiastical revenues," he says, 66 were not at first the effects of just policy or wholesome laws, but of the superstitious devotion of princes and great men who knew no better; or of the base importunity of begging friars, haunting and harassing the death-beds of men departing this life, in a blind and wretched condition of hope to merit heaven, for the building of churches, cloysters, and convents; the black revenues of purgatory, the price of abused and murdered souls, the damned simony. of Trentals, and the hire of indulgencies to commit mortal

Before concluding my extracts from this work, I introduce the following humourous satire of

those who shouted, "No bishop! No king!" in a letter to a friend.

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SIR, Can mischief be nearer hand, than when bishops shall openly affirm that No bishop! No king? A trim paradox, and they may know where they have been a begging for it. I will fetch you the twin brother to it out of the Jesuit's cell; they, feeling the axe of God's reformation, hewing at the old and rotten trunk of Papacy, and finding the Spaniard their surest friend and safest refuge, to sooth him up in his dream of a fifth monarchy, and withal to uphold the decrepit Papalty, have invented this super-politick aphorism, as one terms it, 'One Pope and one king!'

"The little ado which I find in undertaking these pleasant sophisms, puts me into the mind to tell you a tale before I proceed further, and Menenius Agrippa speed us.

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A TALE OF THE HEAD AND THE WEN.

Upon a time the body summoned all the members to meet in the guild for the common good, (as Esop's Chronicles draw many stranger accidents;) the head by right takes the first seat, and next to it a huge and monstrous wen, little less than the head itself, growing to it by a narrow excrescency. The members arranged began to